The Unruly Tongue in Early Modern England: Three Treatises [Hardcover]

Vienne-Guerrin provides a deft overview of the scholarship on the tongue over the past twenty-five years. She traces the biblical and classical sources that the authors reference while presenting a brief overview of the anatomy of the tongue and the relationship between the tongue and heart....One of the most useful features of the book is the collection of striking images relating to the tongue that Vienne-Guerrin has collected in the appendix...Vienne-Guerrin's edition effectively situates the representation of the tongue in the noisy world of the early modern England.This volume excavates the biblical and classical sources behind three early modern treatises that denounce the numerous sins of the tongue that cause damage in the Elizabethan society.The Unruly Tongue in Early Modern England is a scholarly edition of three early modern treatises on the unruly tongue: Jean de Marconville, A Treatise of the Good and Evell Tounge (ca.1592), William Perkins, A Direction for the Government of the Tongue according to Gods worde (1595), and George Webbe, The Araignement of an unruly Tongue (1619). The tongue can no man tame says the Bible (James 3:8), and yet these texts try to tame the tongues of men and tell them how they should rule this little but essential organ and avoid swearing, blaspheming, cursing, lying, flattering, railing, slandering, quarrelling, babbling, jesting, or mocking. This volume excavates the biblical and classical sources in which these early modern texts are embedded and gives a panorama of the sins of the tongue that the Elizabethan society both cultivates and strives to contain. Vienne-Guerrin provides the reader with early modern images of what Erasmus described as a slippery and ambivalent organ that is both sweet and sour, a source of life and death.AcknowledgmentsTable of illustrationsTable of abbreviationsINTRODUCTIONEditorial noteJean de MARCONVILLE,A Treatise of the Good and Evell Tounge. ca. 1592A note on the textThe text ?William lS?