Current Book Project
3d. edition of Betty O’ Yep’s Laughable Tale of Jinny Cropper at th’ Halton Feast, one of Margaret Rebecca Lahee’s many narratives written in the Lancashire dialect
Dialect Acts: Identity Performance on the Victorian Page and Stage examines the role of dialect in British literature and culture of the long nineteenth century. Through archival research and an engagement with recent discussions in sociolinguistics, I reassess the use of dialect across genre and across region, putting canonical novels in conversation with dialect songs and sketches, broadsides, the periodical press, and the theatre. In listening intently to the accents of class, gender, and region across genre and across the landscape of Britain, Dialect Acts narrates alternative versions of literary history, theatre history, and the history of the English language, versions that include Britain’s polyphony of voices.
Header Image: 3d. edition of Lahee's The Bewitched Teapots (1883)
Taryn Hakala 