Introduction to the New Edition of Niels Ege's 1993 Translation of Rasmus Rask's Prize Essay of 1818
Abstract
This edition constitutes a photographic reprint of the English edition of Rasmus Rask's prize essay of 1818 which appeared as volume XXVI in the Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Copenhague in 1993. The only difference, besides the new front matter, is the present introduction, which serves to introduce the author Rasmus Rask, the man and his career, and to contextualize his famous work. It also serves to introduce the translation and the translator, Niels Ege (1927-2003). The prize essay was published in Danish in 1818. In contrast to other works by Rask, notably his introduction to the study of Icelandic (on which, see further below), it was never reissued until Louis Hjelmslev (1899-1965) published a corrected version in Danish as part of his edition of Rask's selected works (Rask 1932). It was thus rare, but not impossible, to find, and certainly very expensive to buy, until Roy Harris included a photographic reprint of the original 1818 edition in his 13-volume Routledge series Foundations of Indo-European Comparative Philology 1800-1850, where it makes up volume 2 (Rask 1999). Thus there are now two Danish editions readily available to the public, the original and the corrected edition (Rask 1932). The present work is, however, the only translation of the work into English and indeed into any other language.
Domains
Nordic languages| Origin | Files produced by the author(s) |
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