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  • Chapter 24 - Dictionaries as Literary Artifacts

  • from Part IV - Dictionaries and Domains of Use
  • Edited by Edward Finegan, University of Southern California, Michael Adams, Indiana University, Bloomington
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Handbook of the Dictionary
    Published online:
    19 October 2024
    Print publication:
    31 October 2024, pp 481-492

  • Summary

    Dictionaries are works of literature: they have an author, a plot, and a narrative. They have also been the object of fascination of writers–poets, novelists, and essayists– from diverse languages, from Ambrose Bierce, Jorge Luis Borges, Denis Diderot, and Gustave Flaubert, to Czeslaw, George Orwell, George Perec, William Thackery, and Voltaire. At times, the structure of a lexicon is emulated in a work of fiction; in others, it is at the heart of a storyline. This meditation explores the wide range of tributes dictionaries have occasioned as well as volumes about the making of specific lexicons, such as the Oxford English Dictionary.