Thank you Mantovanos, one and all, for the full replies to my small question. Here's a little curtain call:
Cane carmen SIXPENCE, pera plena rye, De multis atris avibus coctis in a pie: Simul haec apert'est, cantat omnis grex, Nonne permirabile, quod vidit ille rex? Dimidium rex esus, misit ad reginam Quod reliquit illa, sending back catinum. Rex fuit in aerario, multo nummo tumens; In culina Domina, bread and mel consumens; Ancell' in horticulo, hanging out the clothes, Quum descendens cornix rapuit her nose. And a bow from Blackbeard the Pirate, who used the original as a coded recruiting song... ----- Original Message ----- From: Simon Cauchi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Sunday, August 15, 2004 4:48 PM Subject: RE: VIRGIL: macaronic verse > >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 > > How evocative these lines are! I spent one bitterly cold winter in Fife, > forty-odd years ago, learning Russian at the Joint Services School of > Languages, which was then housed in a disused aerodrome at Crail, and I > remember one weekend walking all along that coast, through Anstruther and > Pittenweem, as far as Elie. Didn't notice any nymphs, though. > > However, the term "macaronic" has undergone a sea-change in recent years. > See, for example, > > http://www.arts.ed.ac.uk/italian/gadda/Pages/journal/issue%200/articles/sbra > giamacaronic.html > > where the discussion concerns modern prose works in a tradition that traces > its descent from Rabelais. For example, here's a taste of the discussion: > > "The resuscitation of the macaronic as an object of historical inquiry by > the German Romantics was part of an overall reconfiguration of the > classical division of the comic and sublime genres. Friedrich Schlegel's > metamorphosis of irony from a rhetorical trope to a metaphysical implement > for transcending from the worldly finite to the spiritually infinite marked > the beginning of the modern quest for a transcendental integration of the > comic into the discourse of the sublime. Jean Paul declared in courses six > and seven of the Vorschule der Aesthetik that the ridiculous in its > contrast of the finite with the finite was «the hereditary enemy of the > sublime», whereas humour, or the Romantic comic, contrasted man's infinity > with his finitude, ultimately in the name of the triumph of the infinite > idea. Most successive elaborations on humour, irony, and the Kantian divide > in the nineteenth century would be a reworking of the notion of the > metaphysical split between the comic empirical self and the contemplative > transcendent self. > Romantic humorism destabilises the false sublimity of objective > finitude within the framework of a continual teleological quest for > subjective infinity. . . ." > > In its loosest sense, I think there must be an element of the macaronic in > practically all Neo-Latin poetry, not all of which -- not very much of it, > indeed -- is intended to be funny. > > And someone, somewhere, *must* have written some macaronic iambic > pentameter couplets. > > Simon Cauchi > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > > > ----------------------------------------------------------------------- > 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 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
