medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
A zillion (or even a minizillion) would be overkill. After reading Marjorie's previous message, I had a look at French-language hits for "Auvergne" in Google, focusing on those whose content was absolutely current, and came swiftly to the conclusion that current practice is not to use an article before this toponym. The analogy of "Bretagne" suggests to me that this is because Auvergne is one of France's _regions_ and that the latter, like _departements_, are referred to today without the article.
Still, if "the Auvergne" is now dated in the same way as is "the Aquitaine", should one give it a "[sic]"? I grit my teeth when people use "Lucania" to refer not to the ancient and early medieval area of that name but rather to today's Italian region (whose borders are somewhat different) of Basilicata (which latter in the previous century _was_ for a while officially "Lucania") or when they say "the Abruzzi" when referring either 1) to the region Abruzzo or 2) to that region's territory at times when the later medieval and modern province designations "Abruzzo citeriore" and "Abruzzo ulteriore" (vel sim.) were not in force. But, because these horribly dated locutions are still commonly used by speakers of English, I would hesitate to employ "[sic]" when quoting occurrences of them.
After all, if we were strictly to follow today's native-language practice in the case of toponyms that are loan words in English, we should be "[sic]"ing occurrences of "Marseilles" and "Lyons" left and right.
That said, I am nonetheless very grateful to Marjorie for calling attention to the essentially non-current nature of the locution "the Auvergne".
Best,
John Dillon
On Mon, 12 Apr 2004 05:06:53 +0000 (GMT)
Marjorie Greene wrote:
>After combing through the indices of what seems like a zillion books (in English), none published after about 1955 refers to *the* Auvergne. All others skip the "the."
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