Literary Names Personal Names in English Literature

Names hidden by acrostic or anagram, pseudonyms, pen-names, nicknames, nameless characters, and lists of names are all explored in this erudite and fascinating book, which encompasses literature from ancient times to modern. Although the main focus is English literature, it also takes in Latin, Greek, French, and Italian. Alastair Fowler shows how developments in the history of naming and changes in the range of permissible given names, from abstract andbiblical to romantic and cinematic, are reflected in fiction. He devotes individual chapters to Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Dickens, Joyce, and Nabokov, and shows how names often turn out to be the thematic focus of literary works.

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.

Preface
Abbreviations
Introduction
1. Naming in History
2. Modes of Naming
3. I^{he Faerie Queene}
4. Hidden Names
5. Shakespeare
6. Milton's Changing Names
7. Assumed and Imposed Names
8. Thackeray and Dickens
9. Arrays
10. Joyce and Nabokov
Afterword
References
Glossary
Index