Aspects of the Language of Latin Prose

2005 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Sentence Structure ◽  
Medieval Latin ◽  
Ancient Novel ◽  
Poetic Diction ◽  
Prose Rhythm

Twenty chapters from two often-dissociated areas of Latin studies, classical and medieval Latin, examine continuities and developments in the language of Latin prose from its emergence to the twelfth century. Language is not understood in a narrowly philological or linguistic sense, but as encompassing the literary exploitation of linguistic effects and the influence of formal rhetoric on prose. Key themes explored throughout this book are the use of poetic diction in prose, archaism, sentence structure, and bilingualism. Chapters cover a comprehensive range of material including studies of individual works, groups of authors such as the Republican historians, prose genres such as the ancient novel or medieval biography, and linguistic topics such as the use of connectives in archaic Latin or prose rhythm in medieval Latin.

Metrical and Rhythmical Clausulae in Medieval Latin Prose: Some Aspects and Problems

2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giovanni Orlandi
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
The Body ◽  
Latin Literature ◽  
Medieval Latin ◽  
Preliminary Results ◽  
The Future ◽  
General Preference ◽  
Prose Rhythm

The possibility that quantitative clausulae were sought by authors of the Latin literature of the medieval West offers a new means of entering the debate over ‘continuity or discontinuity’ between late antiquity and the Latin Middle Ages. The principles and aims of calculating prose rhythm, whether quantitative or tonic, have been changed; but much has returned as well. The variation of prosodical structure between the body and the end of a period may well be due to other reasons than the search for rhythm, such as the general preference of a long word to a short one to close a sentence. If the presented preliminary results are confirmed in the future by larger samples, it may be possible to trace in this twelfth-century prose a tendency towards what was to become the system characteristic of the Italian schools of ars dictaminis, namely a division of functions between the cursus tardus, deputed to minor pauses, and the obligatory cursus uelox, used to conclude nearly every sentence.

scholarly journals Cursus in Dante Alighieri’s prose books De vulgari eloquentia, De Monarchia and Convivio

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-120
Author(s):  
Annika Mikkel
Keyword(s):  
Statistical Analysis ◽  
Medieval Latin ◽  
Word Stress ◽  
Comparative Statistical Analysis ◽  
Prose Rhythm ◽  
De Vulgari Eloquentia

This paper examines the prose rhythm in Dante’s Latin and Italian prose. The samples of Dante’s Latin books De vulgari eloquentia and De Monarchia and the Italian book Convivio are analysed with the purpose of finding the incidence and patterns of prose rhythm. The method used in this paper is comparative-statistical analysis. The rhythm of classic prose was based on the quantity of syllables, while the medieval Latin prose rhythm was based on word stress and called cursus. Although the use of cursus was more popular in Latin prose, it can also be found elsewhere, including Italian prose. The analysis reveals that rhythmical sentences endings have a role in Dante’s prose and that the cursus appear in his Latin works, as well as in his works in vernacular.

Myth in the Ylias and Alexandreis

2021 ◽  
pp. 123-156
Author(s):  
Justin A. Haynes
Keyword(s):  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Medieval Latin ◽  
Essential Component ◽  
Bernard Silvestris

Evidence drawn from Bernard Silvestris, Servius, and others shows that myth (fabula), specifically in the form of the divine apparatus, was believed to be an essential component of the Aeneid in the twelfth century. Yet, most medieval Latin epics did not have a divine apparatus, so the allegiance of the Ylias and Alexandreis to the Aeneid stands out even more starkly by comparison. What is more, evidence is presented that the divine apparatus of the Alexandreis and Ylias function in a similar way to the twelfth-century interpretation of the Virgilian divine apparatus—through allegory as personification. The chapter closes with an argument that the Ylias and Alexandreis, when read in their twelfth-century context, are more closely aligned with Virgil than Lucan. This conclusion contradicts the current scholarly consensus.

‘Ηννσται καί τετέλεσται: An Echo from Traditio I

Traditio ◽  
1955 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 395-400
Author(s):  
Anselm Strittmatter
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Latin Translation ◽  
Text Line ◽  
Medieval Latin ◽  
John Chrysostom ◽  
Latin Version

In the medieval Latin translation of the two Liturgies of Constantinople — ‘St. Basil’ and ‘St. John Chrysostom’ —published from the twelfth-century Paris MS, Nouv. acq. lat. 1791, in 1943, the concluding prayer of the first of these two formularies, “‘Ηννσται καί τετέλεσται, contains a clause which, as was noted at the time, had not been found in any Greek MS. Now, after more than twelve years, two Greek MSS have been discovered — Sinait. 961, of the late eleventh or early twelfth century, and the liturgical roll No. 2 of the Laura, of the early years of the fourteenth century — neither of which indeed contains the interpolation of the Latin version in its entirety, but sufficient to warrant publication and study, for we have here the first trace — and more than a mere trace — of the clause, Si quid dimisimus, which has for so long been a baffling problem. Not unnaturally, this discovery has been the occasion of a re-examination of both the Latin version and the attempted reconstruction of the Greek original, with the result that more than one textual problem overlooked in the preparation of the first edition now stands out more clearly defined. This is especially true of the interesting rendering, ‘nutrimentum’ concerning which more is said below (Text, line 11 and Note 5).

Géographie Arabe et Géographie Latine au XIIe Siècle

2013 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 408-433 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Gautier Dalché
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Complex Issue ◽  
Medieval Latin ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Arab Origin ◽  
Latin Schools ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Comprehensive Study

Abstract The influence of Arab geography upon the Latin tradition in the Middle Ages is difficult to assess due to several factors including the former’s definition, content, and origin, as well as the tangled historiography on the question of its influence. The purpose of this paper is not to provide a comprehensive study of this complex issue but rather to define the terms of the problem and to examine some concrete cases of contact between both geographical cultures during the twelfth century. The author first considers the impact of the introduction of Greek conceptions, transmitted through the Arabic Ṣūrat al-arḍ (The Picture of the Earth), upon medieval Latin cosmography. Special attention is devoted here to the influence of Greco-Arabic knowledge on contemporary Western Latin ideas about the habitability of the remotest parts of the earth. The author then deals with the relationship between both cultures in the field of descriptive geography and cartography. Unexpectedly, these different traditions can be shown to be largely isolated from one another, and the alleged Arab origin of some documents is, in most cases, dubious. The cause of the obvious lack of interest among Western Christians in Arab descriptive geography could lie in the general conditions of the Latin schools of the time, and perhaps also in the fact that Arabic writings and maps emphasize the domination of Islam over lands formerly under Christian rule.

scholarly journals Imagism and Imagery in the Selected Poems of Major Imagist Poets

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 88-93
Author(s):  
Bakhtiar S. Hama
Keyword(s):  
Hilda Doolittle ◽  
Sentence Structure ◽  
Literary Movement ◽  
Figures Of Speech ◽  
Amy Lowell ◽  
Poetic Diction ◽  
Five Senses ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Literary Devices

This paper explores imagism and studies the intrinsic literary features of some poems to show how the authors combine all the elements such as style, sentence structure, figures of speech and poetic diction to paint concrete and abstract images in the mind of the readers. Imagism was an early 20th century literary movement and a reaction against the Romantic and Victorian mainstreams. Imagism is known as an Anglo-American literary movement since it borrows from the English and American verse style of modern poetry. The leaders of the movement set some rules for writing imagist poems. The authors of the group believed that poets are like painters; what the painters can do with brush and dye, poets can do it with language i.e. painting pictures with words. The poems are descriptive; the poets capture the images they experience with one or more of the five senses. They believed that readers could see the realities from their eyes because the texts are like a painting. In this paper, six poems by six prominent leaders of the movement will be scrutinized according to the main principles of the formalistic approach which is the interpretation and analysis of the literary devices pertained to the concrete and abstract images drawn by the poets. The poems are: In a Station of the Metro by Ezra Pound, Autumn by T. E. Hulme, November by Amy Lowell, Oread by Hilda Doolittle (H.D.), and Bombardment by Richard Aldington

Medieval Latin Reception

2019 ◽  
pp. 649-666
Author(s):  
Franklin T. Harkins
Keyword(s):  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Sacred Text ◽  
John Duns Scotus ◽  
Medieval Latin ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Form And Function ◽  
And Function

This chapter provides an overview of the nature of medieval Latin reception of early Christian biblical interpretation, proposing that ancient exegesis served as an ‘omnipresent foundational force’ undergirding and guiding medieval engagements with the sacred text. The first part of the chapter broadly sketches several characteristic examples from the dawn of the Middle Ages to the twelfth century, including the reception of Jerome’s Vulgate as the authoritative version of Scripture, the enormous debt that early medieval scholars such as Bede and Alcuin owed the fathers, and the form and function of the Glossa ordinaria. The second part, in contrast, offers a detailed analysis of the reception of early Christian interpretations of 1 Timothy 2.4 by considering the readings that high scholastic masters such as Bonaventure and John Duns Scotus set forth in their Sentences commentaries.

Poeticism in Pre-Conquest Anglo-Latin Prose

2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Lapidge
Keyword(s):  
Latin Literature ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Medieval Latin ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Poetic Diction ◽  
Measuring Stick

This chapter is primarily concerned with Anglo-Latin prose: that is to say, Latin prose composed in Anglo-Saxon England between roughly 650 and 1050. It poses the question of the extent to which Anglo-Latin authors were aware of different stylistic registers, and how well they understood what diction was appropriate to either prose or verse. Using the example of Bede as a starting point, the chapter provides a list of those features of poetic diction that are found, in varying degrees, in the authors of Anglo-Latin prose. The seven criteria presented provide a crude measuring-stick against which to assess the poeticism of the principal authors of Anglo-Latin prose. The study of poeticism in Anglo-Latin prose, and in medieval Latin literature in general, is a subject that awaits exploration.

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