ENGL 20323 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Playing Card, Crass
Document Summary
This shift bears powerfully on much victorian writing, such as dickens"s great. To answer this question, we need to understand how money both is and is not crucial here. English concerns about social class are not in all ways just like class concerns in other societies. The year 1066 marks the norman invasion of england"s mostly saxon population. (for the meaning of norman, think of france today, as in normandy. ) This period inaugurated several hundred years in which the language of french dominated courtly and aristocratic life. Out of this invasion grew the longtime tendency in the english establishment to see french matters as socially elevated and likewise to see earthy anglo-saxon things as socially low. When pip calls a playing card a jack (an. Anglo-saxon word) rather than a knave (a french equivalent), estella makes him feel crass for doing so.
