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It has long been assumed that the language of Roman poetry was constructed under the dictates of elaborately defined rules of rhetoric, and its content determined according to the system of comparable classifications called invention. This belief has persisted in spite of the difficulty of fitting the works of Catullus, Horace, Virgil, Propertius, and Tibullus into such a rigid scheme. In this book Gordon Williams demonstrates that, although Ovid and his successors did indeed assimilate their poetry to the rhetorical rules devised for prose, the earlier poets employed a quite different method.
Williams sees this method as falling into either a metaphorical or metonymic mode, both of which permitted the poet "to say one thing and mean another." Delicate and often startling transitions of thought could be grasped-though not necessarily on first reading-by readers "assumed by the poet to have a special access to the poet's process of thought." This access presupposed similarities of "education, social position, and sympathetic understanding."
Through close analyses of many poems, Williams shows how poets in the fifty years before Horace's death exploited metaphor, metonymy, and a third device that he calls thematic anticipation to evoke subtle associations of thought. In doing so he elucidates problems of Latin poems that have been generally misunderstood almost since they day they were written.
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Ian Gordon
reviewed Figures of Thought in Roman Poetry on February 02, 2013 Figures of Thought in Roman Poetry
In this book (really a collection of three lectures from 1860 with a long epilogue responding to his critics) Matthew Arnold discusses the challenge of translating Homer into English. He is reacting in particular to a recent translation of the Iliad by one F.W. Newman, but Arnold eloquently illustrates some of the problems with translation in general. One can render the words as literally as possible and yet totally miss the rhythm and feeling of the original language.
Arnold identifies the essential qualities of Homer's work: "that he is eminently rapid; that he is eminently plain and direct both in the evolution of his thought and in the expression of it, that is, both in his syntax and in his words; that he is eminently plain and direct in the substance of his thought, that is, in his matter and ideas; and, finally, that he is eminently noble." Using illustrations from Newman's translation as well as famous earlier attempts by George Chapman and Alexander Pope, among others, Arnold shows how he thinks they fall short in one or more of these essential qualities. His third lecture culminates in his attempts to create a satisfactory translation of a few scenes of the Iliad.
Though Arnold at times works directly with the Greek, most of this book would be of interest to anyone who has pondered (let alone attempted) the art of translation. His criticisms of Newman and the others are occasionally hilarious in an understated British way. And even if you don't find Arnold's own translations completely convincing, you will have been provoked to think more about what goes into a good translation.
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Add Figures of Thought in Roman Poetry, It has long been assumed that the language of Roman poetry was constructed under the dictates of elaborately defined rules of rhetoric, and its content determined according to the system of comparable classifications called invention. This belief has pers, Figures of Thought in Roman Poetry to the inventory that you are selling on WonderClubX
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Add Figures of Thought in Roman Poetry, It has long been assumed that the language of Roman poetry was constructed under the dictates of elaborately defined rules of rhetoric, and its content determined according to the system of comparable classifications called invention. This belief has pers, Figures of Thought in Roman Poetry to your collection on WonderClub |
