Table Of ContentL ITERARY NAMES
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Literary
Names
Personal Names
in English Literature
ALASTAIR FOWLER
OXPORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
1
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, ox2 6dp,
United Kingdom
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© Alastair Fowler 2012
T e moral rights of the author have been asserted
First published 2012
Impression: 1
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ISBN 978–0–19–959222–7
Printed in Great Britain by
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F or my daughter Alison
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P reface
M y title Literary Names calls for explanation. The subtitle “Personal
Names in English Literature” provides some of this but not quite
enough. It gives no hint that while the main focus is on English I have
made sorties into Latin, Greek, French, and Italian.
T his book is an expansion of my 1974 Witter Bynner lecture at
Harvard and my 2008 F. W. Bateson lecture at Oxford. Discussion after
the Bateson lecture suggested the subject of literary names was far
larger than I had grasped, and deserved treatment at book length. Sub-
sequent work confi rmed this: indeed, it now seems that a single book
is hardly enough.
T he following pages do not amount to a defi nitive or systematic trea-
tise. I have rather aimed at a series of interrelated essays exploring how
names have functioned in literature. The broader chapters (1, 2, 4, 7, and
9) are mixed with others on individual authors who use names in spe-
cially interesting ways: Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Dickens, Joyce, and
Nabokov. I hope these case studies may be found less superfi cial.
E mphasis has fallen on earlier literature, partly because I am less
ignorant about it and partly because names mattered more in Renais-
sance literature, and more diversely. In pre-Enlightenment literature
names loomed large, not least in its hidden levels, in acrostics and
anagrams.
A book of this sort incurs a mountain of indebtedness—more, prob-
ably, than I am aware of, and certainly more than can be adequately
acknowledged here. Perhaps the greatest intellectual debt of scholars is
to educative conversation with colleagues and friends. In my case this
means colleagues at Oxford, Edinburgh, Princeton, Charlottesville,
and elsewhere—many of them now gone: F. W. Bateson, Irvin Ehren-
preis, C. S. Lewis, Wallace Robson. Among living colleagues at Edin-
burgh University, it is a pleasure to acknowledge what I have learned
from Michael Bury, Owen Dudley Edwards, Liz Elliott, R. D. S. Jack,
Roger Savage, and Susan Shatto (the last almost a collaborator).
viii preface
O thers, elsewhere, have corresponded generously: William Bellamy,
Eleanor Cook, Jerry Leath Mills, James Nohrnberg, Bernard Richards,
Tom Roche, Roger Swearingen, David Vander Meulen, Sir Christo-
pher Ricks, and Jack Levenson (who after more than thirty years of
contestation has fi nally persuaded me that Finnegans Wake is immensely
enjoyable). On heraldry, I consulted Robin Orr Blair (formerly Lord
Lyon King of Arms) and Katy Lumsden of the Genealogical Offi ce,
Dublin.
F ormer pupils too have instructed me, especially Christopher But-
ler, Anne Coldiron, Tom Corns, Peter Field, and Misako Himuro. But
debts to pupils remain unknowably vast.
S ome friends or acquaintances made the sacrifi ce of reading indi-
vidual chapters or part chapters in draft: Howard Erskine-Hill, Robert
Cummings, Denis Feeney, Juan Pellicer, and Peter Davidson. Others
helped on particular points: John Burrow, Martin Dodsworth, Peter
France, Christopher de Hamel, Emrys Jones, Aleta Konkol, Norman
Kreitman, Michael Lurie, Mark Scowcroft, Karen Thompson, and
Robbert Wetselaar. And always the staff of the National Library of
Scotland have been unfailingly helpful.
I t is a particular pleasure to acknowledge the contribution of
P rofessor John Considine of the University of Alberta, who made
many learned and valuable suggestions.
W hat I owe to my wife Jenny may be imagined from the fact that
she had to talk names every single day for three years.
A lastair Fowler
E dinburgh, 2011
C ontents
A bbreviations x
Introduction 1
1 . N aming in History 11
2 . M odes of Naming 29
3 . T he Faerie Queene 53
4 . H idden Names 75
5 . S hakespeare’s Names 1 01
6 . M ilton’s Changing Names 125
7 . A ssumed and Imposed Names 141
8 . T hackeray, Dickens, and James 171
9 . A rrays of Names 193
1 0. J oyce and Nabokov 215
Afterword 233
G lossary 235
R eferences 237
I ndex 267
