On May 22, 2014, at 10:46 AM, David Wilson-Okamura <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> I've been studying Spenser's musical vocabulary and, in comparison with Shakespeare's, it seems unsophisticated. Compared with Sidney, Spenser also seems weak on military tactics and horsemanship.
>
> What DOES Spenser know about? More specifically, what kinds of words is his vocabulary rich in? (Take that, ye persecutors of postpositive prepositions; I never knew you.)
I'm not sure, but perhaps a little wordwhoring (dalliance with http://wordhoard.northwestern.edu) will shed some light. Using the "Compare Many Word Forms" feature, I found the following.
The top 10 nouns that are more common in Spenser than Shakespeare are:
self
knight
might
wight
rest
shepherd
shield
while
squire
dame
The top 10 nouns that are more common in Shakespeare than Spenser are:
lord
sir
king
master
father
gentleman
friend
wife
mistress
farewell
The top 10 verbs that are more common in Spenser than Shakespeare are:
begin
lie
ween
dight
joy
seem
dismay
pass
wont
eye
The top 10 verbs that are more common in Shakespeare than Spenser are:
go
come
know
speak
give
let
pray
swear
think
put
I guess it's no surprise that the sorts of people one finds in Spenser are the sorts of people one would find on a chivalric quest. These are often people of unknown or provisional status (wight, squire, dame) rather than of a fixed and well-defined status (lord, sir, king, master, wife, mistress).
But there are some other interesting tidbits here, such as that "go" and "come," the most common verbs in Shakespeare, describe not only what the characters in the plays are doing but also the entrances and exits of the dramatic form, whereas "begin" and "lie," the most common verbs in Spenser, suggest a romance narrative that is perpetually starting over again and perpetually stumbling upon people in various forms of prostration.
One could probably get an essay out of the fact that "joy" and "dismay" are extremely common as verbs in Spenser. I think there have already been a few thousand essays on "seem" (or at least on allegory, not that we've figured it all out yet).
Having done this, though, I question whether common words really have an answer to David's question, particularly concerning hints of domain knowledge; I think those are more likely to be found in rarer words.
________________________________________
Craig A. Berry
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"... getting out of a sonnet is much more
difficult than getting in."
Brad Leithauser
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