I'm dredging up long-ago memories here, and get my information from my
sister the Hellenist (didn't publish, perished, but still tutors in
Greek), not a Latinist, but I seem to remember that somebody once did a
word count on Virgil and Ennius and found that the latter has more
adjectives than the former, which may do yet a little more to explain the
former's energy. I could be making this up, but I have heard tell that
more verbs and fewer adjectives help a style, whatever our need for
adjectives too. It's impossible of course to know just what was in
Spenser's mind, but my own suspicion is that he could be generous to
Chaucer because he was very dead (yes, scripta manent as the emblem with
ruins says in Whitney's emblem book, but the author is nicely tucked away
in his corner tomb), and generous to Du Bellay because Du Bellay (rther
flashily, in fact) didn't write epic, and generous to Du Bartas because
his epic (if epic it be) is biblical, but curiously silent about Ronsard,
whom he unquestionably read and even used a little bit. My suspicion is
that it was Ronsard who provided a model of how to be a very snazzy poet
whose "place" was literally in a prince's palace--the Louvre--who
hobnobbed with kings (exchanging verses with Charles IX) and wrote in
every genre one can think of, including the epic. That his epic is more
than problematic is beside the point. It was read in England and isn't
*quite* as bad as some say. I sometimes think that in our fascination with
Spenser's predecessors we forget possible rivalries with the recently
living.
On another topic: my thanks to everyone who has e-mailed me
comments on FQ V.ii or reminders of comments already in print. I have
enough for my little fantasy Variorum at the MLA but would ardently
welcome more. I confess that the episode baffles me in several ways (if
the giant recalls Anabaptists, and he does, how come he's dressed in so
Irish a fashion--isn't he?)? The current stress on how the episode fits
Spenser's Irish interest, by the way, is part of a larger shift away from
scholarly attention to the northern coast of the Continent (France, Belge,
maybe Germany where the Anabaptists hang out) to Ireland. I continue to
believe that much of Book V's earlier sections set the stage for the later
"Burgundian"/Imperial/Dutch/Huguenot complex of problems, not unrelated
geopolitically to Ireland, but it's clear that fellow Spenserians care
more for Ireland. Now if modern Britain were to invade the Netherlands
. . . things might change. Anne Prescott.
On Sat, 25 Nov 2000, Steven J. Willett wrote:
>
>
> On 24 Nov 2000, at 14:59, David Wilson-Okamura wrote:
>
> > Quite. The one thorough-going attempt to write a modern _Iliad_ was
> > Trissino's _Italia liberata dai Gotti_.* It was, by most accounts, a
> > spectacular failure. Tasso and Cinzio disagree about a lot of things, but
> > Trissino's epic is not one of them: this is a _bad_ poem. What's surprising
> > to me is that neither critic associates Trissino's badness with his
> > allegiance to Homer. According to Tasso and Cinzio, the problem with
> > Trissino is not that he is crude (a Homeric failing), but that his
> > classicism leaves us cold (a Virgilian failing; see, for instance, book 3
> > of Tasso's _Discorsi dell'arte poetica_ on _il magnifico_ and _il freddo_).
>
> I'm curious about the meaning of "crude" as it's applied to Homer.
> Is he crude in meter, diction, characterization, imagery, dialogue,
> narrative or psychology? Certainly the oral formulaic style is not in
> itself crude. I'd equally like to know where Vergil is "cold" outside
> the unfinished sections of the Aeneid.
>
> > No. Insofar as the poet is talking about the well of English, Spenser is to
> > Chaucer as Virgil was, not to Homer, but to Ennius, the Old Latin chronicle
> > poet. Cf. Du Bellay on Virgil and Cicero in _Deffence et illustration_ 1.7
> > et passim.
>
> It is not quite correct to say that Vergil stood to Ennius as Spenser
> to Chaucer. Vergil set out to replace, not continue, Ennius. The
> ancient grammarians make it clear that the purpose of the Aeneid
> was to imitate Homer and praise Augustus starting with his
> ancestors. That may a slight simplification, but the Aeneid could
> have existed without Ennius given dactylic hexameter. His intention
> at replacement worked. Ennius and the other Republican epic poets
> ceased to be read and copied, thus leading to their complete or
> nearly complete loss. From the 1st century CE Vergil was the
> supreme Latin poet and, until the 19th century, when German
> Hellenic studies elevated Greece over Rome as our primary cultural
> ancestor, the supreme Classical poet.
>
> > Yes. Chaucer is crude but good (like Homer). Ennius is just crude.
>
> This is extremely unfair to the little we have of Ennius. He was an
> experimental poet who had a profound effect on language, style and
> meter. Although his hexameters do not the finish of Catullus, Vergil
> or Ovid, it is only a comparative roughness. They had a much longer
> history of craftsmanship behind them. It was Ennius' yoking of the
> native Latin alliterative style to the hexameter that made him seem
> so archaic. The regular use of alliteration inside the dactylic
> hexameter gave it, to later ears, a heavy and monotonous tread.
> When Vergil employs alliteration, he does so precisely to give his
> verse an antique feel, the ring of the ancient.
>
>
>
>
> Steven J. Willett
> University of Shizuoka, Hamamatsu Campus
> 2-3 Nunohashi 3-chome
> Hamamatsu City, Japan 432-8012
> Voice and Fax: (53) 457-4514
> Japan email: [log in to unmask]
> US email: [log in to unmask]
>
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