Download or read book The English Dictionary from Cawdrey to Johnson 1604 1755 written by DeWitt Talmage Starnes and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 1991 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study by Starnes and Noyes was immediately recognized as a unique and pioneering work of scholarship and has long been the standard work on the emergence and early flowering of English lexicography. Within the last 20 years we have been witnessing a remarkable scholarly interest in the study of dictionary-making and the role played by dictionaries in the transmission and preservation of knowledge and learning. It is therefore essential to have this classic work available again to all students of linguistic history. In its new edition the book has been vastly enhanced by a lengthy and invaluable introduction by Gabriele Stein, Professor of English Linguistics in Heidelberg and author of The English Dictionary before Cawdrey (1985). In her introduction to the present volume she sets out in scholarly detail the work that has emerged since 1946, which makes this study of the English dictionary from Cawdrey to Johnson as complete as the original authors themselves would have wished.

Download or read book Dictionaries and the Authoritarian Tradition written by Ronald A. Wells and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2011-11-02 with total page 133 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Chaucer in Early English Dictionaries written by Johan Kerling and published by Springer. This book was released on 2013-12-11 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Theory of English Lexicography 1530 1791 written by Tetsuro Hayashi and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 1978-01-01 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book serves as a welcome addition to the better known English Dictionary from Cawdrey to Johnson, 1604-1755, by Starnes & Noyes (new edition published by Benjamins 1991). Whereas Starnes & Noyes describe the history of English lexicography as an evolutionary progress-by-accumulation process, Professor Hayashi focuses on issues of method and theory, starting with John Palsgrave’s Lesclarissement de la langue francoyse (1530), to John Walker’s A Critical Pronouncing Dictionary and Expositor of the English Language (1791). This book also includes a detailed discussion of Dr. Johnson’s influential Dictionary of the English Language (1755).

Download or read book The Discoverers written by Daniel J. Boorstin and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-01-26 with total page 770 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An original history of man's greatest adventure: his search to discover the world around him. In the compendious history, Boorstin not only traces man's insatiable need to know, but also the obstacles to discovery and the illusion that knowledge can also put in our way. Covering time, the earth and the seas, nature and society, he gathers and analyzes stories of the man's profound quest to understand his world and the cosmos.

Download or read book Before the Word Was Queer written by Stephen Turton and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2024-03-13 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bringing together research from queer linguistics and lexicography, this book uncovers how same-sex acts, desires, and identities have been represented in English dictionaries published in Britain from the early modern to the inter-war period. Moving across time – from the appearance of the first standalone English dictionary to the completion of the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary – and shuttling across genres – from general usage, hard words, thieves' cant, and slang to law, medicine, classical myth, women's biography, and etymology – it asks how dictionary-writers made sense of same-sex intimacy, and how they failed or refused to make sense of it. It also queries how readers interacted with dictionaries' constructions of sexual morality, against the broader backdrop of changing legal, religious, and scientific institutions. In answering these questions, the book responds and contributes to established traditions and new trends in linguistics, queer theory, literary criticism, and the history of sexuality.

Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to English Dictionaries written by Sarah Ogilvie and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-09-24 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How did a single genre of text have the power to standardise the English language across time and region, rival the Bible in notions of authority, and challenge our understanding of objectivity, prescription, and description? Since the first monolingual dictionary appeared in 1604, the genre has sparked evolution, innovation, devotion, plagiarism, and controversy. This comprehensive volume presents an overview of essential issues pertaining to dictionary style and content and a fresh narrative of the development of English dictionaries throughout the centuries. Essays on the regional and global nature of English lexicography (dictionary making) explore its power in standardising varieties of English and defining nations seeking independence from the British Empire: from Canada to the Caribbean. Leading scholars and lexicographers historically contextualise an array of dictionaries and pose urgent theoretical and methodological questions relating to their role as tools of standardisation, prestige, power, education, literacy, and national identity.

Download or read book Captain Underwit written by and published by Anaphora Literary Press. This book was released on 2023-05-02 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A country comedy about the absurdly corrupt purchases of military titles. Captain Underwit has succeeded in becoming a “paper” Captain by bribing the Lieutenant with favors and a below-value land-purchase. Underwit then sends his servant Thomas to purchase books to prepare him to actually carry out military duties, but Thomas instead purchases the “Shakespeare” Folio, and other impractical or irrelevant books in a manner that echoes Don Quixote’s belief he could imitate the actions of knights in romance novels. Meanwhile, Underwit withdraws from London into his father-in-law Sir Richard’s country estate. Underwit hires Captain Sackburie to build his military acumen, but Sackburie only has him perform a few military dances before they escape to drink at a tavern. The plot then digresses from these heavy subjects to romantic entanglements as Sir Richard’s wife (Lady) attempts to have an affair with Sir Francis, and Sister flirts with Mr. Courtwell, and Lady’s maid, Mistress Dorothy, devises a fraudulent scheme to make suitors falsely believe she comes from an aristocratic family to secure a husband. There are gems under this visage of simplicity, as Engine is attempting to bribe his way into a monopoly on periwigs, and Device the poet recites elegant songs to Sister that he is not sure if he has plagiarized. The introductory materials explain that the plagiarism of the “Catch” dice-game-song that repeats in the “James Shirley”-bylined Poems &c. (1646) re-affirms Percy’s ghostwriting of most “Shirley”-bylined plays as well as Captain, instead of proving “Shirley’s” authorship of this group of texts, as critics have previously claimed. “A classic English country comedy from the British Renaissance era, and now ably translated by Anna Faktorovich into Modern English for an appreciative readership with an interest in the literature and stage dramas of the time. Captain Underwit is an eloquent, unique, and highly recommended contribution to academic library collections… It should be noted for the personal reading lists of students, academia, and non-specialist general readers with an interest in the subject…” —Midwest Book Review, James Cox, The Literary Fiction Shelf Exordium Plot and Staging “Introduction to Captain Underwit” (1883) by A. H. Bullen Text Terms, References, Questions, Exercises

Download or read book Three Lords and Three Ladies of London written by and published by Anaphora Literary Press. This book was released on 2023-05-02 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An allegorical morality comedy about criminality and the rivalries between London, Lincoln and Spain. This play is an exercise by a young dramatist who is grappling with understanding philosophical and legal concepts by simplifying these into personifications. Three Lords of London (called Pleasure, Pomp and Policy) declare their superiority with puffing emblems and insist that they have an innate right to marry the three Ladies of London (Love, Lucre and Conscience). The Ladies have been imprisoned in the first part of this series (Three Ladies of London) for their sins, and Nemo has decided that he would only release them if precisely three suitors bid for all of their hands in marriage simultaneously. The Ladies are told to remain silent and to obey whoever is willing to marry them, or they would have to return to prison to be tortured by Sorrow. Thus, instead of the standard comedic objections from female characters to potential matches, the only obstacles to this pre-determined resolution are that the three Lords of Spain and the three Lords of Lincoln appear to also bid for the Ladies. The defeat of the Spaniards is presented in an exchange of insults about emblems and epithets during a meeting that alludes to the Spanish Armada attack. And the Lords of Lincoln are briskly defeated when they are told they merely deserve the symbolic stones the Ladies have been sitting on. The introductory remarks explain how Lords should be part of the main canon because it might be one of only three pre-“Shakespearean” British comedies. And a section presents an alternative explanation for the mystery of how the seven copies of Lords’ print-run ended up with strange combinations of varying typos. The annotations explain how the detail of Usury’s parents being Jewish has been misinterpreted by previous critics as anti-Semitic, when this passage actually summarizes the ethnic backgrounds of the actual members of the Ghostwriting Workshop, as the merchant-lender among them Sylvester was Jewish, and Percy was from a region near-Scotland and had been educated in France. And evidence is presented why the series that includes Lords and Ladies should be re-attributed away from “Robert Wilson” and to Percy. “Enhanced for academia with the inclusion of a 6 page listing of Acronyms, a 1 page Summary, a 23 page Exordium, 21 pages of Plot and Staging, a 104 page Text, and and 5 pages of Terms, References, Questions, and Exercises, The Three Lords and Three Ladies of London is Volume 10 of that Anaphora Literary Press British Renaissance Re-Attribution and Modernization series. A unique and unreservedly recommended addition to community, college, and university library Shakespeare, British, and Irish drama collections”. —Midwest Book Review, James Cox, The Theatre/Cinema Shelf Exordium Plot and Staging Text Terms, References, Questions, Exercises

Download or read book The Aphrodisia written by William Percy and published by Anaphora Literary Press. This book was released on 2023-05-02 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A rare marinal about disguised identities and loves among the Greco-Roman deities under the Mediterranean Sea. Percy described Aphrodisia as an experiment in a new genre he was inventing, the marinal, designed to contrast the pastoral set on land in the countryside. Beyond this setting, this comedy focuses on taking to an extreme the popular European trope of disguises by having most of the main characters reveal themselves to have an identity other than the one they present themselves as. Arion relates a sad story that is an original translation of a segment out of Bartas’ Weeks about him being a poor singer who was captured by pirates, but in the conclusion, Arion reveals himself to actually be Jupiter, the King of the gods in Roman mythology. And Talus pretends to be an engineer and Vulcan’s (god of fire) son, when he is really Neptune (god of water). In standard published plots from the Renaissance, these revelations prove to have been necessary to further the goals of the characters, but in this censored story, the disguises cause lifetimes of misery and prevent all who are disguised from achieving their romantic and power goals. Percy has designed a plot that subversively shows how common pseudonyms and fraudulent identities are in British society, as it confesses the Workshop’s role in selling ghostwriting services. On the surface, the story is dense with innovative love entanglements, and the mythological misadventures of complex and stumbling characters. The preparations for Empress Cytherea’s arrival and the Aphrodisia feast in her honor also showcases realistic details about what a day might have been like when the aristocratic Percy family prepared for James I’s visit to their Sion House on June 8, 1603, just before James was crowned. “Fascinating study of disguise, identity, self-fashioning, metamorphosis, and authorship. *****” —LibraryThing, Early Reviewers, Charles Alan Ralston Plot and Staging Text Terms, References, Questions, Exercises

Download or read book Hamlet First Quarto written by and published by Anaphora Literary Press. This book was released on 2023-05-02 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The censored satirical or “bad” version of the “Shakespeare” classic that features a homosexual affair between Hamlet and Horatio, and Ofelia’s deflowering to feign heterosexual normalcy. The standard summary of Hamlet describes it as a “tragedy” about a “mad” or “tormented” Prince of Denmark, who follows the solicitation of the Ghost of his assassinated father to revenge-murder his incestuous and homicidal uncle Claudius. The commentary that accompanies this never-before fully-modernized First Quarto of Hamlet explains how it was initially designed to be a satire that diverged from Saxo Grammaticus’ Danish History where Amleth pretends to be mad not only to execute revenge but also to successfully win the crown from his uncle. The First Quarto subtracts any desire for the crown from Hamlet, and instead subversively explains that Hamlet is motivated to feign madness and to deflower Ofelia to disguise his outlawed homosexual love for Horatio. Hamlet makes no direct expressions of attraction towards Ofelia’s beauty. And in the resolution, Horatio offers to poison himself to death when he learns Hamlet is dying. The satirical perspective of this history is especially apparent in the cemetery scene where the Clown 1 gravedigger sifts through a mass-grave to help Hamlet find a dried skull among those that are still decomposing. The heavy re-write between the 1603 and 1604 editions of Hamlet also help to show Percy’s re-writing habit that confirms the attribution to him of diverging versions of anonymous and then “Shakespeare”-bylined versions of Leir/ Lear, and Tragedy of/ Richard III. “Hamlet: The First Quarto is an iconoclastic, unique, informative, and inherently interesting study that is highly recommended for personal, professional, community, college, and university library Literary Studies collections in general, and supplemental curriculum Shakespearean Studies lists in particular. It is volume twelve of the simply outstanding British Renaissance Re-Attribution and Modernization Series from Anaphora Literary Press. Ably translated by academician Anna Faktorovich, Hamlet: The First Quarto will have a particular interest and value for Shakespearean scholars and students, as well as the non-specialist general reader with an interest in the subject.” —Midwest Book Review, James Cox, February 2022 Exordium Plot and Staging Segments from “Book Three” and “Book Four” of Saxo Grammaticus’ The Danish History Introduction to the 1825 Edition by William Nicol Introduction to the 1860 Edition by Samuel Timmins Text Terms, References, Questions, Exercises

Download or read book Nobody and Somebody written by and published by Anaphora Literary Press. This book was released on 2023-05-02 with total page 138 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comedy that juxtaposes fame with anonymity, and tyrannical abuse with fair governance. The rapid succession of monarchs across Nobody and Somebody satirizes the standard plots of “Shakespearean” histories that end with the overthrow or death of the preceding tyrannical monarch, and suggest hope that the next monarch will be better, before this hope is dispelled in the next tragic history, as is the case with the chronological series of Edward III, Richard II, and 1 Henry IV. Nobody is set in 85-60 BC, or just before the Roman invasion of the British Isles. The plot opens with two Court advisors, Cornwall and Marcian, scheming to overthrow their corrupt King Archigallo who unfairly confiscates land to grant it to Lord Sycophant and names a common Wench as his Queen. The coup d’état succeeds, and Elidure accepts the crown when the advisors explain he is the only rational choice. A while into his reign, Elidure finds Archigallo in exile in a forest, and insists that Archigallo retakes the throne from him. While Archigallo’s second term is less tyrannical it ends shortly thereafter due to his natural death, upon which the throne passes back to Elidure. Without a reprise in the events, Elidure’s two younger brothers then wage war against Elidure and overthrow him. And then these brothers cannot agree on who between them should have power over the other, and so they wage war against each other and both die, leaving Elidure to again reclaim the throne. The radical moral story against tyranny in this central plot is dampened by the constant interruptions of a rival plotline about Nobody and Somebody. Nobody is a fair, charitable and unassuming land owner, against whom the corrupt and fraudulent landowner called Somebody wages a slander-campaign. Every word in this play is dense not only with this extremely violent, sexually-charged and outrageous plotlines, but also with subtexts of implied meanings and historical backstory. Exordium Plot and Staging Primary Sources “The Seventh Chapter” About Elidure from the “Raphael Holinshed”-bylined and Gabriel Harvey and Richard Verstegan-Ghostwritten The Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland “The Well-spoken Nobody” Alexander Smith’s “Note” from the 1877 Old-Spelling Glasgow Edition Text Terms, References, Questions, Exercises

Download or read book The Fairy Pastoral written by William Percy and published by Anaphora Literary Press. This book was released on 2023-05-02 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A pastoral satire about homicidal women- and men-haters being forced into marriage. A standard “Shakespearean” comedy takes a group of youths who are attracted to those who are not interested in them, and regroups them by the conclusion into neat pairings of three or four marriages. In contrast, Fairy Pastoral appears to have been censored because the men in the pairings are wooing their intended partners from the beginning, while the women are homicidally opposed to marriage and prove to the men how much they hate them during the plot, only for them all to be forced into four marriages that all of them are miserable in by the resolution. The setting is the Forest of Elvida inhabited by a kingdom of fairies. Events open with a power-transfer from Princess Hypsiphyle to Prince Orion over accusations of mismanagement. Then, the Princess attempts to regain power across the competitive hunt the Court undertakes. Political and romantic tensions are repeatedly interrupted with slap-stick comedy of Schoolmaster Sir David trying to teach literature while his rear-end is showing, he is falling asleep, and in rare instances when he manages to relate a coherent lecture, the students fail to comprehend his meaning. This is a satire not only on the miseries that accompany forced-marriage, but also about the failures of pedagogic institutions, and irrational transfers of political power through subterfuge and sexism. “Ably presented by Professor Anna Faktorovich, Fairy Pastoral… will have a very special appeal to students and academicians with an interest in Elizabethan era pastoral plays and satiric dramas… Highly recommended for academic library literary fiction and drama collections… [and] for the personal reading lists of students, academia, and non-specialist general readers with an interest in the subject”. —Midwest Book Review, James Cox, July 2022 “The Fairy Pastoral and ‘Songs’ is an inherently fascinating study that will have special and particular appeal for readers with an interest in Shakespeare, Elizabethan Drama, and the Shakespeare/Percy controversy. Highly recommended for personal, professional, community, and academic library Literary Criticism collections.” —Midwest Book Review, Susan Bethany, August 2022 Plot and Staging Text Terms, References, Questions, Exercises “Songs” from MS 509 (1636)

Download or read book Look Around You written by and published by Anaphora Literary Press. This book was released on 2023-05-02 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The neglected actual first part of the Robin Hood series. Both in terms of its plot and date of first-publication and performance, Look Around You is the first part of a trilogy that was followed by the two famous Robin Hood plays, Downfall of Robert and Death of Robert Earl of Huntington. The latter two are tragedies that have been previously falsely attributed to “Anthony Monday”, while Look is a comedy that has remained unattributed since its anonymous release. Censors might have neglected to connect Look to the others because in it, Robin Hood (Earl of Huntington) spends most of the play cross-dressing as Lady Faukenbridge, and being wooed on a balcony by Prince Richard. Meanwhile, Skink wears a myriad of disguises to escape Old King Henry’s wrath over the Queen hiring Skink to assassinate the King’s lover, Rosamund. And Young King Henry has been given the throne by his father, Old King, after several military battles between them. One of the main passions for Young King during his reign is his attempts to see the “fantastical” Earl of Gloucester executed for speaking too freely at Court. Lady Faukenbridge, Robin Hood and their supporters scheme to free Gloucester, and then to aid his life-on-the-run, while the other side schemes to re-capture and execute Gloucester. These schemes force several of the otherwise virtuous characters to take on fraudulent disguises and to succumb to highway robbery to support themselves while on the run from the law. The comedy is enhanced with the absurd constant running in the wrong directions by Redcap, whose ridiculous stuttering is imitated by other characters who take on his red cap as a disguise. This stuttering subversively restates that the attempts to execute Gloucester for speaking the truth are barbaric; hinting that such policies can cause all subjects of a kingdom to stutter instead of directly expressing their ideas. An excerpt from “Raphael Holinshed’s” Chronicles that covers the history of Henry II is included with an explanation of how it was adapted in Look. “Editions of Look are rare and obscure — I’d never heard of the play until this volume came along. The text is… modernized, with… improved stage directions and prefixes, plus on-the-page glosses. And a section of Holinshed’s Chronicles that has… relevance… to this play.” —LibraryThing, Early Reviewers, Robert B. Waltz, Editor of Minnesota Heritage Songbook Exordium Plot and Staging Segments About Henry II from “Raphael Holinshed’s” The Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland Text Terms, References, Questions, Exercises

Download or read book Fedele and Fortunio the Two Italian Gentlemen written by and published by Anaphora Literary Press. This book was released on 2023-05-02 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An adaptation of an Italian anti-comedy into an English formulaic-comedy. Fedele and Fortunio is an exercise in adapting Luigi Pasqualigo’s Italian Il Fedele: Comedia del Clarissimo (1576) into an idealized version of British cultural purity. Pasqualigo had rebelled against preceding tropes of Italian comedy by showcasing murderous and wildly promiscuous and unfaithful ladies and gentlemen, and rebellious servants. Perhaps because Percy was desperate in his youth to create extremely proper content that would lead to him being invited to officially write for court revels, Percy re-wrote Pasqualigo’s innovations back into what this comedic plot was initially designed to be. A couple of virginal gentlemen and a couple of virginal ladies exchange love-interests as they realize they cannot attain their initial desires. Their eventual marriages are attained with mischievous help from a pretense-captain Crack-Stone, a spying Pedant who fakes being in love to appear manly, and the scientific and psychologically-manipulating magic of enchantress Medusa. Percy avoided repeating these standard comedic tropes across the rest of his literary career, as he instead explored extremes of tragic infidelity in plays such as Hamlet, or extreme promiscuity in Cuck-Queans’; Fedele and Fortunio’s structural simplicity convinced Percy he had to constantly search for new formulas, vocabularies and foreign cultures to showcase. The introduction explains why the staging of this play is minimalistic to fit with the budgetary and spatial restraints of the accessible London stages. A precise explanation is offered of how scholars have come to the false conclusion that the “M. A.”/ “A. M.” initials indicate this play was written by “Anthony Monday”, and why the Percy attribution is accurate. To show the original divergences of Percy’s Fedele, original and translated excerpts are included from Pasqualigo’s Italian, France’s Latin, and Larivey’s French versions; the plots, characters and linguistics of these versions are compared and analyzed. “A deftly presented, informative, and inherently interesting study, Fedele and Fortunio will prove to be a much appreciated and valued addition to college and university library English Drama and Literary Studies collections in general, and William Percy supplemental studies lists in particular.” —Midwest Book Review, James Cox, May 2022 Exordium Plot and Staging J. Johnson’s Introductions (1909, 1933) Luigi Pasqualigo’s Il Fedele: Comedia del Clarissimo (1576: Italian) Abraham France’s Victoria (1588-92?: Latin: based on Dana Sutton’s Translation) Pierre de Larivey’s Le Fidelle Comedie (1611: French) Text Terms, References, Questions, Exercises

Download or read book Defining Language written by Geoff Barnbrook and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2002 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book describes an investigation of the subset of general language used in definition sentences and the development of a taxonomy of definition types, a grammar of definition sentences and parsing software which can extract their functional components. Based on definition sentences used in one of the dictionaries from the Cobuild range, and the book includes a brief history of the development of monolingual English dictionaries, an assessment of the concepts of sublanguages and local grammars and a full exploration of the results of the analysis and of the present and future applications of the taxonomy, grammar and parser.

Download or read book Sonnets to the Fairest Coelia and Three Letters written by and published by Anaphora Literary Press. This book was released on 2023-05-02 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The only actual collection of sonnets written by William Shakespeare Percy. Discover a collection of extraordinary sonnets that have been nearly invisible to scholars and students alike because they were misunderstood or deliberately suppressed by censors of the canon. As the introduction explains, one of its only preceding reprints was an 1818 edition that was prefaced by its editor as a poetic failure that was a typical example of “the court style”. A close analysis of Coelia’s poetic structure and linguistics proves this collection to be one of the best examples of metered and rhymed verse from the Renaissance. The real reason for the cold critical reception that has ostracized Coelia becomes apparent in the synopsis of the content of the unified narrative these sonnets relate. Coelia is a plea addressed to Elizabeth I for ending the Buggery Act that sentenced homosexuals to death. Sonnet XI refers to a suicidal sacrifice, and Percy was indeed risking his life when he put his own name in the byline of this poetic appeal. Because he was writing under his own name, Percy subverts some of this homosexual subject-matter by instead referring to ugly or masculine features behind a feminine or cross-dressing mask in Sonnet XIII. Each sonnet explores a new philosophical dilemma, with beautiful descriptions, complex mythological allusions, and tragically romantic appeals for love and sympathy. Percy was the dominant ghostwriter of most of the “Shakespeare”-bylined tragedies, but he only wrote a few pieces out of the “Shakespeare”-bylined multi-ghostwriter collection called Sonnets (1609); thus, readers have not really read a full collection of sonnets by “Shakespeare” the Tragedian until they explore Coelia. “Historians have long recognized that the revered Hippocratic Corpus is an accretion of the writings of many ghost writers and imitators. The analysis of a similar process of accretion in the instance of the British Renaissance Corpus has brought to the fore contributors and ghostwriters here-to-fore largely unknown. Such is the case with William Percy, obscure poet of the 17th century./ At first glance, the notion that careful analysis of this phenomenon may be assisted by artificial intelligence seems contrary to humanistic literary values. But Anna Faktorovich has been a full and sensitive participant in the process and the result is not only her computational-linguistics re-attribution, but also a sensitive, accessible rendition of William Percy’s twenty Sonnets to Coelia./ The poems are contextualized by exordia from multiple historical authors and perspicaciously by Anna Faktorovich herself. Such contextual writings illuminate the central purpose of Percy’s poetizing; the Sonnets to Coelia are an apologia for alternative forms of human love, more specifically an apologia for homosexual love. It is, therefore, of considerable modern interest as an important milestone (or millstone) in the historical record of laws governing human sexuality. Sonnets to Coelia is a plea to Elizabeth I to reverse the ‘Buggery Act’ of 1533, which she instead reinstated./ The poems themselves exemplify the period. They conform to the sonnet form with considerable consistency. What makes them seem most archaic to the modern ear is their rhyme. Commitment to rhyme over-rides all other considerations: it over-rides rhythm, it over-rides accessibility and often renders locutions awkward. Still a careful reading, aided by the abundance of footnotes, is rewarded by considerable amusement and insight./ Perhaps the greatest reward is received if the ‘beholder’s share’, that which the reader brings to the poem, is the presupposition that Coelia is a rubric signifying all the manifold and various forms of human love. Consider for example Sonnet 16 where a grain of cruelty seems to be welcomed:/ ‘Then, if I swear thy love does make me languish;/ Thou turn away, and smile scornfully./ And if I weep; my tears thou despise.’/ In summary, William Percy’s Sonnets to Coelia are a fascinating read and receive my highest recommendation.” —Midwest Book Review, Lloyd Jacobs (December 2021) “Dr. Anna Faktorovich’s writing is not only erudite but also beautiful and simple. Her persuasive and fascinating argument that William Percy was the main tragedian behind the ‘William Shakespeare’ pseudonym is most convincing in her work, Sonnets. She projects more credibility than any trial lawyer.” —LibraryThing, Valerie Ogden, past chairperson of the Mayor’s Animal Advisory Committee for the City of Philadelphia and president of the Board of Directors for the Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Exordium Text Terms, References, Questions, Exercises Introduction to the 1824 Edition by Joseph Haslewood Commentary on Haslewood’s Introduction The Title Page of William Percy’s Transcripts William Percy (1567?-1648) is the dominant tragedian behind the “William Shakespeare” pseudonym according to the computational-linguistic study in The Re-Attribution of the British Renaissance Corpus. Percy was a younger son of the assassinated 8th Earl of Northumberland and the brother of the imprisoned in the Tower 9th Earl.