Logomotives

Words That Change the World, 1400–1700

Marjorie Rubright editor Stephen Spiess editor

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Edinburgh University Press

Published:31st Mar '25

£95.00

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Logomotives cover

Logomotives are words that change worlds – past, present, and future. Bearing a wide range of linguistic, regional and disciplinary expertise, the volume’s twenty-five contributors traverse multiple geographies (Asia, Africa, Iberian Peninsula, Europe, and the Americas), work across fifteen languages and span from antiquity to our current moment to reveal how words are catalysts of cultural, political and epistemological change. Harnessing new developments in philologies of race, in queer-, feminist-, trans-, transnational- and postcolonial philologies, as well as translation studies, Logomotives illuminates the world-making capacity of words. Each chapter opens with a methodological statement, pursues a central reading and concludes with a lesson plan for undergraduate or graduate classrooms. The volume orients critical attention to the relations between what a word means, the ways in which it moves, and the changes that such motion engenders, both within and across the historical cultures under analysis and in present-day scholarship.

Logomotives is a beautifully crafted study of the world-changing power of words. Ranging across diverse geographies and cultures, these essays show how words catalyse cultural, political and epistemological change in the pre-modern world. This collection will be an indispensable reference for anyone interested in the force language exerts across history. -- Jenny C. Mann, New York University

ISBN: 9781399544528

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: unknown

392 pages