I am slightly puzzled by the observation about inflected languages. Surely
if someone falls to the 'senceless grownd', then 'senceless' would be in the
accusative, with 'grownd'. (If they lie on the 'senceless grownd', it would
be locative, and I don't know if adjectives can take a locative.) Whereas
'really' the adjective should be in the nominative agreeing also in number
and gender with the subject. (I'm basing this on the classical languages,
and may be talking nonsense with regard to other inflected languages.)If
these adjectives were 'free-floating', then chiasmus would not be possible.
It is - and was. QED.
Penny McCarthy
-----Original Message-----
From: Sidney-Spenser Discussion List [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
On Behalf Of Dorothy Stephens
Sent: 10 January 2006 18:04
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Fwd: figure of speech
My thanks to everyone who replied both on and off the list. Andrew,
your
observations are gorgeous and are surely spot on; I may have to quote
you. Spenser's transferred epithets fascinate me partly because their
effects in English are more striking than they would be in more highly
inflected languages, where freely-floating epithets are a dime a
dozen. Spenser seems to have been pleased to find that with this
particular figure of speech, the lesser flexibility of his native English
was actually a boon. As with allegory itself, the very stubbornness of the
material--its reluctance to name what it is naming--becomes a virtue.
Dorothy
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