Jacob Grimm: From the Exaltation of the German Language to 19th Century Linguistics

Abstract

The present study seeks to demonstrate the influence and impact of the German Romanticism ideals on heading of the reflections about language in the 19th Century, which contributed for the establishment of Linguistics as Science. It will emphasize the German author Jacob Grimm (1785–1863), better known associated with his brother, Wilhelm Grimm (1786– 1859), trough the compilation of fairy tales extracted from the German folklore (published between 1812–1858), and by the formulation of the recent called first phonetic law. Grimm, heavily biased by the romantic nationalism, featured by the refusal of the classical past and promoting the appreciation of a national literature and language, focused on the study of Germanic cultural manifestations and German language, truly from within its roots, aiming for a national identity. The result, however, was the important discovery of a systematic phonetic mutation, noticed trough comparisons among Greek, Gothic, Latin and Sanskrit languages and which will influence the directions of the modern Linguistic Studies. Starting from a historical contextualization and theoretical exposure about Romanticism, it will relate the movement ideals with Grimm's Linguistics work. This is a bibliographical research, theoretically based on Robins (1979) and Morpurgo Davies (1998), works directed to linguistic historiography, and on Guinsburg (1978), in the field of the literature theory.