Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T05:22:14.109Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Etymology, Antiquarianism, and Unchanging Languages in Johannes Goropius Becanus's Origines Antwerpianae and William Camden's Britannia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2020

David Weil Baker
David Weil Baker*
Affiliation:
Rutgers University–Newark
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article argues that, despite the protestations to the contrary of William Camden (1551–1623), the antiquarian methods of his “Britannia” are indebted to the “Origines Antwerpianae” of Johannes Goropius Becanus (1519–73). Both Goropius and Camden posited the contemporary existence of an unchanged primeval language (Dutch for Goropius and Welsh for Camden) wherein etymologies could be used to trace the origins and migrations of ancient peoples. Even as humanist philology underscored the mutability of language, Goropius and Camden selectively ignored this mutability in order to have a basis other than myth or legend for reconstructing antiquity. Their efforts, however, created new myths about language and its ability to bridge present and distant past.

Type
Articles
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 72 , Issue 4 , Winter 2019 , pp. 1326 - 1361
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

This article grew out of a conference paper presented at the 2015 Annual Meeting of the Renaissance Society of America. I am grateful for the opportunity to have presented there, as well as to the readers at Renaissance Quarterly for their insightful criticisms. Finally, I would like to thank the late Marcia Worth-Baker for her many contributions over the years.

References

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Anderson, Judith. Words That Matter: Linguistic Perception in Renaissance English. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996.Google Scholar
Aubrey, John. Brief Lives. Ed. Bennett, Kate. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.Google Scholar
Bodin, Jean. Methodus ad Facilem Historiarum Cognitionem. Paris, 1566.Google Scholar
Borchardt, Frank. “Etymology in Tradition and in the Northern Renaissance.” Journal of the History of Ideas 29.3 (1968): 415–29.10.2307/2708452CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Borst, Arno. Der Turmbau von Babel. 6 vols. Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann, 1957–63.Google Scholar
Brerewood, Edward. Enquiries touching the diversity of languages and religions through the cheife parts of the world. London, 1614.Google Scholar
Caesar, Julius. The Gallic War. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1917.Google Scholar
Camden, William. Britannia. London, 1586.Google Scholar
Camden, William. Remains … Concerning Britaine. London, 1605.Google Scholar
Camden, William. Britannia. London, 1607.Google Scholar
Camden, William. Epistolae. Ed. Smith, Thomas. London, 1691.Google Scholar
Camden, William. Britannia. Ed. and trans. Gibson, Edmund. London, 1695.Google Scholar
Considine, John. Dictionaries in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.10.1017/CBO9780511485985CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crawforth, Hannah. Etymology and the Invention of English in Early Modern Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.10.1017/CBO9781107300750CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dante, Alighieri. De vulgari eloquentia. Paris, 1577.Google Scholar
Davies, John. Antiquae Linguae Britannicae Rudimenta. London, 1621.Google Scholar
Delmas, Adrien. “Writing History in the Age of Discovery, According to La Popeliniere, 16th–17th Centuries.” In The Dutch Trading Companies as Knowledge Networks, ed. Huigen, Siegfried, 297–318. Leiden: Brill, 2010.Google Scholar
Drayton, Michael. Poly-Olbion. London, 1612.Google Scholar
Droixhe, Daniel. La Linguistique et l'appel de l'histoire (1600–1800). Geneva: Droz, 1978.Google Scholar
Droixhe, Daniel. “Ossian, Hermann and the Jew's Harp: Images of the Celtic Languages from 1600–1800.” In Celticism, ed. Brown, Terence, 21–30. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1996.Google Scholar
Eco, Umberto. The Search for the Perfect Language. Trans. James Fentress. Oxford: Blackwell, 1995.Google Scholar
Eskhult, Joseph. “Augustine and the Primeval Language in Early Modern Exegesis and Language.” Language and History 56.2 (2013): 98–118.10.1179/1759753613Z.00000000021CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fletcher, R.H. “Two Notes on the Historia Regum Britanniae of Geoffrey of Monmouth.” PMLA 16.4 (1901): 461–74.10.2307/456568CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frederickx, Eddy, and Toon Van Hal, . Johannes Goropius Becanus (1519–1573): Brabant Arts en Taalfanaat. Hilversum: Verloren, 2015.Google Scholar
Goropius Becanus, Johannes. Origines Antwerpianae. Antwerp, 1569.Google Scholar
Goropius Becanus, Johannes. Opera Hactenus in Lucem non Edita. Antwerp, 1580.Google Scholar
Grafton, Anthony. Defenders of the Text: The Traditions of Scholarship in an Age of Science. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991.Google Scholar
Grafton, Anthony. Joseph Scaliger: A Study in the History of Classical Scholarship. 2 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993.Google Scholar
Greene, Thomas. The Light in Troy: Imitation and Discovery in Renaissance Poetry. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986.Google Scholar
Hakluyt, Richard. The principall navigations, voiages and discoveries of the English nation. London, 1589.Google Scholar
Herendeen, Wyman. William Camden: A Life in Context. Rochester, NY: Boydell & Brewer, 2007.Google Scholar
Jenkins, Geraint. “The Cultural Uses of the Welsh Language, 1660–1800.” In The Welsh Language before the Industrial Revolution, ed. Jenkins, Geraint, 369–406. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1997.Google Scholar
Johnson, James. “The Scythian: His Rise and Fall.” Journal of the History of Ideas 20.2 (1959): 250–57.10.2307/2707822CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jones, R.Brinley. The Old British Tongue: The Vernacular in Wales, 1540–1640. Cardiff: Avalon Books, 1970.Google Scholar
Jonson, Ben. Ben Jonson. Ed. Hereford, C. H. and Simpson, Percy. 11 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1937.Google Scholar
Karrow, Robert. Mapmakers of the Sixteenth Century and Their Maps. Chicago: Newberry Library, 1993.Google Scholar
Kendrick, T. D.British Antiquity. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1950.Google Scholar
Kidd, Colin. British Identities before Nationalism: Ethnicity and Nationhood in the Atlantic World, 1600–1800. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.10.1017/CBO9780511495861CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Klein, Bernard. Maps and the Writing of Space in Early Modern England and Ireland. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001.10.1057/9780230598119CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. Collectanea Etymologica. Hannover, 1717.Google Scholar
Leland, John. Cygnea Cantio. London, 1545.Google Scholar
Levy, F. J.Tudor Historical Thought. San Marino, CA: Huntington Library, 1967.Google Scholar
Ligota, C. R. “Annius of Viterbo and Historical Method.” Journal of the Warburg and Cortauld Institutes 50 (1987): 44–56.10.2307/751317CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lipsius, Justus. Epistularum Selectarum Centuria Tertia ad Belgas. Antwerp, 1602.Google Scholar
Llwyd, Humphrey. Commentarioli Britannicae Descriptionis Fragmentum. Cologne, 1572.Google Scholar
Llwyd, Humphrey. Cronica Walliae. Ed. Williams, Ievan. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2002.Google Scholar
Manilius, M.Astronomicon. Ed. Scaliger, Joseph. Paris, 1579.Google Scholar
Migne, Jacques Paul, ed. Patrologia Latina. 217 vols. Paris, 1844–55.Google Scholar
Milton, John. Paradise Lost. London, 1674.Google Scholar
Morris, Lewis. Celtic Remains. London, 1878.Google Scholar
Olender, Maurice. “Europe, or How to Escape Babel.” In Proof and Persuasion in History, ed. Marchand, Suzanne and Grafton, Anthony, 5–25. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1994.Google Scholar
Ortelius, Abraham. Synonymia Geographica. Antwerp, 1578.Google Scholar
Padron, Ricardo. “Mapping Plus Ultra: Cartography, Space, and Hispanic Modernity.” Representations 79.1 (2002): 28–60.10.1525/rep.2002.79.1.28CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pagden, Anthony. Lords of all the World: Ideologies of Empire in Spain, Britain and France. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995.Google Scholar
Parry, Graham. Trophies of Time: English Antiquarians of the Seventeenth Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.Google Scholar
Pausanias, . Description of Greece with an English Translation. Trans. Jones, W. H.. 4 vols. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1935.Google Scholar
Pezron, Paul. The Antiquities of Nations. Ed. Davis, Daniel. London: Routledge, 2002.Google Scholar
Popper, Nicholas. Walter Raleigh's History of the World and the Historical Culture of the Late Renaissance. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012.Google Scholar
Porras, Stephanie. “Producing the Vernacular: Antwerp, Cultural Archaeology, and the Bruegelian Peasant.” Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art 3.1 (2011). doi: https://doi.org/10.5092/jhna.2011.3.1.3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Prise, John. Historiae Britannicae Defensio. Ed. and trans. Davies, Ceri. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2015.Google Scholar
Rhys, John David. Cambrobrytannicae Cymraecaeve Linguae Institutiones et Rudimenta. London, 1592.Google Scholar
Scaliger, Joseph Justus. Opuscula. Paris, 1610.Google Scholar
Scaliger, Joseph Justus. Epistolae. Paris, 1627.Google Scholar
Schmidt, Benjamin. “Mapping an Empire: Cartographic and Colonial Rivalry in Seventeenth-Century Dutch and English North America.” William and Mary Quarterly 54.3 (1997): 549–78.10.2307/2953839CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schwyzer, Philip. “A Map of Greater Cambria.” Early Modern Literary Studies 4.2 (1998): 1–13.Google Scholar
Schwyzer, Philip. Literature, Nationalism and Memory in Early Modern England and Wales. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.10.1017/CBO9780511483950CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Selden, John. De Diis Syriis. London, 1617.Google Scholar
Swift, Jonathan. The Works of Jonathan Swift. 2 vols. London, 1843.Google Scholar
Van Dorsten, J. A.Poets, Patrons, and Professors: Sir Philip Sidney, Daniel Rogers, and the Leyden Humanists. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962.Google Scholar
Van Hal, Toon. “Moedertalen en Taalmoeders”: Het Vroegmoderne Taal-Vergelijkende Onderzoek in de Lage Landen. Brussels: Paleis der Academiens, 2010a.Google Scholar
Van Hal, Toon. “‘Quam enim Periculosa sit ea via …’: Joseph Justus Scaliger's Views on Linguistic Kinship.” Beiträge zur Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft 20.1 (2010b): 111–40.Google Scholar
Verstegan, Richard. A restitution of decayed intelligence. London, 1634.Google Scholar
Vine, Angus. In Defiance of Time: Antiquarian Writing in Early Modern England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weststeijn, Thijs. Art and Antiquity in the Netherlands and Britain: The Vernacular Arcadia of Franciscus Junius (1591–1677). Leiden: Brill, 2015.10.1163/9789004283992CrossRefGoogle Scholar
White, Richard. Historiarum Libri. Arras, 1597.Google Scholar