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The Unruly Tongue in Early Modern England: Three Treatises
Author(s): Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin (Author)
- Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press (UK)
- Publication Date: 1 Mar. 2012
- Language: English
- Print length: 300 pages
- ISBN-10: 1611474698
- ISBN-13: 9781611474695
Book Description
The Unruly Tongue in Early Modern England is a scholarly edition of three early modern treatises on the unruly tongue: Jean de Marconville, A Treatise of the Good and Evell Tounge (ca.1592), William Perkins, A Direction for the Government of the Tongue according to Gods worde (1595), and George Webbe, The Araignement of an unruly Tongue (1619). “The tongue can no man tame” says the Bible (James 3:8), and yet these texts try to tame the tongues of men and tell them how they should rule this little but essential organ and avoid swearing, blaspheming, cursing, lying, flattering, railing, slandering, quarrelling, babbling, jesting, or mocking. This volume excavates the biblical and classical sources in which these early modern texts are embedded and gives a panorama of the sins of the tongue that the Elizabethan society both cultivates and strives to contain. Vienne-Guerrin provides the reader with early modern images of what Erasmus described as a “slippery” and “ambivalent” organ that is both sweet and sour, a source of life and death.
Editorial Reviews
Review
“Vienne-Guerrin provides a deft overview of the scholarship on the tongue over the past twenty-five years. She traces the biblical and classical sources that the authors reference while presenting a brief overview of the anatomy of the tongue and the relationship between the tongue and heart….One of the most useful features of the book is the collection of striking images relating to the tongue that Vienne-Guerrin has collected in the appendix…Vienne-Guerrin’s edition effectively situates the representation of the tongue in the noisy world of the early modern England.” —Renaissance Quarterly
About the Author
Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin is professor of early modern English literature at the University of Montpellier III-Paul Valéry and head of the IRCL, “Institut de Recherche sur la Renaissance, l’âge Classique et les Lumières” (UMR 5186, research center of the French National Center for Scientific Research, CNRS).
