27.1799, Review: Historical Ling; History of Ling; Ling & Lit: Momma (2015)

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Subject: 27.1799, Review: Historical Ling; History of Ling; Ling & Lit: Momma (2015)

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Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2016 15:50:56
From: Corey Zwikstra [corey.zwikstra at washburn.edu]
Subject: From Philology to English Studies

 
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/26/26-1778.html

AUTHOR: Haruko  Momma
TITLE: From Philology to English Studies
SUBTITLE: Language and Culture in the Nineteenth Century
PUBLISHER: Cambridge University Press
YEAR: 2015

REVIEWER: Corey J. Zwikstra, Washburn University

Reviews Editor: Robert Arthur Cote

SUMMARY

Though it never went away, philology has been repeatedly coming back, if
perhaps more in the describing than the doing. One welcomes these continual
returns, and re-returns, of philologies old, new, and newer. “From Philology
to English Studies: Language and Culture in the Nineteenth Century” by Haruko
Momma, a philologist and Anglo-Saxonist, sits nicely beside other recent books
on the history of philology by Turner, Pollock et al., and Gupta, though its
scope is narrower, focusing on “the vernacular philology of nineteenth-century
Britain” (25). The book has an informative introduction, four substantial
chapters, a brief epilogue, an excellent bibliography, and a useful index.

Momma prefaces the book with the disclosure that she “approach[es]
nineteenth-century philology not exclusively as scholarship on language but
rather as a series of undertakings that centred on language, but which were
closely associated with non-linguistic issues” (xiv). Given the variability of
philology as a discipline and practice, such a direct statement is welcome,
for it explains her perspective and emphases in the chapters that follow.  

The introduction ‘Where is Philology?’ offers context, introduces key terms,
and differentiates philology from earlier approaches to language study.
Philology differs from universalist approaches such as prescriptivism and
etymologism because it may connect language to social and cultural issues.
Philology also stands apart from narrow notions of grammar because of its
engagement with literature and culture. Momma presents philology in English as
having historically broad (study of literature) and narrow (science of
language) senses, the former more American, the latter more British--Americans
would call the narrow sense “linguistics.” The narrow sense became more
common, and the term itself destabilized, in the 20th century with various
‘return to’ and ‘new’ philology movements. At the start of the 21st century,
philology has begun to regain its former general sense, at least in the USA.
The introduction also provides the requisite definitions of philology: ‘love
of words taken as a collective whole’ (2), ‘the study of literature, in a wide
sense’ (11), and ‘the art of reading slowly’ and ‘what philologists do’ (26). 

Language study in the 19th century differed from earlier language study by
being more systematic and comparative and including non-European languages,
most importantly, Sanskrit. Chapter 2 ‘Philological Awakening: William Jones
and the Architecture of Learning’ explores the supposed German origins of
philology in scholars such as Schlegel, Bopp, and Grimm. The groundwork for
the influential Germanic philology of the 19th century, though, was laid in
the late 18th century by the British orientalist William Jones and his 1786
Third Anniversary Discourse, whose story Momma tells at length. Jones’s
Asiatic Society and its journal Asiatic Researches were quite influential, for
example, in helping turn Paris into a central place to study Sanskrit in the
early 19th century. Indeed, it was Sanskrit that roused Jones’s “philological
awakening” (43), before which he saw language as ancillary to learning, not
learning itself. More influentially than is recognized, Jones practiced and
promoted historical, not universalist, language study. For Jones, philology
should be fundamentally secular, analytical, and historical, part of the
discipline of history. Although the groundwork of philology was laid by a
British scholar, Britain proved relatively slow to Jones’s way of thinking and
to philology generally.    

Chapter 3, ‘The Anglo-Saxon Revolution: John Mitchell Kemble and the
Paradigm’, uses Kemble “to consider the conflict between the home-grown and
the imported schools of vernacular English studies during the 1830s as a
cultural war or, more specifically, a revolutionary war of paradigm” (61) à la
Kuhn. In this war of approaches to language study, “pioneering vernacularists
in the early nineteenth century . . . often met with frustration and delay”
(60) and rejection, especially those who took a “scientific” approach. Modern
scientific philology, influenced by Jones and practiced by people such as
Kemble and Thorpe, challenged traditional language study as practiced by
root-oriented etymologists, antiquaries, and professors. This was not only a
“paradigm war” (89) about the proper way to study language and texts but also
in practice often an “institutional feud” (89) between Cambridge, representing
the new philology, and Oxford, representing the traditional approach. While
modern philology might have begun in 1786 with Jones’s Discourse (there are
other contenders, such as Wolf in 1776), in England it began about 1830 with
the work of Kemble, a disciple of Grimm and student of German methods
generally. During this period, the new philology took root in England and
would grow in the following decades, but too slowly for Kemble to get his due,
though he’d subsequently prove influential to the historical study of English.
    

Chapter 4 ‘The Philological Society of London: Lexicography as National
Philology’ explains how “the introduction of continental philology in Britain
coincided with the ascent of Anglicism in its South Asian colony” (96) of
India. An “Orientalist-Anglicist controversy” (96) emerged c. 1835 in British
India over this question: Should native scholars, funded by the East India
Company, be instructed in Arabic and Sanskrit (Orientalist view) or in English
(Anglicist view)? The Anglicists prevailed, but implementing the plan took
decades. English proved problematic, however, as the basis for a “national
philology,” since philology privileged the historical analysis of language,
but English had lost many inflections, had an apparently unremarkable
phonology, and had borrowed many foreign words. Still, English philologists
did what they could, focusing on early English lexis, especially through the
Philological Society of London, founded in 1842, which applied the methods of
the new philology to English. Finding existing English dictionaries
incomplete, one member of the society, the theologian Trench, planned a ‘Big
Dictionary’ of English around 1858 along the lines of what nationalist
lexicographers were doing in Germany. After decades of setbacks, delays, and
changing editors, this ‘Big Dictionary’ would eventually become the monumental
Oxford English Dictionary, a historical dictionary that embodied the
nationalistic golden age of English philology.

Chapter 5 ‘The Professor and the Reader: Vernaculars in the Academy’ focuses
on Max Müller, a German scholar of Sanskrit, and Henry Sweet, an English
phonetician and Anglo-Saxonist, “to consider how vernacular philology gained
academic ground in the late nineteenth century” (137) when “non-classical
philology . . . still faced many challenges” (138). After his arrival in
England, where Sanskrit was disregarded, Müller became a comparative
philologist and ethnologist, rather than primarily a Sanskrit specialist.
Unlike his fellow countryman and comparatist Bopp, who focused strictly on
language, Müller included national history and culture in his comparative
philology. Popular as Müller was, even if somewhat shunned in Britain, he
failed to establish non-classical languages as academic disciplines. English
studies, for instance, developed unevenly across different universities and
countries (Scotland, England, USA), and most English teachers trained in
philology at German universities. Henry Sweet, too, studied in Germany,
attending Müller’s classes. Sweet published influential editions and
pedagogical works on Old English but encountered “academic misfortune” (170),
professional disappointment, and lack of appreciation in his native England.
English philology found itself underrepresented and not much esteemed. More
generally, starting around the 1870s, ‘linguistics’ and ‘neogrammarians’
gained popularity worldwide as philology waned, even in Germany. Perhaps we
should be thankful since Momma suggests that “philology contains a paradox in
that it loses its very quality when it is placed in a position of prestige”
(161). After much trouble, Oxford established a school of English in the late
19th century, but it wasn’t what Sweet had envisioned for English philology as
an academic discipline. He soon turned away from the historical study of
English and his sound ideas for how English philology should be
institutionalized went unheard.

The epilogue ‘The Closing of the Phase of Philology’ extends beyond the 19th
century to update the history of English studies as a discipline and note the
changing and waning place of philology in it. Over time, philology branched
into linguistics and literary criticism, thus (unfortunately) separating the
study of language and of literature, respectively, which had been united in
philology and often turning away from historical analysis in favor of
synchronic studies. Yet some form of philology persists.   

The bibliography shows excellent historical research but also provides
contemporary lenses, useful for further exploration and study. The index
includes proper names, text titles, languages, and selected key terms. 

EVALUATION

Momma’s well-researched and crisply-written book illuminates important
episodes in the history of English philology. Much of the pleasure in reading
the book comes from reading the early philologists in their own words through
the abundant quotations Momma provides. These philologists can indeed turn a
phrase, and their prose is often humorous, even snarky, as in the cases of
Jones and Kemble. One notices how lively, as well as learned, discussions
about philological issues were. 

Particularly enjoyable is Momma’s extended treatment in Chapter 3 of the
‘Anglo-Saxon Controversy’ of the mid-1830s. In short, a catty epistolary war
was waged in the periodical “The Gentleman’s Magazine” over the proper
direction for English language study. The revolutionary philologist Kemble,
who aspired to a Cambridge professorship and championed “the continental
school of vernacular philology” (82), took on mostly anonymous Oxonian
detractors who preferred older ways of doing things with words. Kemble
summarily, and with reason, dismissed their scholarly achievements as “idle.”
Kemble lost the war, though his view of scholarship was superior. Like
philology itself, this controversy was social as well as linguistic, as the
Continental battled the insular for territory in England and in English.

Momma integrates theory appropriately and lightly. For example, Said and
Foucault appear in Chapter 2 to contextualize, respectively, colonialism and
orientalism, and the status of language as an object of study. Another scholar
might here have become distracted by and lost in colonialist politics and
epistemological brambles. Similarly, Kuhn’s notion of paradigms and paradigm
shifts helpfully informs Chapter 3 but does not overwhelm it. Momma never lets
theoretical issues muddy her prose or distract her from the historical,
language-focused stories she tells. Yes, some of these stories are familiar
and told more fully elsewhere (Jones’s ‘discovery’ of Sanskrit, Kemble’s
pioneering Anglo-Saxon scholarship, the history of the Oxford English
Dictionary, English as a university discipline), but she combines them well
with historical nuance, crispness, and interest. 

The book seems to have been carefully edited. Sometimes the alphabetization of
the index is off, for example, “Berkhout” before “Beowulf” and “Boethius”
before “Boeckh.” Certain typographical conventions could be clearer to the eye
and more consistently employed. For instance, parentheses are often used for
both parentheticals and parentheticals within parentheticals. For the latter,
square brackets should have been used everywhere (contrast footnote 20 on page
78 with footnote 24 on page 125). Typos are rare.

An unhappy motif threads through several of the stories told in the book:
subsequently influential scholars were not sufficiently recognized and
rewarded in their own times. Are matters different today? Students of English
should read the book to learn that their discipline has a history and that
worthwhile literary scholarship existed before linguistics, theory, or
cultural studies. In order to participate wisely in current disciplinary
conversations, and to produce scholarship of the highest quality, one must
know the history of the fields in which one labors. Momma’s book surveys
several fruitful acres. Sometimes the best new things are old things. May the
new philologies, and the new philologists this book might inspire, not forget
their ancestors, whose tracks will lead somewhere beneficial once scholars
learn again how to follow them. While perhaps primarily of interest to
Anglo-Saxonists, “From Philology to English Studies” will make rewarding and
enjoyable reading for anyone interested in philology, language, or historical
English studies.  

REFERENCES

Gupta, Suman. 2015. Philology and Global English Studies: Retracings. New
York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Pollock, Sheldon, Benjamin A. Elman, and Ku-ming Kevin Chang (eds.). 2015.
World Philology. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Turner, James. 2014. Philology: The Forgotten Origins of the Modern
Humanities. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Corey J. Zwikstra (Ph.D. Notre Dame) teaches language and literature at
Washburn University where he is Associate Professor and chair of the English
department. His research interests include Old English poetry and questions of
literary style and judgment.





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