Books Read, 2012

1 January 2013

Like last year, I’m publishing a list of the books I’ve read over the previous year. There are about as many titles as last year, but the total word count is lower given that many of them are poems. But then, many are also in Old English, so reading is much slower and more intensive.

Many of the books were on my PhD special field reading list or critical works I read in preparation for that exam.

Those marked with an asterisk are re-reads. I’ve read them before.

Books
*Austen, Jane, Pride and Prejudice
Bede, The Ecclesiastical History of the English People (Old English version)
Benedict, The Rule of St. Benedict
*Beowulf (Nowell Codex)
Bitterli, Dieter, Say What I Am Called: The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book and the Anglo-Latin Riddle Tradition
*Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy
Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy (Old English version)
*Book of John Mandeville
Chaucer, Geoffrey, Troilus and Criseyde
Jurasinski, Stefan and Lisi Oliver, eds., English Law Before Magna Carta: Felix Liebermann and Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen
Jurasinski, Stefan, Ancient Privileges: Beowulf, Law, and the Making of Germanic Antiquity
Godden, Malcolm and Michael Lapidge, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Old English Literature
Gregory the Great, Pastoral Care (Old English version)
Harbus, Antonina, Cognitive Approaches to Old English Poetry
Harris, Sam, Free Will
Haywood, Eliza, Fantomina
*Kleist, Aaron, Striving with Grace: Views of Free Will in Anglo-Saxon England
Lakoff, George, Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things
Lakoff, George and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By
Lockett, Leslie, Anglo-Saxon Psychologies in the Vernacular and Latin Traditions
*Milton, John, Paradise Lost
O’Brien O’Keeffe, Katherine, Stealing Obedience: Narratives of Agency and Identity in Later Anglo-Saxon England
Orchard, Andy, A Critical Companion to Beowulf
Orchard, Andy, Pride and Prodigies: Studies in the Monsters of the Beowulf-Manuscript
Robertson, A. J., The Laws of the Kings of England from Edmund to Henry I
Rowley, Sharon, The Old English Version of Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica
*Shakespeare, William, King Lear
Sowdone of Babylone, The
Sword, Helen, Stylish Academic Writing
Symonds, Craig, The Battle of Midway
Taylor, Charles, Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity
Trim, Richard, Metaphor Networks: The Comparative Evolution of Figurative Language
Wills, David, Dorsality: Thinking Back Through Technology and Politics

Shorter Poetry
*Chaucer, Geoffrey, General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales
*Chaucer, Geoffrey, The Knight’s Tale
*Chaucer, Geoffrey, The Miller’s Prologue and Tale
*Chaucer, Geoffrey, The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale

Exeter Book poetry
*Christ A, B, & C
*Deor
*Guthlac A & B
*The Husband’s Message
*Juliana
*Riddles
*The Ruin
*The Seafarer
*Soul and Body II
*The Wanderer
*Widsith
*The Wife’s Lament
*Wulf and Eadwacer

Junius Manuscript poetry
Christ and Satan
Daniel
Exodus
Genesis A & B

Misc. Anglo-Saxon short poems
The Battle of Maldon
*Cædmon, Cædmon’s Hym
*Judith (Nowell Codex)
Solomon and Saturn

Vercelli Book poetry
Andreas
Elene
*The Dream of the Rood
Soul and Body I

Short-form Old English Prose
Ælfric, St. Stephen’s Day Homily (CH I.3)
*Ælfric, Epiphany Homily (CH 1.7)
*Ælfric, St. Gregory Homily (CH 2.9)
Ælfric, Life of St. Cuthbert
*Ælfric, Life of St. Edmund
*Ælfric, Preface to Genesis
Ælfric, Twenty-First Sunday After Pentecost Homily (CH 1.35)
Homily 23: Life of Guthlac (Vercelli Book)
The Letter of Alexander the Great to Aristotle (Nowell Codex)
The Passion of St. Christopher (Nowell Codex)
Wulfstan, Sermo Lupi ad Anglos

Hyphens: A Rant (So to Speak)

5 December 2012

Although Jen Doll calls her piece a “rant,” it really isn’t one. It’s rare that a mass-market publication like The Atlantic prints a thoughtful article that effectively deals with the niceties and subtleties of punctuation, but this one on the hyphen is just that. Judging from my students’ essays, the hyphen, along with its cousin the dash, is probably the most misused punctuation mark, and Ms Doll’s article addresses the proper usage with understated wit and charm. If only more articles about pet peeves were like this one.

Plus, I learned something from this article. I had no idea that that an en dash was the proper mark to use in the adjective pre–Civil War. It seems, at least according to Chicago, that an en dash is used instead of hyphen when linking an open compound (i. e., Civil War) with another adjective or prefix.

[Tip o’ the Hat to Andrew Sullivan]

OED Editing Drama

28 November 2012

There’s nothing like the excitement generated by a good story about dictionary editing gone wild.

The Guardian ran this piece on Monday about the OED “covertly” deleting words because they came from sources outside England.

The only problem is, that it doesn’t seem to be true. Yes, the dictionary deleted words, and these were disproportionately words from non-UK varieties of English, but there was nothing covert about it. The dictionary clearly explained its editorial policy and under what circumstances words would be struck from the dictionary. The words weren’t deleted because they were foreignisms, but because the evidence for their use was not substantive enough. At the same time, the editors were adding many more foreignisms that were better researched and clearly established. When dealing with a print dictionary, there is only so much room and such editorial decisions need to be made. Furthermore, the book on which The Guardian bases its article apparently does not make the claims the newspaper says it does.

Jesse Sheidlower has a response on the New Yorker’s blog.

AP on Homophobia

28 November 2012

The Associated Press Stylebook, which is something of the standard setter among American journalists, has come out discouraging the use of the word homophobia (and Islamophobia as well):

phobia
An irrational, uncontrollable fear, often a form of mental illness. Examples: acrophobia, a fear of heights, and claustrophobia, a fear of being in small, enclosed spaces. Do not use in political or social contexts: homophobia, Islamophobia.

The AP justifies its decision in this way:

Phobia means irrational, uncontrollable fear, often a form of mental illness. In terms like homophobia, it’s often speculation. The reasons for anti-gay feelings or actions may not be apparent. Specifics are better than vague characterizations of a person’s general feelings about something.

But that justification is wrongheaded, a clear example of the etymological fallacy that runs counter to how people use both the word and the suffix -phobia. In many instances phobia is not used in a clinical sense, and it doesn’t even have to refer a literal “fear,” as in homophobia which is a bigotry or intense dislike. I don’t have a copy of Webster’s New World Dictionary, which is the AP’s go-to dictionary, but here is how other dictionaries define homophobia:

  • The Oxford English Dictionary, in an entry dated 1993, defines it simply as, “fear or hatred of homosexuals and homosexuality,” and says that -phobia, in a March 2006 entry is used in “forming nouns with the sense ‘fear of ——,’ ‘aversion to ——.’”

  • The American Heritage Dictionary, fourth edition gives two definitions of homophobia: “fear of or contempt for lesbians and gay men” and “behavior based on such a feeling.” Similarly, this dictionary gives two definitions for phobia: “a persistent, abnormal, and irrational fear” and “a strong fear, dislike, or aversion.”

  • Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, eleventh edition, says homophobia means an “irrational fear, aversion to, or discrimination against homosexuality or homosexuals.” This dictionary has two definitions for the combining form -phobia: 1) “an exaggerated fear of” and 2) “intolerance or aversion for.”

The AP is simply wrong on all counts here.

Furthermore, the AP’s argument that homophobia shouldn’t be used because it isn’t a clinical fear is itself a politically charged one. Conservapedia has this to say in their entry for homophobia, which is a more explicit statement of the AP’s justification:

Homophobia is an etymologically incorrect term which most directly denotes “an unreasoning fear of or antipathy toward homosexuals and homosexuality,” but it also includes a fear of increased political and social power of homosexuals in advancing their agenda. The term is used regularly by activists to describe several kinds of people, which may or may not match the actual definition of “fear of homosexuals and homosexuality.” The recipients of the homophobia label include those who feel uncomfortable around homosexuals, those who reveal that they oppose “gays,” and even those who may privately support homosexuality but who fail to publicly support homosexuals when called upon to do so.

So by stepping into the fray, the AP has declared itself, wittingly or not, as being on one side of the “culture wars.”

For further reading, this Voice of America piece quotes Ben Zimmer, John E. McIntyre of the Baltimore Sun weighs in here, and Nathaniel Frank pens Slate’s article on the AP decision.