In Babel’s Shadow: Language, Philology, and the Nation in Nineteenth-Century Germany. By Tuska Benes. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press. 2008. Pp. xii þ 418. Cloth $54.95. ISBN 978-0-8143-3304-4.

摘要

Tuska Benes’s rich and erudite new work covers more territory than the titlenmight suggest. But then, that is her prime goal, to show the centrality of thenacademic study of language and languages to the broader cultural projects ofnnineteenth-century Germany, and indeed beyond. The book’s most importantncontribution is therefore in applying insights from the history of linguistics tonwider questions of German intellectual and cultural history, and in bringingnsome important but neglected names from the various subdisciplines of nine-nteenth-century German philology back into the historical mainstream. Somenof the details of sound shifts and linguistic systems will appeal primarily tonspecialists, but there is much here for German historians at large; scholars inter-nested in the origins and development of structuralism, poststructuralism, and thenlinguistic turns might find the argument stimulating as well.