Literary Names

Personal Names in English Literature

Alastair Fowler

Broader historical range than any other study of literary names
Takes in names hidden by acrostic or anagram, pseudonyms, pen-names, nicknames, nameless characters, and lists of names
Chapters devoted to names in Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Dickens, Joyce, and Nabokov

Literary Names

Personal Names in English Literature

Alastair Fowler

Description

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.

Literary Names

Personal Names in English Literature

Alastair Fowler

Literary Names

Personal Names in English Literature

Alastair Fowler

Author Information

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 Byner lecture at Harvard in 1974.

Literary Names

Personal Names in English Literature

Alastair Fowler

Reviews and Awards

"There is no key to all mythologies when it comes to naming. It is rather a fascinating and vertiginous landscape full of chimeras, mirages, and truths in plain sight, differing from every perspective, but illuminated in the best fashion in Literary Names." --The Daily Beast

Literary Names

Personal Names in English Literature

Alastair Fowler

From Our Blog

What's in a literary name?

By Alastair Fowler Names and naming are topics of perennial interest, but until recently there were few general discussions of names as a literary feature. This is strange, since questions about names keep coming up in criticism. How are character names chosen? Are literary names always meaningful, or are some characters named quite casually? Does each genre have a list of first names available only for that sort of writing?

Posted on September 24, 2012

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Tennyson in 2012

By Gregory Tate 2012 has been a good year for the Victorian novel. The dizzying number of adaptations, exhibitions, and readings which have been organised to celebrate the bicentenary of the birth of Charles Dickens testify to the ongoing popularity of nineteenth-century fiction, and of this most famous of Victorian novelists in particular.

Posted on October 15, 2012

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