This volume brings together a selection of pivotal articles published in the hundred years since the launch of the journal Neophilologus. Each article is accompanied by an up-to-date commentary written by former and current editors of the journal. The commentaries position the articles within the history of the journal in particular and within the field of Modern Language Studies in general. As such, this book not only outlines the history of a scholarly journal, but also the history of an entire field. Over the course of its first one hundred years, 1916 to 2016, Neophilologus: An International Journal of Modern and Mediaeval Language and Literature has developed from a modest quarterly set up by a group of young and ambitious Dutch professors as a platform for their own publications to one of the leading international journals in Modern Language Studies. Although Neophilologus has remained broad in scope, multilingual and multidisciplinary, it has witnessed dramatic changes in its long-standing history: paradigm shifts, the rise and fall of literary theories, methods and sub-disciplines, as has the field of Modern Language Studies itself.

In this volume, scholars from different disciplines – Old English and Anglo-Latin literature and linguistics, palaeography, history, runology, numismatics and archaeology – explore what are here called ‘micro-texts’, i.e. very short pieces of writing constituting independent, self-contained texts. For the first time, these micro-texts are here studied in their forms and communicative functions, their pragmatics and performativity.

The first handbook to survey and expand the burgeoning field of corpus pragmatics, the intersection of pragmatics and corpus linguistics.

First full-length study of the notion and concept of old age in early medieval England.

Why was the term ‘intertextuality’ coined? Why did its first theorists feel the need to replace or complement those terms – of quotation, allusion, echo, reference, influence, imitation, parody, pastiche, among others – which had previously seemed adequate and sufficient to the description of literary relations? Why, especially in view of the fact that it is still met with resistance, did the new concept achieve such popularity so fast? Why has it retained its currency in spite of its inherent paradoxes? Since 1966, when Kristeva defined every text as a ‘mosaic of quotations’, ‘intertextuality’ has become an all-pervasive catchword in literature and other humanities departments; yet the notion, as commonly used, remains nebulous to the point of meaninglessness. This book seeks to shed light on this thought-provoking but treacherously polyvalent concept by tracing the theory’s core ideas and emblematic images to paradigm shifts in the fields of science, philosophy, psychoanalysis, and linguistics, focusing on the shaping roles of Darwin, Nietzsche, Freud, Saussure, and Bakhtin. In so doing, it elucidates the meaning of one of the most frequently used terms in contemporary criticism, thereby providing a much-needed foundation for clearer discussions of literary relations across the discipline and beyond.

In this ground breaking work of synthesis, Monika Fludernik combines insights from literary theory and linguistics to provide a challenging new theory of narrative. This book is both an historical survey and theoretical study, with the author drawing on an enormous range of examples from the earliest oral study to contemporary experimental fiction. She uses these examples to prove that recent literature, far from heralding the final collapse of narrative, represents the epitome of a centuries long developmental process.

Originally published: Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986.