A History of Cant and Slang Dictionaries
Volume I: 1567-1784
ISBN13: 9780199254712ISBN10: 0199254710
Hardback,
272 pages
Feb 2004,
In Stock
Price:
$175.00 (06)Description
This is a pioneering account of a fascinating and under-studied group of dictionaries. Well over a hundred glossaries of cant and slang were published during the period covered by this volume. These reveal the secret language used by thieves and beggars to conceal their illegal conspiracies. Coleman investigates the relationship between cant lists and canting literature, and examines their socio-historical context. Why was this period so fascinated by crime and by criminals and so obsessed with the need to record this language? How far are the lists genuine records of contemporary cant and how far the products of literary invention? Who produced them, and how were they researched? Who bought them, and what did they hope to get out of them? This absorbing and astute book will become an invaluable resource for anyone interested in the field.Features
- written for a multi-disciplinary readership of social and cultural historians and historians of language
- full of revelation about the underside of early modern English life
About the Author(s)
Julie Coleman lectures in English Historical Linguistics and Medieval Literature at the University of Leicester. She has written widely on English lexicology and lexicography from the medieval period onwards, and is founder and current chair of the International Society for Historical Lexicography and Lexicology (http://www.le.ac.uk/ee/jmc21/ishll.html).
