Publisher's Synopsis
This volume of "The Penguin History of Literature" is devoted to its medium, the English language. A first section considers present-day English, its sounds, grammar, vocabulary and stylistic varieties. A second section describes the growth of the language over the centuries and concludes with chapters on the social context of English-language studies and the role of English in the modern world. While each essay stands complete in itself, the book is designed to provide a grounding in the modern language through which to explore past developments. It constitutes an introduction to the subject, and full biographies point the way to further investigation.;"The Penguin History of Literature" is a critical survey of English and American literature in ten volumes. Each volume is a collection of original essays specially commissioned for the series, which, taken together, cover 14 centuries of literature from the Anglo-Saxons to the present.
