HYPOTHESES, CONTEXTS

My subject is the evolution of English prose in the eighteenth century. I shall argue that the language of ordinary written discourse changed markedly during those hundred years, that the habitual or primary textures of prose became more polite and more “written” (less oral). For better or worse, it was not possible in 1790 to write as Defoe and Swift had written in 1710 – the age demanded greater formality and precision; the age applauded a more flowery style. And standards, preferences, tastes that dominated the literate world of 1790 did not entirely lose their grip for many decades. Accordingly, although this book deals with the ordering of eighteenth-century English it also describes the stylistic origins of some varieties of Romantic and Victorian prose (Wordsworth and Walter Scott, for example).

“Changes in language and style from 1700 to 1800,” and “the evolution of English prose in the eighteenth century”: I may have to begin by convincing the reader that there were any such changes, and that English prose really did evolve during those hundred years. Until recently, histories of the English language have paid little attention to the eighteenth century, assuming either that all eighteenth-century prose is “modern” (as opposed to Shakespeare's prose or Hooker's, which is “early modern”), or that the only thing worth talking about for the period is prescriptivism.