Capitals in M&D

[Ya Sam]

Thanks! That was a concrete and relevant answer I expected to get. In that 
respect Pynchon's prose in M&D definitely mirrors the inconsistencies of the 
orthography of the period.


>From: robinlandseadel at comcast.net
>To: "Ya Sam" <takoitov at hotmail.com>, pynchon-l at waste.org
>Subject: Re: Capitals in M&D
>Date: Wed, 09 Aug 2006 14:24:10 +0000
>
>These are the sort of spelling and Capitalization writing conventions one 
>would find in materials published during the Colonial era in what was about 
>to become the United States of America. Noah Webster was developing the 
>first dictionary of "American" English at the time. In pre-"Websterized" 
>written English, normalized, consistent rules for capitalization and 
>spelling were absent. I remember an edition of Bartholomew Fair, where the 
>spelling was deliberately (and quite creatively) inconsistent, in order to 
>more accurately reflect the actual pronunciations of the characters in the 
>play. Mark Twain did a similar thing in "Huck Finn." The lack of 
>consistency is the point. This individualizes the speech patterns of the 
>characters in the works mentioned.
>
>http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN1419108999&id=waCtwcOgcqgC&pg=PA1&lpg=PA1&dq=bartholomew+fair&sig=Su5TlveqGIneAP7NwMUzcLfvX4g
>
>  http://lexrex.com/bios/nwebster.htm
>
>  -------------- Original message ----------------------
>From: "Ya Sam" <takoitov at hotmail.com>
> > Another question for M&D connoisseurs. What is the principle of the 
>(mock)
> > 18th century capitalisation in this novel? Initially I thought it was 
>quite
> > simple: all the nounse are capitalised. But it turned out that some were
> > not. I failed to see any systematic pattern there. If you know about the
> > subject could you please enlighten me a bit?
> >
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>

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