From Philology to General Linguistics and Literary Theory

Abstract

In the Epilogue of her book From Philology to English Studies (2013), centered on the study of language in the nineteenth century (along the historicist line briefly sketched in Chapter 3 above), Haruko Momma wrote:

In the twentieth century, the study of language and literature blossomed in the fields of linguistics and literary analysis. These two may be seen as sibling disciplines in that they were born of the same parent, philology, and they each took after different features of their matrix. Their paths parted almost immediately after birth […]. This meant […] that the study of language and literature was split into two separate subjects, thus dissolving a good portion of the space occupied by philology for more than a century. (p. 185)