Gibbon, Edward | Robert Adams Day (essay date April-June 1988)
Robert Adams Day (essay date April-June 1988)
SOURCE: Day, Robert Adams. “Gibbon and the Language of History.” Études Anglaises 41, no. 2 (April-June 1988): 155-64.
[In the following essay, Day analyzes the vocabulary, sentence structure, and rhythms of a sample of Gibbon's prose from the Decline and Fall to show what devices Gibbons consciously used to convey his message to readers.]
As recently as September 1985 a reviewer in the London Times Literary Supplement, praising J. W. Burrow's newly-published Gibbon, said that
the student will get a sharper sense of where the true vitality of the Decline and Fall resides from Burrow's book than from any comparable study,
but went on to complain:
However, although Burrow helps us to see where we may find the life of the Decline and Fall, he is not equally illuminating about the forms that life...
[The entire page is 4786 words long]
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