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. . . Thank you -- David - Original Message - From: David Wilson-Okamura <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, August 11, 2004 12:59 PM Subject: RE: VIRGIL: heroic verse > At 04:03 PM 8/11/2004 +0100, Patrick Roper wrote: > >Though it does not answer your specific question,you will probably have seen > >William Bowman Piper's entry on the heroic couplet in 'The New Princeton > >Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics' (1993). > > Thanks, Patrick. I didn't mean to dismiss Piper in my first set of remarks > -- his book is excellent. Looked at Brogan's bibliography last summer, but > will try again and see if there was anything I missed. > > --- > David Wilson-Okamurahttp://virgil.org [EMAIL PROTECTED] > East Carolina UniversityVirgil 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 --- 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
Re: VIRGIL: macaronic verse
Off the top of my head it occurs in religious verse in the middle ages - some of the marian hymns are quite effective. Helen Conrad-O'Briain PS David could you e-mail me privately? On 15 Aug 2004, at 16:31, david connor wrote: 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. . . Thank you -- David - Original Message - From: David Wilson-Okamura <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, August 11, 2004 12:59 PM Subject: RE: VIRGIL: heroic verse At 04:03 PM 8/11/2004 +0100, Patrick Roper wrote: Though it does not answer your specific question,you will probably have seen William Bowman Piper's entry on the heroic couplet in 'The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics' (1993). Thanks, Patrick. I didn't mean to dismiss Piper in my first set of remarks -- his book is excellent. Looked at Brogan's bibliography last summer, but will try again and see if there was anything I missed. -- - David Wilson-Okamurahttp://virgil.org [EMAIL PROTECTED] East Carolina UniversityVirgil 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 --- 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
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 --- 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
VIRGIL: attention David Wilson-Okamura
Apologies to David Connor! you must have wondered what on earth this strange woman was up to! I meant that I'd like David Wilson Okamura to e-mail me privately. Helen Conrad-O'Briain --- 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
Re: VIRGIL: macaronic verse
In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Patrick Roper <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes >> 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." There are Graeco-Latin macaronics in Ausonius, but hardly in high seriousness, any more than the odd bits of Greek in Juvenal and Martial. However, the fourteenth-century Harley Lyrics in British Library MS Harley 2253 (ed. C. L. Brook, Manchester, 3rd edn. 1964) include (no. 19, fo. 76r, p. 55): Dum ludis floribus velud lacinia, le dieu d'amour moi tient en tiel angustia, merour me tient de duel e de miseria si ie ne la ay quam amo super omnia . . . There is also an Anglo-French specimen (no. 28, fo, 83r, pp. 66-8): Mayden moder milde, orez cel oreysoun; from shome (th)ou me shilde e de ly mal feloun; for loue of (th)ine childe me menez de tresoun. Ich was wod ant wilde, ore su en prisoun. . . . A more famous example is the fifteenth-century Germano-Latin Christmas hymn, which is also familiar in Anglo-Latin translation: In dulci iubilo Nun singet und seid froh! Unsers Herzens Wonne Leit in praesepio, Leuchtet vor die Sonne, Matris in gremio, Alpha es et O! [ij] However, it became harder to take the genre seriously once the satiric genius of Teofilo Folengo, alias Merlinus Cocaius, had published the successive editions of his macaronic writings, in particular _Baldus_. To quote the beginning of book 1 in the final, 1554 edition: Plantasia mihi plus quam phantastica venit, Historiam Baldi grassis cantare camoenis. Altisonam cuius phamam, nomenque gaiardum, Terra tremat, baratrumque metu sibi cagat adossum. Sed prius altorium vestrum chiamare bisognat O macaronaeam Musae quae funditis artem. . . . That is why Pound and Eliot had to reclaim it. Leofranc Holford-Strevens -- *_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_* Leofranc Holford-Strevens 67 St Bernard's Road usque adeone Oxford scire MEVM nihil est, nisi ME scire hoc sciat alter? OX2 6EJ tel. +44 (0)1865 552808(home)/353865(work) fax +44 (0)1865 512237 email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (home)/[EMAIL PROTECTED] (work) *_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_* --- 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
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
