Why do authors use pseudonyms and pen-names, or ingeniously hide names in their work with acrostics and anagrams? How has the range of permissible given names changed and how is this reflected in literature? Why do some characters remain mysteriously nameless? In this rich and learned book, Alastair Fowler explores the use of names in literature of all periods - primarily English but also Latin, Greek, French, and Italian - casting an unusual and rewarding light on the work of literature itself. He traces the history of names through Homer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Thackeray, Dickens, Joyce, and Nabokov, showing how names often turn out to be the thematic focus. Fowler shows that the associations of names, at first limited, become increasingly salient and sophisticated as literature itself develops.

About the Author
Alastair Fowler is Regius Professor Emeritus of Edinburgh University, and was previously Professor of English at the University of Virginia. For many years he divided his time between the United States and Britain, where he now lives. His publications include an annotated edition of Paradise Lost (1968); Kinds of Literature (1982); and Renaissance Realism (2003). His interest in literary names goes back to his Witter Bynner lecture at Harvard in 1974.

Reviews
An amusing, accessible book this volume merits a wide readership: specialists will hasten to pore over Fowler's comments on Paradise Lost or Lolita or on the characters' names in Twelfth Night, while the experienced reader will browse the book as a whole with recurring smiles of delight and gasps of edification. * E.D. Hill, Choice *
this book is something of a marvel. * London Review of Books *
Fowler -- now in his eighties -- has more learning between his ears than most of us could acquire in eight lifetimes ... [his] book has the inspirational virtue that it makes one think one's own thoughts. * John Sutherland, Literary Review *
[an] engagingly and sometimes overflowingly serendipitous book ... lively and informative ... generally delightful * Claude Rawson, Times Literary Supplement *
Unusually for a scholar of such deep erudition, Fowler appears to have either the modesty or common sense to follow Frank Kermode's precept: "Names can have power, but not always." * Alexandra Mullen, The New Criterion *



Book Information
ISBN 9780199592227
Author Alastair Fowler
Format Hardback
Page Count 296
Imprint Oxford University Press
Publisher Oxford University Press
Weight(grams) 474g
Dimensions(mm) 220mm * 145mm * 21mm