The Spirit of the English Language

John Wulsin, a language teacher of thirty years, here traces the spirit and evolution of the English language. Taking poetry as his guide, he examines how English has sounded over the past thirteen centuries, and how those changes have affected Western consciousness. This work, destined to be a classic, is filled with the textures of the lives and works of the great English-language poets, from Beowulf and Chaucer to Gerard Manley Hopkins and Emily Dickinson.