The Roman Inkhorn: Literary and Religious Resistance to Latinism in the English Renaissance

Abstract

This chapter demonstrates that the opposition between scriptural autonomy and interpretive tradition shapes sixteenth-century examinations of the sufficiency of the English language and foreign borrowings. This chapter discusses the changing dynamics and abiding elements in early modern debates about biblical English following the exchange between More and Tyndale, involving, among others, Stephen Gardiner, Gregory Martin, William Rainolds, William Fulke, Thomas Cartwright, and William Lisle. The chapter goes on to discuss writing about secular borrowings—and Latinate English (the inkhorn) in particular—involving Thomas Elyot, John Cheke, Thomas Wilson, Roger Ascham, George Puttenham, Richard Mulcaster, et al. These two groups of texts—about biblical translation and secular borrowings respectively—have in common a conception of English autonomy that is at once linguistic, literary, and ecclesiastic.