Re: VIRGIL: macaronic verse reply to Patrick Roper

[david connor]

Patrick, Thank you for the illuminating response.  What started out as a
trivial question has become far more interesting to me.   David
----- Original Message -----
From: Patrick Roper <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Sunday, August 15, 2004 1:15 PM
Subject: RE: VIRGIL: macaronic verse


> > Pardon me for changing the subject being discussed, but would someone
tell
> > me something about Macaronic Verse?  Is it always a "burlesque"
> > form as the
> > dictionary implies, or is there a body of more serious work?
> > Are there, for example, macaronic heroic couplets?  A few inquiring
minds
> > want to know. . .
>
> The dictionary I cited before says, among much else, that in Middle
English
> examples "whole lines of Latin are frequently inserted as quasi-refrains,
> and since the metre of both languages often matches, macaronic verse may
> have been an important vehicle for transporting the accentual rhythms of
> Medieval Latin into English."
>
> The authors go on to say that Ezra Pound and T S Eliot "transformed the
> macaronic into a serious and important technique of poetic composition,
> allusion and structure."
>
> The fashion for the macaronic may have declined too early for heroic
couplet
> writers.  However, if you hadn't provoked me to think about it I might
never
> have come across gems like William Drummond's Scots/Latin
'Polemo-Middinia'.
> Here's a flavour of it:
>
> Nymphae quae colitis highissima monta Fifaea,
> Seu vos Pittenwema tenent seu Crelia crofta
> Sive Anstraea domus, ubi nat haddocus in undis
> Codlineusque ingens, et fleucca et skeeta pererrant
> Per costam, et scopulis lobster mony-footus in udis
> Creepat, et in mediis whitenius undis
>
> Patrick Roper
>
>
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