On Tue, 22 May 2001 07:14:46 +1000, [log in to unmask] wrote:
>>An interpretation, however original, eminent and/or respectable, can by
no
>>means replace the exact definition of a classic rhetorical figure of
speech
>>or of an philologically/historically founded literary term.
>
>Huh?
>
>If this were so, we'd still be speaking like Chaucer. I'm with Mark
>here: usage is all. Moreover, Jose was saying his lines were _not_
>versiculos.
>
>Best
>
>Alison
Visibly, I have not explained myself well, on the matter of
rhetorical definitions: my point seemed clear to me, though.
Vesiculo is a "versetto" and this definition used to define the forms and
schemes used for biblical verse.
I was not questioning the linguistic changes occurring in the texts
employing this particular formal feature, BUT what a "versiculo" stands for
etiologically.
Language changes rapidly and although I might still speak very much like
Dante, you certainly do not speak like Chaucer, Alison, we can all see it.
But definitions change at a slower page: and "versiculo", as much
as "versetto", is a literary definition and its history does not change so
rapidly. It is only a matter or researching about its past and present
meanings more accurately so to find out what it stands for.
Of course, for the effect of usage the term "versiculo", ("versetto" )
might have changed in the Hispanic poetic traditions, but even then, one
must acknowledge that the “variation" has occurred on what previously
stood for "a small brief verse", and later Biblical verse.
I am sure that the reason why English speakers find difficult to grasp the
implications of these kind of Latinate diminutive ("versiculo" ) derives
from the fact that English language does without it, therefore in your mind
there is no familiarity with the conveyed implicit meanings (and with it
the unexpected nuances offered by mutations and deformations: like when a
diminutive happens to become ironical, implying a depreciative judgement,
as in the case of versiculo as intended later on, during the XVI century,
in the profane parodies of biblical versiculi made up for the
celebrations of Folk Carnivals).
Going back to language mutability and to the more stable condition of
literary definitions, if you write a letter-poem, I - after Plato - still
define that an "epistolary" –since "epistolary" etymologically comes from
the Greek "epistole" = "message" - so I call it “epistolary” as it would
have been called 2000 years ago.
And if you structurally are writing in the style of Chaucer, (able or not
to still speak the language of Chaucer), it means that you are using a
Chaucerian stanza .It is nothing to do with my personal interpretation: if
you are using a Rhyme Royal, - you are using as Chaucer an observable
stanza form of seven decasyllabic lines rhyming as they do
ababbcc...Chaucer might have not call it Chaucerian stanza - of course -
but after he created the pattern, all forms reproducing that structure are
defined Chaucerian or pseudo-Chaucerian stanzas. You might dislike that
there is an Academy for literary and historical literary terms, but there
is.
Boas, serpents, snakes: all welcome.
The question of what a "versiculo" is a matter of defining what a literary
term is in relation to its etymology. Only on this ground we can establish
and define the evolution of forms. And what a given term stands for, with
the passing of centuries.
You might speak differently from Chaucer.
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