At 05:30 PM 8/11/2004 +0100, you wrote: >There are some reasonably convincing remarks about the rise of the form, if >not as I recall the name, in heroic literature in Ruth C Wallerstein, 'The >Development of the Rhetoric and Metre of the Heroic Couplet 1625-45' PML 50 >(1935), 160ish
It was actually Wallerstein that put me onto this. Wallerstein was Piper's teacher, and she argued that the heroic couplet so-called was originally devised as an equivalent for the Latin elegiac couplet -- not heroic at all. Piper confirmed this. But you see where my question is going: when did something that was originally used for translating elegies and epigrams become the de facto meter for epic? ----------------------------------------------------------------------- David Wilson-Okamura http://virgil.org [EMAIL PROTECTED] East Carolina University Virgil reception, discussion, documents, &c ----------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- To leave the Mantovano mailing list at any time, do NOT hit reply. Instead, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message "unsubscribe mantovano" in the body (omitting the quotation marks). You can also unsubscribe at http://virgil.org/mantovano/mantovano.htm#unsub
