Prose is language that follows the natural flow or rhythm of speech, ordinary grammatical structures , or, in writing, typical conventions and formatting. Thus, prose ranges from informal speaking to formal academic writing . However, it differs most notably from poetry , in which language is organized by a rhythmic metre , a rhyme scheme , writing formatted in verse , or other more intentionally artistic structures.
140-405: Ordinary conversational language and many other forms of language fall under prose, a label that can describe both speech and writing. In writing, prose is visually formatted differently than poetry. Poetry is traditionally written in verse : a series of lines on a page, parallel to the way that a person would highlight the structure orally if saying the poem aloud; for example, poetry may end with
280-614: A lingua franca , used to facilitate communication across a large area. However, vernaculars usually carry covert prestige among their native speakers, in showcasing group identity or sub-culture affiliation. As a border case, a nonstandard dialect may even have its own written form, though it could then be assumed that the orthography is unstable, inconsistent, or unsanctioned by powerful institutions, like that of government or education. The most salient instance of nonstandard dialects in writing would likely be nonstandard phonemic spelling of reported speech in literature or poetry (e.g.,
420-594: A lingua franca until the 17th century, when grammarians began to debate the creation of an ideal language. Before 1550 as a conventional date, "supraregional compromises" were used in printed works, such as the one published by Valentin Ickelsamer ( Ein Teutsche Grammatica ) 1534. Books published in one of these artificial variants began to increase in frequency, replacing the Latin then in use. After 1550
560-990: A liturgical language , a specialized use of a former lingua franca . For example, until the 1960s, the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church was generally celebrated in Latin rather than in vernaculars. The Coptic Church still holds liturgies in Coptic , not Arabic. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church holds liturgies in Ge'ez , but parts of the Mass are read in Amharic . Similarly, in Hindu culture, traditionally religious or scholarly works were written in Sanskrit (long after its use as
700-492: A Romance language was a book written in manuscript form by Leon Battista Alberti between 1437 and 1441 and entitled Grammatica della lingua toscana , "Grammar of the Tuscan Language". In it Alberti sought to demonstrate that the vernacular – here Tuscan, known today as modern Italian – was every bit as structured as Latin. He did so by mapping vernacular structures onto Latin. The book was never printed until 1908. It
840-410: A conversational form; Ferguson had in mind a literary language. For example, a lecture is delivered in a different variety than ordinary conversation. Ferguson's own example was classical and spoken Arabic, but the analogy between Vulgar Latin and Classical Latin is of the same type. Excluding the upper-class and lower-class register aspects of the two variants, Classical Latin was a literary language;
980-602: A cousin of the James family came down to the house in Fourteenth Street and, one evening during his stay, read the first instalment of David Copperfield aloud to the elders of the family: Henry Junior had sneaked down from his bedroom to listen surreptitiously to the reading, until a scene involving the Murdstones led him to "loud[ly] sob," whereupon he was discovered and sent back to bed. Between 1855 and 1860,
1120-616: A dramatisation of his popular novella Daisy Miller in 1882. From 1890 to 1892, having received a bequest that freed him from magazine publication, he made a strenuous effort to succeed on the London stage, writing a half-dozen plays, of which only one, a dramatisation of his novel The American , was produced. This play was performed for several years by a touring repertory company, and had a respectable run in London, but did not earn very much money for James. His other plays written at this time were not produced. In 1893, however, he responded to
1260-546: A few different languages; some examples of languages and regional accents (and/or dialects) within Great Britain include Scotland ( Scottish Gaelic ), Northumbria , Yorkshire , Wales ( Welsh ), the Isle of Man ( Manx ), Devon , and Cornwall ( Cornish ). Being the language of a maritime power, English was (of necessity) formed from elements of many different languages. Standardisation has been an ongoing issue. Even in
1400-674: A freelance writer in Rome and then secured a position as Paris correspondent for the New York Tribune through the influence of its editor, John Hay . When these efforts failed, he returned to New York City. During 1874 and 1875, he published Transatlantic Sketches , A Passionate Pilgrim and Roderick Hudson . In 1875, James wrote for The Nation every week; he received anywhere from $ 3 to $ 10 for brief paragraphs, $ 12 to $ 25 for book reviews and $ 25 to $ 40 for travel articles and lengthier items. During this early period in his career, he
1540-710: A general plea for mother-tongue education in England: The first part of the elementary , published in 1582, by Richard Mulcaster . In 1586, William Bullokar wrote the first English grammar to be written in English, the Pamphlet for Grammar . This was followed by Bref Grammar , in that same year. Previously he had written the Booke at Large for the Amendment of Orthography for English Speech (1580), but his orthography
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#17327660642661680-461: A house, 58 West Fourteenth Street , in Manhattan. A painting of a view of Florence by Thomas Cole hung in the front parlor of this house on West Fourteenth. His education was calculated by his father to expose him to many influences, primarily scientific and philosophical; it was described by Percy Lubbock, the editor of his selected letters, as "extraordinarily haphazard and promiscuous." Once,
1820-436: A joint publication, in 1584 by De Eglantier and the rhetoric society of Amsterdam; this was to be the first comprehensive Dutch grammar, Twe-spraack vande Nederduitsche letterkunst/ ófte Vant spellen ende eyghenscap des Nederduitschen taals . Hendrick Laurenszoon Spieghel was a major contributor, with others contributing as well. Modern English is considered to have begun at a conventional date of about 1550, most notably at
1960-515: A language as coherent, complex, and complete systems—even nonstandard varieties. A dialect or language variety that is a vernacular may not have historically benefited from the institutional support or sanction that a standard dialect has. According to another definition, a vernacular is a language that has not developed a standard variety , undergone codification , or established a literary tradition. Vernacular may vary from overtly prestigious speech varieties in different ways, in that
2100-594: A linguistic phenomenon termed diglossia ("split tongue", on the model of the genetic anomaly ). In it, the language is bifurcated: the speaker learns two forms of the language and ordinarily uses one but under special circumstances uses the other. The one most frequently used is the low (L) variant, equivalent to the vernacular, while the special variant is the high (H). The concept was introduced to linguistics by Charles A. Ferguson (1959), but Ferguson explicitly excluded variants as divergent as dialects or different languages or as similar as styles or registers. It must not be
2240-482: A living, however, and lacked the experiences of select schools, university, and army service, the common bonds of masculine society. He was furthermore a man whose tastes and interests were, according to the prevailing standards of Victorian era Anglo-American culture, rather feminine, and who was shadowed by the cloud of prejudice that then and later accompanied suspicions of his homosexuality. Edmund Wilson compared James's objectivity to Shakespeare's: One would be in
2380-806: A long visit, James refers jocularly to their "happy little congress of two". In letters to Hugh Walpole, he pursues convoluted jokes and puns about their relationship, referring to himself as an elephant who "paws you oh so benevolently" and winds about Walpole his "well-meaning old trunk". His letters to Walter Berry printed by the Black Sun Press have long been celebrated for their lightly veiled eroticism. However, James corresponded in equally extravagant language with his many female friends, writing, for example, to fellow novelist Lucy Clifford : "Dearest Lucy! What shall I say? when I love you so very, very much, and see you nine times for once that I see Others! Therefore I think that—if you want it made clear to
2520-568: A number of weeks in Italy in 1887, and his shock and grief over her suicide in 1894, are discussed in detail in Edel's biography and play a central role in a study by Lyndall Gordon . Edel conjectured that Woolson was in love with James and killed herself in part because of his coldness, but Woolson's biographers have objected to Edel's account. James is one of the major figures of trans-Atlantic literature. His works frequently juxtapose characters from
2660-430: A once-familiar paradigm in biographies of homosexuals when direct evidence was nonexistent. Novick also criticised Edel for following the discounted Freudian interpretation of homosexuality "as a kind of failure." The difference of opinion erupted in a series of exchanges between Edel (and later Fred Kaplan filling in for Edel) and Novick, which were published by the online magazine Slate , with Novick arguing that even
2800-511: A phonetical and morphological overview of Spanish for nonnative speakers. The Grammar Books of the Master-poets ( Welsh : Gramadegau'r Penceirddiaid ) are considered to have been composed in the early fourteenth century, and are present in manuscripts from soon after. These tractates draw on the traditions of the Latin grammars of Donatus and Priscianus and also on the teaching of the professional Welsh poets. The tradition of grammars of
2940-489: A position to appreciate James better if one compared him with the dramatists of the seventeenth century— Racine and Molière , whom he resembles in form as well as in point of view, and even Shakespeare , when allowances are made for the most extreme differences in subject and form. These poets are not, like Dickens and Hardy , writers of melodrama—either humorous or pessimistic, nor secretaries of society like Balzac , nor prophets like Tolstoy : they are occupied simply with
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#17327660642663080-409: A repeated exposure of this wickedness, a reiterated and passionate plea for the fullest freedom of development, unimperiled by reckless and barbarous stupidity. Philip Guedalla jokingly described three phases in the development of James's prose: "James I, James II, and The Old Pretender," and observers do often group his works of fiction into three periods. In his apprentice years, culminating with
3220-573: A request from actor-manager George Alexander for a serious play for the opening of his renovated St. James's Theatre, and wrote a long drama, Guy Domville , which Alexander produced. A noisy uproar arose on the opening night, 5 January 1895, with hissing from the gallery when James took his bow after the final curtain, and the author was upset. The play received moderately good reviews and had a modest run of four weeks before being taken off to make way for Oscar Wilde 's The Importance of Being Earnest , which Alexander thought would have better prospects for
3360-453: A rhyme at the end of each line, making the entire work more melodious or memorable. Prose uses writing conventions and formatting that may highlight meaning—for instance, the use of a new paragraph for a new speaker in a novel —but does not follow any special rhythmic or other artistic structure. The word "prose" first appeared in English in the 14th century. It is derived from
3500-663: A series of adverbs. The overall effect could be a vivid evocation of a scene as perceived by a sensitive observer. It has been debated whether this change of style was engendered by James's shifting from writing to dictating to a typist, a change made during the composition of What Maisie Knew . In its intense focus on the consciousness of his major characters, James's later work foreshadows extensive developments in 20th-century fiction. Indeed, he might have influenced stream-of-consciousness writers such as Virginia Woolf , who not only read some of his novels but also wrote essays about them. Both contemporary and modern readers have found
3640-405: A serious disease, and her impact on the people around her. Some of these people befriend Milly with honourable motives, while others are more self-interested. James stated in his autobiographical books that Milly was based on Minny Temple, his beloved cousin, who died at an early age of tuberculosis. He said that he attempted in the novel to wrap her memory in the "beauty and dignity of art". James
3780-457: A ship and sneaked them through customs, allowing her to bury him in their family plot. James regularly rejected suggestions that he should marry, and after settling in London, proclaimed himself "a bachelor". F. W. Dupee , in several volumes on the James family, originated the theory that he had been in love with his cousin, Mary ("Minnie") Temple, but that a neurotic fear of sex kept him from admitting such affections: "James's invalidism ...
3920-409: A slave born in the house rather than abroad. The figurative meaning was broadened from the diminutive extended words vernaculus, vernacula . Varro , the classical Latin grammarian, used the term vocabula vernacula , "termes de la langue nationale" or "vocabulary of the national language" as opposed to foreign words. In general linguistics , a vernacular is contrasted with a lingua franca ,
4060-588: A spoken language) or in Tamil in Tamil country. Sanskrit was a lingua franca among the non-Indo-European languages of the Indian subcontinent and became more of one as the spoken languages, or prakrits , began to diverge from it in different regions. With the rise of the bhakti movement from the 12th century onwards, religious works were created in other languages: Hindi , Kannada , Telugu and many others. For example,
4200-503: A stutter, which seems to have manifested itself only when he spoke English; in French, he did not stutter. In the summer of 1857, the James family went to Boulogne-sur-Mer, where they set up house at No. 20 Rue Neuve Chaussée, and where Henry was a regular customer at an English lending library. In the autumn of that year, Henry Senior wrote from Boulogne to a friend that "Henry is not so fond of study, properly so-called, as of reading...He
4340-745: A third-party language in which persons speaking different vernaculars not understood by each other may communicate. For instance, in Western Europe until the 17th century, most scholarly works had been written in Latin , which was serving as a lingua franca. Works written in Romance languages are said to be in the vernacular. The Divina Commedia , the Cantar de Mio Cid , and The Song of Roland are examples of early vernacular literature in Italian, Spanish, and French, respectively. In Europe, Latin
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4480-645: A vernacular has an internally coherent system of grammar . It may be associated with a particular set of vocabulary , and spoken using a variety of accents , styles , and registers . As American linguist John McWhorter describes about a number of dialects spoken in the American South in earlier U.S. history, including older African-American Vernacular English , "the often nonstandard speech of Southern white planters , nonstandard British dialects of indentured servants, and West Indian patois , [...] were non standard but not sub standard." In other words,
4620-560: Is a devourer of libraries, and an immense writer of novels and dramas. He has considerable talent as a writer, but I am at a loss to know whether he will ever accomplish much." William recorded in a letter to their parents in Paris, while the boys were staying in Bonn, that Henry and Garth Wilkinson would wrestle "when study has made them dull and sleepy." In 1860, the family returned to Newport. There, Henry befriended Thomas Sergeant Perry , who
4760-455: Is a general but far from uniform consensus among the leading scholars about what should or should not be said in standard English; but for every rule, examples from famous English writers can be found that break it. Uniformity of spoken English never existed and does not exist now, but usages do exist, which must be learnt by the speakers, and do not conform to prescriptive rules. Usages have been documented not by prescriptive grammars, which on
4900-486: Is a grammar of the Irish language which is thought to date back as far as the 7th century: the earliest surviving manuscripts are 12th-century. Italian appears before standardization as the lingua Italica of Isidore and the lingua vulgaris of subsequent medieval writers. Documents of mixed Latin and Italian are known from the 12th century, which appears to be the start of writing in Italian. The first known grammar of
5040-478: Is crucial to determining its intended sense. In variation theory, pioneered by William Labov , language is a large set of styles or registers from which the speaker selects according to the social setting of the moment. The vernacular is "the least self-conscious style of people in a relaxed conversation", or "the most basic style"; that is, casual varieties used spontaneously rather than self-consciously, informal talk used in intimate situations. In other contexts
5180-459: Is exercised well or badly. His protagonists were often young American women facing oppression or abuse, and as his secretary Theodora Bosanquet remarked in her monograph Henry James at Work : When he walked out of the refuge of his study and into the world and looked around him, he saw a place of torment, where creatures of prey perpetually thrust their claws into the quivering flesh of doomed, defenseless children of light ... His novels are
5320-400: Is generally straightforward and, though personally characteristic, well within the norms of 19th-century fiction. Roderick Hudson (1875) is a Künstlerroman that traces the development of the title character, an extremely talented sculptor. Although the book shows some signs of immaturity—this was James's first serious attempt at a full-length novel—it has attracted favourable comment due to
5460-571: Is more codified , institutionally promoted, literary , or formal. More narrowly, a particular language variety that does not hold a widespread high-status perception, and sometimes even carries social stigma , is also called a vernacular , vernacular dialect , nonstandard dialect , etc. and is typically its speakers' native variety . Regardless of any such stigma, all nonstandard dialects are full-fledged varieties of language with their own consistent grammatical structure, sound system , body of vocabulary, etc. Like any native language variety,
5600-406: Is normally more systematic or formulaic, while prose is closer to both ordinary, and conversational speech. In Molière 's play Le Bourgeois gentilhomme the character Monsieur Jourdain asked for something to be written in neither verse nor prose, to which a philosophy master replies: "there is no other way to express oneself than with prose or verse", for the simple reason that "everything that
5740-406: Is not prose is verse, and everything that is not verse is prose". American novelist Truman Capote , in an interview, commented as follows on prose style: I believe a story can be wrecked by a faulty rhythm in a sentence— especially if it occurs toward the end—or a mistake in paragraphing, even punctuation. Henry James is the maestro of the semicolon. Hemingway is a first-rate paragrapher. From
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5880-511: Is set mainly in Europe, especially in England and Italy. Generally regarded as the masterpiece of his early phase, The Portrait of a Lady is described as a psychological novel , exploring the minds of his characters, and almost a work of social science, exploring the differences between Europeans and Americans, the old and the new worlds. The second period of James's career, which extends from
6020-580: Is the subject of contention among James's biographers, but the letters to Andersen were occasionally quasierotic: "I put, my dear boy, my arm around you, & feel the pulsation, thereby, as it were, of our excellent future & your admirable endowment." His numerous letters to the many young homosexual men among his close male friends are more forthcoming. To his homosexual friend Howard Sturgis , James could write: "I repeat, almost to indiscretion, that I could live with you. Meanwhile, I can only try to live without you." In another letter Sturgis, following
6160-443: Is to have lived & loved & cursed & floundered & enjoyed & suffered—I don't think I regret a single 'excess' of my responsive youth". The interpretation of James as living a less austere emotional life has been subsequently explored by other scholars. The often intense politics of Jamesian scholarship has also been the subject of studies. Author Colm Tóibín has said that Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick 's Epistemology of
6300-660: The 54th Massachusetts . In 1864, the James family moved to Boston, Massachusetts, to be near William, who had enrolled first in the Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard and then in the medical school. In 1862, Henry attended Harvard Law School , but realised that he was not interested in studying law. He pursued his interest in literature and associated with authors and critics William Dean Howells and Charles Eliot Norton in Boston and Cambridge and formed lifelong friendships with Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. ,
6440-526: The Atlantic Monthly . The novel was later published in book form in 1878. During a 14-month trip through Europe in 1869–70, he met John Ruskin , Charles Dickens , Matthew Arnold , William Morris , and George Eliot . Rome impressed him profoundly. "Here I am then in the Eternal City", he wrote to his brother William. "At last—for the first time—I live!" He attempted to support himself as
6580-738: The Hetruscane and Mesapian , whereof though there be some Records yet extant; yet there are none alive that can understand them: The Oscan , the Sabin and Tusculan, are thought to be but Dialects to these. Here, vernacular, mother language and dialect are in use in a modern sense. According to Merriam-Webster , "vernacular" was brought into the English language as early as 1601 from the Latin vernaculus ("native") which had been in figurative use in Classical Latin as "national" and "domestic", having originally been derived from verna ,
6720-531: The Old French prose , which in turn originates in the Latin expression prosa oratio (literally, straightforward or direct speech ). In highly-literate cultures where spoken rhetoric is considered relatively unimportant, definitions of prose may be narrower, including only written language (but including written speech or dialogue). In written languages, spoken and written prose usually differ sharply. Sometimes, these differences are transparent to those using
6860-541: The Old World (Europe), embodying a feudal civilisation that is beautiful, often corrupt, and alluring, and from the New World (United States), where people are often brash, open, and assertive , and embody the virtues of the new American society—particularly personal freedom and a more exacting moral character. James explores this clash of personalities and cultures, in stories of personal relationships in which power
7000-683: The Ramayana , one of Hinduism's sacred epics in Sanskrit, had vernacular versions such as Ranganadha Ramayanam composed in Telugu by Gona Buddha Reddy in the 15th century; and Ramacharitamanasa , a Awadhi version of the Ramayana by the 16th-century poet Tulsidas . These circumstances are a contrast between a vernacular and language variant used by the same speakers. According to one school of linguistic thought, all such variants are examples of
7140-701: The Southern Netherlands came under the dominion of Spain, then of Austria (1713) and of France (1794). The Congress of Vienna created the United Kingdom of the Netherlands in 1815 from which southern Netherlands (being Catholic) seceded in 1830 to form the Kingdom of Belgium , which was confirmed in 1839 by the Treaty of London . As a result of this political instability no standard Dutch
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#17327660642667280-805: The Welsh Language developed from these through the Middle Ages and to the Renaissance. A dictionary is to be distinguished from a glossary . Although numerous glossaries publishing vernacular words had long been in existence, such as the Etymologiae of Isidore of Seville , which listed many Spanish words, the first vernacular dictionaries emerged together with vernacular grammars. Glossaries in Dutch began about 1470 AD leading eventually to two Dutch dictionaries : Shortly after (1579)
7420-474: The " New York Edition ", a 24-volume collection of his works. In 1910, his brother William died; Henry had just joined William from an unsuccessful search for relief in Europe, on what turned out to be Henry's last visit to the United States (summer 1910 to July 1911) and was near him when he died. In 1913, he wrote his autobiographies, A Small Boy and Others and Notes of a Son and Brother . After
7560-512: The " rederijkerskamers " (learned, literary societies founded throughout Flanders and Holland from the 1420s onward) attempted to impose a Latin structure on Dutch, on the presumption that Latin grammar had a "universal character". However, in 1559, John III van de Werve, Lord of Hovorst published his grammar Den schat der Duytsscher Talen in Dutch; Dirck Volckertszoon Coornhert ( Eenen nieuwen ABC of Materi-boeck ) followed five years after, in 1564. The Latinizing tendency changed course, with
7700-558: The 1516 Regole grammaticali della volgar lingua of Giovanni Francesco Fortunio and the 1525 Prose della vulgar lingua of Pietro Bembo . In those works the authors strove to establish a dialect that would qualify for becoming the Italian national language. The first grammar in a vernacular language in western Europe was published in Toulouse in 1327. Known as the Leys d'amor and written by Guilhèm Molinièr, an advocate of Toulouse, it
7840-492: The 15th century, concurrent with the rise of Castile as an international power. The first Spanish grammar by Antonio de Nebrija ( Tratado de gramática sobre la lengua Castellana , 1492) was divided into parts for native and nonnative speakers, pursuing a different purpose in each. Books 1–4 describe the Spanish language grammatically, in order to facilitate the study of Latin for its Spanish-speaking readers. Book 5 contains
7980-476: The 1710s, due to the military power of Louis XIV of France . Certain languages have both a classical form and various vernacular forms, with two widely used examples being Arabic and Chinese: see Varieties of Arabic and Chinese language . In the 1920s, due to the May Fourth Movement , Classical Chinese was replaced by written vernacular Chinese . The vernacular is also often contrasted with
8120-472: The 1880s was The Tragic Muse . Although he was following the precepts of Zola in his novels of the '80s, their tone and attitude are closer to the fiction of Alphonse Daudet. The lack of critical and financial success for his novels during this period led him to try writing for the theatre; His dramatic works and his experiences with theatre are discussed below. In the last quarter of 1889, "for pure and copious lucre," he started translating Port Tarascon ,
8260-423: The 27-year-old Andersen in Rome in 1899, when James was 56, and wrote letters to Andersen that are intensely emotional: "I hold you, dearest boy, in my innermost love, & count on your feeling me—in every throb of your soul". In a letter of 6 May 1904, to his brother William, James referred to himself as "always your hopelessly celibate even though sexagenarian Henry". How accurate that description might have been
8400-478: The Anglo-Norman domains in both northwestern France and Britain, English scholars retained an interest in the fate of French as well as of English. Some of the numerous 16th-century surviving grammars are: The development of a standard German was impeded by political disunity and strong local traditions until the invention of printing made possible a " High German -based book language". This literary language
8540-526: The Atlantic. It drew notice perhaps mostly because it depicted a woman whose behaviour is outside the social norms of Europe. He also began his first masterpiece, The Portrait of a Lady , which appeared in 1881. In 1877, he first visited Wenlock Abbey in Shropshire, home of his friend Charles Milnes Gaskell , whom he had met through Henry Adams. He was much inspired by the darkly romantic abbey and
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#17327660642668680-530: The Closet made a landmark difference to Jamesian scholarship by arguing that he be read as a homosexual writer whose desire to keep his sexuality a secret shaped his layered style and dramatic artistry. According to Tóibín, such a reading "removed James from the realm of dead white males who wrote about posh people. He became our contemporary." James's letters to expatriate American sculptor Hendrik Christian Andersen have attracted particular attention. James met
8820-526: The Cricket ", published in 1863. About a year later, " A Tragedy of Error ", his first short story, was published anonymously. James's first literary payment was for an appreciation of Sir Walter Scott's novels, written for the North American Review . He wrote fiction and nonfiction pieces for The Nation and Atlantic Monthly , where Fields was editor. In 1865, Ernest Lawrence Godkin ,
8960-455: The English, and continental Europeans, such as The Portrait of a Lady . His later works, such as The Ambassadors , The Wings of the Dove and The Golden Bowl were increasingly experimental. In describing the internal states of mind and social dynamics of his characters, James often wrote in a style in which ambiguous or contradictory motives and impressions were overlaid or juxtaposed in
9100-442: The French writers that he had studied assiduously. Critical reaction and sales were poor. He wrote to Howells that the books had hurt his career rather than helped because they had "reduced the desire, and demand, for my productions to zero". During this time, he became friends with Robert Louis Stevenson , John Singer Sargent , Edmund Gosse , George du Maurier , Paul Bourget , and Constance Fenimore Woolson . His third novel from
9240-513: The James household travelled to London, Paris, Geneva , Boulogne-sur-Mer , Bonn , and Newport, Rhode Island , according to the father's current interests and publishing ventures, retreating to the United States when funds were low. The James family arrived in Paris in July 1855 and took rooms at a hotel in the Rue de la Paix. Some time between 1856 and 1857, when William was fourteen and Henry thirteen,
9380-516: The Latin did spread all over that Country; the Calabrian , and Apulian spoke Greek, whereof some Relics are to be found to this day ; but it was an adventitious, no Mother-Language to them: 'tis confess'd that Latium it self, and all the Territories about Rome, had the Latin for its maternal and common first vernacular Tongue; but Tuscany and Liguria had others quite discrepant, viz.
9520-628: The New York edition of The American , James describes the development of the story in his mind as exactly such: the "situation" of an American, "some robust but insidiously beguiled and betrayed, some cruelly wronged, compatriot..." with the focus of the story being on the response of this wronged man. The Portrait of a Lady may be an experiment to see what happens when an idealistic young woman suddenly becomes very rich. In many of his tales, characters seem to exemplify alternative futures and possibilities, as most markedly in " The Jolly Corner ", in which
9660-661: The Rhode Island shore, at Portsmouth Grove ; he took walks and had conversations with numerous soldiers and in later years compared this experience to those of Walt Whitman as a volunteer nurse. In the autumn of 1861, James received an injury, probably to his back, while fighting a fire. This injury, which resurfaced at times throughout his life, made him unfit for military service in the American Civil War. His younger brothers Garth Wilkinson and Robertson, however, both served, with Wilkinson serving as an officer in
9800-624: The United States, James largely relocated to Europe as a young man, and eventually settled in England, becoming a British citizen in 1915, a year before his death. James was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911, 1912, and 1916. Jorge Luis Borges said "I have visited some literatures of East and West; I have compiled an encyclopedic compendium of fantastic literature; I have translated Kafka , Melville , and Bloy ; I know of no stranger work than that of Henry James." James
9940-447: The adjective "nonstandard" should not be taken to mean that these various dialects were intrinsically incorrect, less logical, or otherwise inferior, only that they were not the socially perceived norm or mainstream considered prestigious or appropriate for public speech; however, nonstandard dialects are indeed often stigmatized as such, due to socially-induced post-hoc rationalization. Again, however, linguistics regards all varieties of
10080-478: The age of modern communications and mass media, according to one study, "… although the Received Pronunciation of Standard English has been heard constantly on radio and then television for over 60 years, only 3 to 5% of the population of Britain actually speaks RP … new brands of English have been springing up even in recent times ...." What the vernacular would be in this case is a moot point: "…
10220-445: The brooding conscientious mentor. In The Portrait of a Lady (1881), James concluded the first phase of his career with a novel that remains his most popular piece of long fiction. The story is of a spirited young American woman, Isabel Archer, who "affronts her destiny" and finds it overwhelming. She inherits a large amount of money and subsequently becomes the victim of Machiavellian scheming by two American expatriates. The narrative
10360-419: The case of the English language , while it has become common thought to assume that nonstandard varieties should not be taught, there has been evidence to prove that teaching nonstandard dialects in the classroom can encourage some children to learn English. The first known usage of the word "vernacular" in English is not recent. In 1688, James Howell wrote: Concerning Italy, doubtless there were divers before
10500-463: The coming season. After the stresses and disappointment of these efforts, James insisted that he would write no more for the theatre, but within weeks had agreed to write a curtain-raiser for Ellen Terry . This became the one-act "Summersoft", which he later rewrote into a short story, "Covering End", and then expanded into a full-length play, The High Bid , which had a brief run in London in 1907, when James made another concerted effort to write for
10640-427: The concept still further by proposing that multiple H exist in society from which the users can select for various purposes. The definition of an H is intermediate between Ferguson's and Fishman's. Realizing the inappropriateness of the term diglossia (only two) to his concept, he proposes the term broad diglossia. Within sociolinguistics , the term "vernacular" has been applied to several concepts. Context, therefore,
10780-560: The deaths of those closest to him, including his sister Alice in 1892; his friend Wolcott Balestier in 1891; and Stevenson and Fenimore Woolson in 1894. The sudden death of Fenimore Woolson in January 1894, and the speculations of suicide surrounding her death, were particularly painful for him. Leon Edel wrote that the reverberations from Fenimore Woolson's death were such that "we can read a strong element of guilt and bewilderment in his letters, and, even more, in those extraordinary tales of
10920-612: The discussion of a character's psyche. For their unique ambiguity, as well as for other aspects of their composition, his late works have been compared to Impressionist painting . His novella The Turn of the Screw has garnered a reputation as the most analysed and ambiguous ghost story in the English language and remains his most widely adapted work in other media. He wrote other highly regarded ghost stories, such as " The Jolly Corner ". James published articles and books of criticism, travel , biography, autobiography, and plays. Born in
11060-675: The end of the Great Vowel Shift . It was created by the infusion of Old French into Old English , after the Norman conquest of 1066 AD, and of Latin at the instigation of the clerical administration. While present-day English speakers may be able to read Middle English authors (such as Geoffrey Chaucer ), Old English is much more difficult. Middle English is known for its alternative spellings and pronunciations. The British Isles, although geographically limited, have always supported populations of widely-varied dialects, as well as
11200-483: The founder of The Nation , visited the James family at their Boston residence in Ashburton Place; the purpose of his visit was to solicit contributions from Henry Senior and Henry Junior for the inaugural issue of the journal. Henry Junior was later to describe his friendship with Godkin as "one of the longest and happiest of my life." In 1871, he published his first novel, Watch and Ward , in serial form in
11340-501: The future Supreme Court justice, and with James T. Fields and Annie Adams Fields , his first professional mentors. In 1865, Louisa May Alcott visited Boston and dined with the James family; she was to write in her journals that "Henry Jr....was very friendly. Being a literary youth he gave me advice, as if he had been eighty, and I a girl." His first published work was a review of a stage performance, "Miss Maggie Mitchell in Fanchon
11480-417: The idea of poetry and prose as two ends on a spectrum rather than firmly distinct from each other. The British poet T. S. Eliot noted, whereas "the distinction between verse and prose is clear, the distinction between poetry and prose is obscure." Latin was a major influence on the development of prose in many European countries . Especially important was the great Roman orator Cicero (106–43 BC). It
11620-439: The languages; linguists studying extremely literal transcripts for conversation analysis see them, but ordinary language-users are unaware of them. Academic writing (works of philosophy , history , economics , etc.), journalism , and fiction are usually written in prose (excepting verse novels etc.). Developments in twentieth century literature, including free verse , concrete poetry , and prose poetry , have led to
11760-677: The late style difficult and unnecessary; his friend Edith Wharton , who admired him greatly, said that some passages in his work were all but incomprehensible. James was harshly portrayed by H. G. Wells as a hippopotamus laboriously attempting to pick up a pea that had got into a corner of its cage. The "late James" style was ably parodied by Max Beerbohm in "The Mote in the Middle Distance". More important for his work overall may have been his position as an expatriate , and in other ways an outsider, living in Europe. While he came from middle-class and provincial beginnings (seen from
11900-789: The latter introducing him to the Travellers' and the Reform Clubs . He was also an honorary member of the Savile Club , St James's Club and, in 1882, the Athenaeum Club . In England, he met the leading figures of politics and culture. He continued to be a prolific writer, producing The American (1877), The Europeans (1878), a revision of Watch and Ward (1878), French Poets and Novelists (1878), Hawthorne (1879), and several shorter works of fiction. In 1878, Daisy Miller established his fame on both sides of
12040-403: The massive dictionary of Samuel Johnson . French (as Old French ) emerged as a Gallo-Romance language from Colloquial Latin during late antiquity . The written language is known from at least as early as the 9th century. That language contained many forms still identifiable as Latin. Interest in standardizing French began in the 16th century. Because of the Norman conquest of England and
12180-404: The masterwork The Portrait of a Lady , his style was simple and direct (by the standards of Victorian magazine writing) and he experimented widely with forms and methods, generally narrating from a conventionally omniscient point of view. Plots generally concern romance, except for the three big novels of social commentary that conclude this period. In the second period, as noted above, he abandoned
12320-432: The meanest intelligence—I love you more than I love Others." To his New York friend Mary Cadwalader Rawle Jones : "Dearest Mary Cadwalader. I yearn over you, but I yearn in vain; & your long silence really breaks my heart, mystifies, depresses, almost alarms me, to the point even of making me wonder if poor unconscious & doting old Célimare [Jones's pet name for James] has 'done' anything, in some dark somnambulism of
12460-529: The midlands. Chaucer wrote in an early East Midland style; John Wycliffe translated the New Testament into it, and William Caxton , the first English printer, wrote in it. Caxton is considered the first modern English author. The first printed book in England was Chaucer's Canterbury Tales , published by Caxton in 1476. The first English grammars were written in Latin , with some in French , after
12600-509: The next half-dozen years, " The Altar of the Dead " and " The Beast in the Jungle ". The years spent on dramatic works were not entirely a loss. As he moved into the last phase of his career, he found ways to adapt dramatic techniques into the novel form. In the late 1880s and throughout the 1890s, James made several trips through Europe. He spent a long stay in Italy in 1887. In 1888, he published
12740-838: The outbreak of the First World War in 1914, he did war work. In 1915, he became a British citizen and was awarded the Order of Merit the following year. He died on 28 February 1916, in Chelsea, London , and was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium . A memorial was built to him in Chelsea Old Church . He had requested that his ashes be buried in Cambridge Cemetery in Massachusetts. This was not legally possible, but William's wife smuggled his ashes onboard
12880-440: The people spoke Vulgar Latin as a vernacular. Joshua Fishman redefined the concept in 1964 to include everything Ferguson had excluded. Fishman allowed both different languages and dialects and also different styles and registers as the H variants. The essential contrast between them was that they be "functionally differentiated"; that is, H must be used for special purposes, such as a liturgical or sacred language. Fasold expanded
13020-468: The permission of James's family. Edel's portrayal of James included the suggestion he was celibate, a view first propounded by critic Saul Rosenzweig in 1943. In 1996, Sheldon M. Novick published Henry James: The Young Master , followed by Henry James: The Mature Master (2007). The first book "caused something of an uproar in Jamesian circles" as it challenged the previous received notion of celibacy,
13160-461: The perspective of European polite society), he worked very hard to gain access to all levels of society, and the settings of his fiction range from working-class to aristocratic , and often describe the efforts of middle-class Americans to make their way in European capitals. He confessed he got some of his best story ideas from gossip at the dinner table or at country house weekends. He worked for
13300-541: The point of view of ear, Virginia Woolf never wrote a bad sentence. I don't mean to imply that I successfully practice what I preach. I try, that's all. Many types of prose exist, which include those used in works of nonfiction , prose poem , alliterative prose and prose fiction . Prose is divided into two main divisions: Vernacular Vernacular is the ordinary, informal, spoken form of language, particularly when perceived as having lower social status or less prestige than standard language , which
13440-415: The presentation of conflicts of moral character, which they do not concern themselves about softening or averting. They do not indict society for these situations: they regard them as universal and inevitable. They do not even blame God for allowing them: they accept them as the conditions of life. Many of James's stories may also be seen as psychological thought experiments about selection. In his preface to
13580-460: The protagonist and a ghost-doppelganger live alternative American and European lives; and in others, like The Ambassadors, an older James seems fondly to regard his own younger self facing a crucial moment. The first period of James's fiction, usually considered to have culminated in The Portrait of a Lady , concentrated on the contrast between Europe and America. The style of these novels
13720-637: The publication of The Portrait of a Lady through the end of the 19th century, features less popular novels, including The Princess Casamassima , published serially in The Atlantic Monthly in 1885–1886, and The Bostonians , published serially in The Century during the same period. This period also featured James's celebrated Gothic novella, The Turn of the Screw (1898). The third period of James's career reached its most significant achievement in three novels published just around
13860-558: The publication of The Europeans , Washington Square , Confidence and The Portrait of a Lady . The period from 1882 to 1883 was marked by several losses. His mother died in January 1882, while James was in Washington, D.C., on an extended visit to America. He returned to his parents' home in Cambridge , where he was together with all four of his siblings for the first time in 15 years. He returned to Europe in mid-1882, but
14000-563: The publications of Jamaican poet Linton Kwesi Johnson ) where it is sometimes described as eye dialect . Nonstandard dialects have been used in classic literature throughout history. One famous example of this is Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn . This classic piece of literature, commonly taught in schools in the U.S., includes dialogue from various characters in their own native vernaculars (including representations of Older Southern American English and African-American English ), which are not written in standard English. In
14140-600: The serialised novel and from 1890 to about 1897, he wrote short stories and plays. Finally, in his third and last period he returned to the long, serialised novel. Beginning in the second period, but most noticeably in the third; he increasingly abandoned direct statement in favour of frequent double negatives, and complex descriptive imagery. Single paragraphs began to run for page after page, in which an initial noun would be succeeded by pronouns surrounded by clouds of adjectives and prepositional clauses, far from their original referents, and verbs would be deferred and then preceded by
14280-439: The short novel The Aspern Papers and The Reverberator . In 1897–1898, he moved to Rye, Sussex and wrote The Turn of the Screw ; 1899–1900 had the publication of The Awkward Age and The Sacred Fount . During 1902–1904, he wrote The Wings of the Dove , The Ambassadors , and The Golden Bowl . In 1904, he revisited America and lectured on Balzac. In 1906–1910, he published The American Scene and edited
14420-406: The speaker does conscious work to select the appropriate variations. The one they can use without this effort is the first form of speech acquired. In another theory, the vernacular language is opposed to the standard language . The non-standard varieties thus defined are dialects, which are to be identified as complexes of factors: "social class, region, ethnicity, situation, and so forth". Both
14560-472: The spirit, which has ... given you a bad moment, or a wrong impression, or a 'colourable pretext' ... However these things may be, he loves you as tenderly as ever; nothing, to the end of time, will ever detach him from you, & he remembers those Eleventh St. matutinal intimes hours, those telephonic matinées, as the most romantic of his life ..." His long friendship with American novelist Constance Fenimore Woolson , in whose house he lived for
14700-468: The spread of the French national language into German-speaking territories assisted by the efforts of the French Academy. With so many linguists moving in the same direction, a standard German ( hochdeutsche Schriftsprache ) did evolve without the assistance of a language academy. Its precise origin, the major constituents of its features, remains uncertainly known and debatable. Latin prevailed as
14840-439: The stage. He wrote three new plays, two of which were in production when the death of Edward VII on 6 May 1910 plunged London into mourning and theatres closed. Discouraged by failing health and the stresses of theatrical work, James did not renew his efforts in the theatre, but recycled his plays as successful novels. The Outcry was a best-seller in the United States when it was published in 1911. During 1890–1893, when he
14980-453: The standard and non-standard languages have dialects, but in contrast to the standard language, the non-standard language has "socially disfavored" structures. The standard language is primarily written (in traditional print media), whereas the non-standard language is spoken. An example of a vernacular dialect is African American Vernacular English . A vernacular is not a real language but is "an abstract set of norms". Vernaculars acquired
15120-540: The standardisation of English has been in progress for many centuries." Modern English came into being as the standard Middle English (i.e., as the preferred dialect of the monarch, court and administration). That dialect was of the East Midland, which had spread to London , where the king resided and from which he ruled. It contained Danish forms not often used in the north or south, as the Danes had settled heavily in
15260-453: The start of the 20th century: The Wings of the Dove (1902), The Ambassadors (1903), and The Golden Bowl (1904). Critic F. O. Matthiessen called this "trilogy" James's major phase, and these novels have certainly received intense critical study. The second-written of the books, The Wings of the Dove , was the first published because it was not serialised. This novel tells the story of Milly Theale, an American heiress stricken with
15400-403: The status of official languages through metalinguistic publications. Between 1437 and 1586, the first reference grammars of Italian , Spanish , French , Dutch , German and English were written, though not always immediately published. It is to be understood that the first precursors of those languages preceded their standardization by up to several hundred years. In the 16th century,
15540-414: The suggestion of celibacy went against James's own injunction "live!"—not "fantasize!" A letter James wrote in old age to Hugh Walpole has been cited as an explicit statement of this. Walpole confessed to him of indulging in "high jinks", and James wrote a reply endorsing it: "We must know, as much as possible, in our beautiful art, yours & mine, what we are talking about—& the only way to know it
15680-669: The supraregional ideal broadened to a universal intent to create a national language from Early New High German by deliberately ignoring regional forms of speech, which practice was considered to be a form of purification parallel to the ideal of purifying religion in Protestantism . In 1617, the Fruitbearing Society , a language club, was formed in Weimar in imitation of the Accademia della Crusca in Italy. It
15820-578: The surrounding countryside, which feature in his essay "Abbeys and Castles". In particular, the gloomy monastic fishponds behind the abbey are said to have inspired the lake in The Turn of the Screw . While living in London, James continued to follow the careers of the French realists, Émile Zola in particular. Their stylistic methods influenced his own work in the years to come. Hawthorne's influence on him faded during this period, replaced by George Eliot and Ivan Turgenev. The period from 1878 to 1881 had
15960-459: The third volume of Daudet's adventures of Tartarin de Tarascon . Serialized in Harper's Monthly from June 1890, this translation – praised as "clever" by The Spectator – was published in January 1891 by Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington . After the stage failure of Guy Domville in 1895, James was near despair and thoughts of death plagued him. His depression was compounded by
16100-573: The two brothers visited the Louvre and the Luxembourg Palace. Henry studied primarily with tutors, and briefly attended schools while the family travelled in Europe. A tutor of the James children in Paris, M. Lerambert, had written a volume of verse that was well reviewed by Sainte-Beuve. Their longest stays were in France, where Henry began to feel at home and became fluent in French. He had
16240-424: The vernacular can be a distinct stylistic register , a regional dialect , a sociolect , or an independent language. Vernacular is a term for a type of speech variety , generally used to refer to a local language or dialect, as distinct from what is seen as a standard language. The vernacular is contrasted with higher-prestige forms of language, such as national , literary , liturgical or scientific idiom, or
16380-481: The vernacular was Galileo , writing in Italian c. 1600 , though some of his works remained in Latin. A later example is Isaac Newton , whose 1687 Principia was in Latin, but whose 1704 Opticks was in English. Latin continues to be used in certain fields of science, notably binomial nomenclature in biology, while other fields such as mathematics use vernacular; see scientific nomenclature for details. In diplomacy, French displaced Latin in Europe in
16520-404: The vivid realisation of the three major characters: Roderick Hudson, superbly gifted but unstable and unreliable; Rowland Mallet, Roderick's limited but much more mature friend and patron; and Christina Light, one of James's most enchanting and maddening femmes fatales . The pair of Hudson and Mallet has been seen as representing the two sides of James's own nature: the wildly imaginative artist and
16660-486: The whole are less comprehensible to the general public, but by comprehensive dictionaries, often termed unabridged, which attempt to list all usages of words and the phrases in which they occur as well as the date of first use and the etymology where possible. These typically require many volumes, and yet not more so than the unabridged dictionaries of many languages. Henry James Henry James OM ( ( 1843-04-15 ) 15 April 1843 – ( 1916-02-28 ) 28 February 1916)
16800-449: Was an American-British author. He is regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism , and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in the English language. He was the son of Henry James Sr. and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James . He is best known for his novels dealing with the social and marital interplay between émigré Americans,
16940-552: Was back in America by the end of the year following the death of his father. Emerson, an old family friend, died in 1882. His brother Wilkie and friend Turgenev both died in 1883. In 1884, James made another visit to Paris, where he met again with Zola, Daudet, and Goncourt. He had been following the careers of the French "realist" or "naturalist" writers, and was increasingly influenced by them. In 1886, he published The Bostonians and The Princess Casamassima , both influenced by
17080-532: Was born at 21 Washington Place (facing Washington Square) in New York City on 15 April 1843. His parents were Mary Walsh and Henry James Sr. His father was intelligent and steadfastly congenial. He was a lecturer and philosopher who had inherited independent means from his father, an Albany banker and investor. Mary came from a wealthy family long settled in New York City. Her sister Katherine lived with her adult family for an extended period of time. Henry Jr.
17220-532: Was defined (even though much in demand and recommended as an ideal) until after World War II . Currently the Dutch Language Union , an international treaty organization founded in 1980, supports a standard Dutch in the Netherlands, while Afrikaans is regulated by Die Taalkommissie founded in 1909. Standard English remains a quasi-fictional ideal, despite the numerous private organizations publishing prescriptive rules for it. No language academy
17360-527: Was ever established or espoused by any government past or present in the English-speaking world. In practice the British monarchy and its administrations established an ideal of what good English should be considered to be, and this in turn was based on the teachings of the major universities, such as Cambridge University and Oxford University , which relied on the scholars whom they hired. There
17500-575: Was influenced by Nathaniel Hawthorne . In the fall of 1875, he moved to the Latin Quarter of Paris . Aside from two trips to America, he spent the next three decades—the rest of his life—in Europe. In Paris, he met Zola , Daudet , Maupassant , Turgenev and others. He stayed in Paris only a year before settling in London, where he established relationships with Macmillan and other publishers, who paid for serial instalments that they published in book form. The audience for these serialised novels
17640-444: Was itself the symptom of some fear of or scruple against sexual love on his part." Dupee used an episode from James's memoir, A Small Boy and Others, recounting a dream of a Napoleonic image in the Louvre, to exemplify James's romanticism about Europe, a Napoleonic fantasy into which he fled. Between 1953 and 1972, Leon Edel wrote a major five-volume biography of James, which used unpublished letters and documents after Edel gained
17780-418: Was largely made up of middle-class women, and James struggled to fashion serious literary work within the strictures imposed by editors' and publishers' notions of what was suitable for young women to read. He lived in rented rooms, but was able to join gentlemen's clubs that had libraries and where he could entertain male friends. He was introduced to English society by Henry Adams and Charles Milnes Gaskell ,
17920-435: Was most engaged with the theatre, James wrote a good deal of theatrical criticism, and assisted Elizabeth Robins and others in translating and producing Henrik Ibsen for the first time in London. Leon Edel argued in his psychoanalytic biography that James was traumatised by the opening-night uproar that greeted Guy Domville , and that it plunged him into a prolonged depression. The successful later novels, in Edel's view, were
18060-612: Was not generally accepted and was soon supplanted, thus his grammar shared a similar fate. Other grammars in English followed rapidly; Paul Greaves' Grammatica Anglicana (1594), Alexander Hume 's Orthographie and Congruitie of the Britain Tongue (1617), and many others. Over the succeeding decades, many literary figures turned a hand to grammar in English; Alexander Gill , Ben Jonson , Joshua Poole, John Wallis , Jeremiah Wharton, James Howell , Thomas Lye, Christopher Cooper , William Lily , John Colet and more, all leading to
18200-583: Was not generally known, but it was known, as an inventory of the library of Lorenzo de'Medici lists it under the title Regule lingue florentine ("Rules of the Florentine language"). The only known manuscript copy, however, is included in the codex , Reginense Latino 1370, located at Rome in the Vatican library . It is therefore called the Grammatichetta vaticana. More influential perhaps were
18340-592: Was not identical to any specific variety of German. The first grammar evolved from pedagogical works that also tried to create a uniform standard from the many regional dialects for various reasons. Religious leaders wished to create a sacred language for Protestantism that would be parallel to the use of Latin for the Roman Catholic Church . Various administrations wished to create a civil service, or chancery, language that would be useful in more than one locality. And finally, nationalists wished to counter
18480-668: Was one of four boys, the others being William , who was one year his senior, and younger brothers Wilkinson ( Wilkie ) and Robertson. His younger sister was Alice . Both of his parents were of Irish and Scottish descent. Before he was a year old, his father sold the house at Washington Place and took the family to Europe, where they lived for a time in a cottage in Windsor Great Park in England. The family returned to New York in 1845, and Henry spent much of his childhood living between his paternal grandmother's home in Albany, and
18620-466: Was one of many such clubs; however, none became a national academy. In 1618–1619 Johannes Kromayer wrote the first all-German grammar. In 1641 Justin Georg Schottel in teutsche Sprachkunst presented the standard language as an artificial one. By the time of his work of 1663, ausführliche Arbeit von der teutschen Haubt-Sprache , the standard language was well established. Auraicept na n-Éces
18760-474: Was particularly interested in what he called the "beautiful and blest nouvelle ", or the longer form of short narrative. Still, he produced a number of very short stories in which he achieved notable compression of sometimes complex subjects. The following narratives are representative of James's achievement in the shorter forms of fiction. At several points in his career, James wrote plays, beginning with one-act plays written for periodicals in 1869 and 1871 and
18900-581: Was published in order to codify the use of the Occitan language in poetry competitions organized by the company of the Gai Saber in both grammar and rhetorical ways. Chronologically, Spanish (more accurately, lengua castellana ) has a development similar to that of Italian. There was some vocabulary in Isidore of Seville, with traces afterward, writing from about the 12th century; standardisation began in
19040-437: Was replaced by French from the 17th.- to the mid-20th century, i.e. until the uptake of English: Prose usually lacks the more formal metrical structure of the verses found in traditional poetry . It comprises full grammatical sentences (other than in stream of consciousness narrative), and paragraphs, whereas poetry often involves a metrical or rhyming scheme. Some works of prose make use of rhythm and verbal music. Verse
19180-420: Was the lingua franca among literate Europeans until quite recent times, and the great works of Descartes (1596–1650), Francis Bacon (1561–1626), and Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) were published in Latin. Among the last important books written primarily in Latin prose were the works of Swedenborg (d. 1772), Linnaeus (d. 1778), Euler (d. 1783), Gauss (d. 1855), and Isaac Newton (d. 1727). Latin's role
19320-460: Was to become a celebrated literary academic in adulthood, and painter John La Farge , for whom Henry sat as a subject, and who introduced him to French literature, and in particular, to Balzac . James later called Balzac his "greatest master", and said that he had learned more about the craft of fiction from him than from anyone else. In July 1861, Henry and Thomas Sergeant Perry paid a visit to an encampment of wounded and invalid Union soldiers on
19460-506: Was used at Tridentine Mass until the Second Vatican Council of 1965. Certain groups, notably Traditionalist Catholics , continue to practice Latin Mass . In Eastern Orthodox Church , four Gospels translated to vernacular Ukrainian language in 1561 are known as Peresopnytsia Gospel . In India, the 12th century Bhakti movement led to the translation of Sanskrit texts to the vernacular. In science, an early user of
19600-1430: Was used widely instead of vernacular languages in varying forms until c. 1701 , in its latter stage as Neo-Latin . In religion, Protestantism was a driving force in the use of the vernacular in Christian Europe, the Bible having been translated from Latin into vernacular languages with such works as the Bible in Dutch: published in 1526 by Jacob van Liesvelt ; Bible in French: published in 1528 by Jacques Lefevre d'Étaples (or Faber Stapulensis); German Luther Bible in 1534 ( New Testament 1522); Bible in Spanish: published in Basel in 1569 by Casiodoro de Reina (Biblia del Oso); Bible in Czech: Bible of Kralice, printed between 1579 and 1593; Bible in English: King James Bible , published in 1611; Bible in Slovene, published in 1584 by Jurij Dalmatin. In Catholicism , vernacular bibles were later provided, but Latin
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