Philology: The Forgotten Origins of the Modern Humanities

In this weighty, scholarly tome, Turner (Religion Enters the Academy), Cavanaugh Professor of humanities at Notre Dame, attempts to cover the concept of philology, “the multifaceted study of texts, languages, and the phenomenon of language itself.” He expresses a rather peculiar affinity for the maligned and forgotten progenitor of the humanities, claiming it to be “put down, kicked around, abused, and snickered at” by modern academics, personifying it as “totter[ing] along with arthritic creakiness... its gaunt torso clad in a frock coat.” But, he says, “it used to be chic, dashing, and much ampler in girth.” That characterization aside, he traces philology’s origins and history, from Greek rhetoric to the Renaissance, on through the dawn of the modern humanities in the 19th-century and finally into its 20th-century decline. The story he tells is of a wide-ranging, all-encompassing field of learning that was forced to grow, evolve, and eventually spawn its successors over the centuries. “Philology began a prolonged process of fragmentation and re-formation. Tasks long seen as facets of a single enterprise hived off as semiautonomous areas of scholarship.” Turner’s examination is thorough, occasionally wry, passionate, and yet painfully dense, suited more for a doctoral program than casual reader; the sort of work that may be heralded as a masterpiece in the field, as overlooked and ill-appreciated as its subject. (June)