Modern Age - Spring 2016 - 32

MODERN AGE

SPRING 2016

John Milton wrote in his Art of Logic that notation (etymology)
was "the interpretation of a name, that is, a reason given why
anything is named as it is." Milton also quoted Cicero's remark
that "names are truly the signs of things" and gave as one of his
own examples the derivation of homo from humo ("soil"): Milton
said that the "notation is from the matter,"5 with the Latin word
for "man" being derived from the material from which the Bible
says he was created. Milton was not unmindful that traditional
etymologies were sometimes fanciful, but he cited many examples in this chapter of his Logic-the kind of work the Renaissance
thought necessary for the writer-that were genuine.
Underlying all this discussion is the assumption that there is a
real connection between a word and the thing that it denotes.
Although it is true, as Juliet says in Romeo and Juliet, that "a rose
by any other name would smell as sweet," names still do stand
for realities, in this play as much as anywhere else. It is Juliet's
famous meditation on Romeo's name, as she stands alone on her
balcony-"Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo"-that
causes her lover hidden in the garden below to reveal himself
and to express his love for her. The invocation of the name calls
out the person and reveals the boldness of his character.
Of course, the meanings of words change over time, but a
nineteenth-century writer on the arts of language, John Stuart
Mill, spoke for all those who like to study this topic when he said
in his own book on logic, "It may be good to alter the meaning of
a word, but it is bad to let any part of the meaning drop."6
The plays suggest that Shakespeare agreed with Mill's assertions, that to unleash a word's full potency required that no "part
of [its] meaning drop."

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Modern Age - Spring 2016

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Modern Age - Spring 2016

Contents
Modern Age - Spring 2016 - Cover1
Modern Age - Spring 2016 - Cover2
Modern Age - Spring 2016 - Contents
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Modern Age - Spring 2016 - Cover3
Modern Age - Spring 2016 - Cover4
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