Some Poetical Forests

1950 ◽  
Vol 19 (55) ◽  
pp. 29-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. W. Lamb

‘Perhaps you can draw a cypress’, says Horace (A.P. 19), a remark which many Latin poets seem to have interpreted as a challenge. Not that the poets, with the exception of Ovid, wasted many words on the cypress itself, although all are very careful to mention it. Usually it is accompanied by some gloomy epithet, feralis (Ovid, Trist. 3. 13. 21; Virg. Aen. 6. 216) or funebris, or has some remote allusion to the funeral pyre (e.g. Lucan 3. 442; Stat. Theb. 4. 464). Homer, on the contrary, preferred a more cheerful epithet ε??ώ??ης.But the cypress is by no means the only tree in the forest, and the poets take good care to let the reader know it. The Romans thought that there were some parts of poetry, and particularly epic poetry, in which they could improve on the Greeks, and word-painting was one of these. Where the Greeks usually contented themselves with a terse epithet, the Romans loved to dip their brush in bright colours and lay them on thick. Such descriptive passages have their place in poetry, but their employment needs to be regulated carefully in accordance with the requirements of the subject. In epic particularly they should not delay the course of the action, but, as it were, provide a pleasant oasis wherein the reader can rest after perusing the account of some more strenuous activity. The forests we find in Latin verse usually contain far more trees than are generally found on an oasis, but they do provide a convenient resting-point in the action, and at the same time give the poet an opportunity of displaying his powers of word-painting.

1940 ◽  
Vol 34 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 30-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. P. Wilkinson

The elements which every schoolboy learns on beginning Latin Verse Composition include a number of rules which seem arbitrarily designed to make the game harder. In hexameters, he is told, he must have a masculine caesura either in the third foot or in the second and fourth, and end normally with a disyllabic or a trisyllable; in pentameters he must end with a disyllabic; and in neither line may a single monosyllable stand at the end. Rarely, in my experience, is any reason given him by way of redress, and he will search for one in vain in most of the school text-books, in introductions like Postgate's to Tibullus and Propertius, and in histories of Latin literature like Wight Duff's and Mackail's. This reticence may be due to the dissensions of experts on this subject and on the subject of Latin accentuation in general, but the theory that predominates in England, among those who hold a theory at all, explains so many of the phenomena that it deserves to be more widely and precisely known. The most detailed exposition of it is by E. H. Sturtevant, who summed up his analyses in a pair of articles in the Transactions of the American Philological Association in 1923–4. While his careful work is invaluable as marshalling the statistics and evidence, it errs on the side of excessive minuteness, and leaves room not merely for some additions, but for a different kind of treatment concerned less with bare statistics and more with poetic principles and historical development. Since Latin Verse Composition plays such an important part in English higher classical education, it seems desirable that a less technical and more accessible account should be available for English readers. Such an account I attempt to give here, keeping separate as far as possible the exposition and the consideration of the criticisms and rival theories that have been advanced.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-2
Author(s):  
Jerome Moran

If the modern oral hypothesis, beginning in the 1920s (see 17 below), about the composition of early Greek epic poetry is correct (a ‘paradigm shift’ in Homeric studies according to Casey Dué), there were many poets who over centuries, beginning perhaps in the middle-to-late Bronze Age, composed in performance many different versions of epic poems, including poems about the Trojan War, and including the subject matter of the Iliad and the Odyssey, vestiges of which survive on papyrus fragments and in the manuscripts of later authors. But the versions of the Iliad and the Odyssey that we have were not the work of many poets but, for the most part, of a single poet. The overall unity of the poems cannot be explained, or explained away, by any theory that posits multiple, successive authorship spanning many years.


Author(s):  
Aitalina Akhmetovna Kuzmina

The subject of this research is the semantics, structure and plotline of other space in the Yakut heroic epic poetry. The object is the texts of the Yakut heroic epic poetry, namely Olonkho of Vilyuysky tradition. The goal lies in comprehensive analysis of the category of other space in the Yakut heroic epic poetry, particularly Olonkho of Vilyuysky tradition. The article employs the systemic analysis of Olonkho poetics, structural-semantic analysis, and comparative method. Special attention is given to construction of mythopoetic model of the world and correlation between space and plot of the epic poem. The acquired results can be implemented in folklore studies. The novelty of this research consists in the analysis of other space in Olonkho from the perspective of its semantics, structure, and narrative role. This article is first to describe the peculiarities of other space in the texts of Vilyuysky epic tradition. It is determined that other space in the Yakut heroic epic poetry Olonkho is depicted in form of the Lower and Upper worlds, “foreign country” in the Middle world, intermediate zones that hold an important place within the epic worldview and course of events in the plot of Olonkho. The author notes that the texts of Vilyuysky Olonkho preserve the traditional techniques depicting the three worlds; and the difference lies in emergence of the image of shaman dwelling in the intermediate zone, prevalence of the entry into the Lower world without demarcation of its boundaries.


2016 ◽  
Vol 55 (1-2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Pál S. Varga

Szilárd Borbély described the periodical change in poetry at the turn of the 18th and 19th century as a ”shift in the attitude of literary texts” and as a transformation of ”literary understanding”. The turning away from the late Baroque and Classic poetry – which both followed inherited models of genre – came when the narrator received a unique identity, and the reader began to understand the text as an expression of the Self. This change can be pointed out in Sándor Kisfaludy’s cycle of poems, Kesergő szerelem (1802), which influenced the creation of Csokonai’s own cycle of love poems. The temporalization of the attitude towards the textual genre happened in the poetry of Ferenc Kölcsey. The narrators of Kölcsey’s Vanitatum vanitas and Hymnus create their identity by uniquely reflecting on the genre and dislocating the ready-made meanings. The peak of the transition is the inventive formation of history by means of poetry and language. The epic poetry of Mihály Vörösmarty structures language in a way that makes the mythical recounting of origin possible for the subject attempting to establish an identity in the past. Yet this language brought about the paradox of excluding the subjective from the expression. The concept emphasizing the formation of the attitude that reflects on the genre by language is not only a re-interpretation of 18th-19th century Hungarian poetry, but it is obviously close to the postmodern poetic method which is attributed to Halotti pompa [The Splendours of Death].


1966 ◽  
Vol 70 (661) ◽  
pp. 32-34
Author(s):  
Charles H. Gibbs-Smith

Inventors who work in secret, and whose vital creations never see the light of day until the world has passed them by, are mostly figures of romantic fiction. Most inventors take good care that their devices are brought to public notice, preferably after patents have been granted to them; and one of their main concerns in the 19th century was therefore the channels of communication open to them.Sir George Cayley wrote, in 1837, that “the experiments that have been made, and the investigation which it (the subject) has undergone, lie almost unconnected in the periodical publications of the last thirty years; and hence, every new speculator on the possibility of steering balloons takes up the subject merely on his own view”.


1977 ◽  
Vol 97 ◽  
pp. 39-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jasper Griffin

The Homeric poems are the subject of such a flood of print that a definite justification is needed by one who adds to it. Especially perhaps is this so if the Epic Cycle is to be involved; ‘enough and too much has been written about the Epic Cycle’, said T. W. Allen in 1908. My argument will be that the Cycle has still not been fully exploited as a source to show, by comparison and contrast, the particular character and style of the two great epics, particularly the Iliad. With the domination of Homeric scholarship in English by formulaic studies on the one hand and archaeology on the other, the poems themselves have perhaps been less discussed than might have been expected, and the uniqueness of the Homeric style and picture of the world has not been fully brought out. Most treatments of the Cycle have been concerned to assert or to deny that it contained poems or incidents earlier than the surviving epics, a question which will not be raised here. Most recent writers on Homer have more or less ignored the Cycle; even Hermann Fränkel, the first part of whose book Dichtung und Philosophie des frühen Griechentums (2nd edition 1962; now available in English, Poetry and Philosophy in Early Greece [1975]), is perhaps the most illuminating single work to have appeared on Homer in this century, does not discuss it, although it could have been made to support many of his arguments. No inferences are based on it, for example, in Wace and Stubbings, Companion to Homer, nor by Sir Maurice Bowra in his posthumous Homer. ‘My remarks are restricted to the two epics’, says J. B. Hainsworth in his short account; and G. S. Kirk, who does refer to the style of the fragments, does so summarily and without quotation. Yet after all the Cycle was a large body of early Greek heroic poetry, composed at a time not too far removed from that of the great epics, and at least passing as being in the same manner. We have some 120 lines quoted in the original, and a good deal of information about the content of the poems. If it proves possible to draw from this material any clear contrast with the Iliad, it may be felt that this will bring out the individuality of the latter even more strikingly than does the epic poetry, currently more often invoked, of the ancient Hittites or the modern Yugoslavs.


PMLA ◽  
1935 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 1320-1327
Author(s):  
Colbert Searles

THE germ of that which follows came into being many years ago in the days of my youth as a university instructor and assistant professor. It was generated by the then quite outspoken attitude of colleagues in the “exact sciences”; the sciences of which the subject-matter can be exactly weighed and measured and the force of its movements mathematically demonstrated. They assured us that the study of languages and literature had little or nothing scientific about it because: “It had no domain of concrete fact in which to work.” Ergo, the scientific spirit was theirs by a stroke of “efficacious grace” as it were. Ours was at best only a kind of “sufficient grace,” pleasant and even necessary to have, but which could, by no means ensure a reception among the elected.


1966 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 363-371
Author(s):  
P. Sconzo

In this paper an orbit computation program for artificial satellites is presented. This program is operational and it has already been used to compute the orbits of several satellites.After an introductory discussion on the subject of artificial satellite orbit computations, the features of this program are thoroughly explained. In order to achieve the representation of the orbital elements over short intervals of time a drag-free perturbation theory coupled with a differential correction procedure is used, while the long range behavior is obtained empirically. The empirical treatment of the non-gravitational effects upon the satellite motion seems to be very satisfactory. Numerical analysis procedures supporting this treatment and experience gained in using our program are also objects of discussion.


1966 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 159-161

Rule: I'd like at this point to bring up the subject of cables and wireways around the telescope. We've touched upon this twice during previous sessions: the cable wrap up problem, the communications problem, and data multiplexing problem. I think we'll ask Bill Baustian if he will give us a brief run down on what the electrical run problems are, besides doubling the system every year.


Paleobiology ◽  
1980 ◽  
Vol 6 (02) ◽  
pp. 146-160 ◽  
Author(s):  
William A. Oliver

The Mesozoic-Cenozoic coral Order Scleractinia has been suggested to have originated or evolved (1) by direct descent from the Paleozoic Order Rugosa or (2) by the development of a skeleton in members of one of the anemone groups that probably have existed throughout Phanerozoic time. In spite of much work on the subject, advocates of the direct descent hypothesis have failed to find convincing evidence of this relationship. Critical points are:(1) Rugosan septal insertion is serial; Scleractinian insertion is cyclic; no intermediate stages have been demonstrated. Apparent intermediates are Scleractinia having bilateral cyclic insertion or teratological Rugosa.(2) There is convincing evidence that the skeletons of many Rugosa were calcitic and none are known to be or to have been aragonitic. In contrast, the skeletons of all living Scleractinia are aragonitic and there is evidence that fossil Scleractinia were aragonitic also. The mineralogic difference is almost certainly due to intrinsic biologic factors.(3) No early Triassic corals of either group are known. This fact is not compelling (by itself) but is important in connection with points 1 and 2, because, given direct descent, both changes took place during this only stage in the history of the two groups in which there are no known corals.


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