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APPOSITIONS:

Studies in Renaissance / Early Modern Literature & Culture

2008 Conference: Genres & Cultures

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Renaissance / Early Modern Keywords

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Welcome to http://appositions2008keywords.pbwiki.com/, an open-access, public Wiki that we have created for you to use during the Appositions electronic conference (February, 2008).  The results of this collaborative project (if sufficient & interesting) may be published, after editorial review, in volume one of the digital journal, Appositions, scheduled to launch in April, 2008.

The topic for this Wiki is: keywords. More specifically: Renaissance /early modern keywords that undergo significant shifts in meaning during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Our conference theme identifies two keywords, genre & culture. The first is admittedly anachronistic (strictly speaking) to the time period. Genre, meaning “a particular style or category of works of art; esp. a type of literary work characterized by a particular form, style, or purpose,” enters the language in 1770. The second, however, reaches farther back in time. Culture has at least two definitions that emerge within the scope of the two centuries: “the training of the human body,” 1628; and “the cultivating or development (of the mind, faculties, manners, etc.), improvement or refinement by education and training,” 1510, 1633, and 1651. (At least, those are the current entries in the OED. Other and/or earlier instances of usage in print may also exist).

Which keywords, in your opinion, undergo significant changes in meaning during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries? How and why are those new denotations and connotations important for the study of literature and culture during the Renaissance and early modern era?

We invite your comments, questions, discussion, postings, links, etc.

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For example, consider the words individual, or personall.

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