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cmw
cmw
01:42
@SebastianKoppehel You don't get the pun with the Latin.
 
3 hours later…
Cerberus
Cerberus
04:16
Hmm what's the pun?
Isn't Utopia simply "non-place"?
It's just odd that he should have used ou rather than a.
 
1 hour later…
cmw
cmw
05:17
@Cerberus Could be read as eu-, "good place."
Cerberus
Cerberus
05:27
@cmw Ahh.
But Greek eu isn't translitterated as u?
Or do you think that was his intention?
herisson
herisson
06:20
Hello!
@Cerberus In English, "Utopia" and "Eutopia" are pronounced the same. So it works as a aural pun for English speakers
I don't know how much evidence we have that this was intended by More
Oh, Wikipedia says More does bring it up himself: "Wherfore not Utopie, but rather rightely my name is Eutopie, a place of felicitie."
Cerberus
Cerberus
@herisson Ahh that makes sense!
Good quotation.
herisson
herisson
I recently downloaded Hypotactic's text of the Aeneid: hypotactic.com/vergils-aeneid-text-and-pdf
And have been running some scripts to find unusual lines
Probably PedeCerto could also be used for some things I am interested in. For example, it is easy to use PedeCerto to find lines that end in a monosyllable
I initially was looking at types of elision, and now am trying to find out about lines that have unusual stress patterns. But figuring out what the actual stress was is tricky!
E.g. the following lines are unusual in having a fifth foot starting with a monosyllabic preposition:
quid memorem Alcīdēn? et mī genus ab Jove summō.'
Ītaliam quaerō patriam et genus ab Jove summō.
sīderaque ēmēnsae ferimur, dum per mare magnum
Quālis in Eurōtae rīpīs aut per juga Cynthī
quīn omnem Hesperiam penitus sua sub juga mittant,
I assume the preposition is not stressed here, but I think some might argue that it is ...
Cerberus
Cerberus
06:40
Hmm I see what you mean, those prepositions sound somehow odd in my heads when I scan them.
herisson
herisson
Most hexameter lines in Vergil end in the pattern –́⏑⏑–́–
Sometimes explained by the idea of a "coincidence of accent and ictus" in this position; but several modern sources that I've read repudiate that viewpoint
At least Vergil is easier than trying to understand the meter and prosody of Plautus!
 
7 hours later…
Joonas Ilmavirta
Joonas Ilmavirta
13:15
@herisson I don't see anything too odd in stressing a preposition sometimes. I always took the preference for coincidence of accent and ictus to allow that, and those lines scan fine to me.
I'm no expert, but I'm not sure how much of a thing accent even is in hexameter. The metric rhythm of the ictus has always felt sufficient to structure the enunciation, even when against prose stress. Vergil might well consider me a barbarian for holding such views, though...
 
2 hours later…
cmw
cmw
14:56
@herisson I too took it for granted that stress and accent were resolved by the end of the line, so I'm interested in what those newer sources are. Very interesting. I wonder if those lines would have been fixed by Vergil in the final publication. Or what else might he have had in mind?
Sebastian Koppehel
Sebastian Koppehel
15:20
@herisson was about to say, Morus was clearly not following Erasmian pronunciation here, but then I realised Erasmian pronunciation didn't exist yet ...
 
2 hours later…
herisson
herisson
17:17
Ah, it's a bit of a fine point. They don't dispute the cadence of the last five syllables; what they take issue with is the idea that this stress pattern is related to an "ictus".
Here's Benjamin Fortson, "Latin Prosody and Metrics", Ch. 7 *A Companion to the Latin Language*:
"It is still worth issuing the reminder that the observed distribution of stresses in the hexameter is largely epiphenomenal. Stressed monosyllables were avoided at the end of a line after Ennius, meaning the second-to-last syllable was almost always the (stressed) heavy penult of a two- or three-syllable word. (Line-f…
Jean Soubiran says something similar in "Intremere omnem et Si bona norint" (1959), which I found by Googling some of the lines with unusual accent patterns:
"Avant d'aller plus loin, soulignons bien que nous n'entendons pas ici réveiller la vieille querelle concernant une prétendue recherche de la coïncidence accent-ictus en fin d'hexamètre. On voit assez, à la lumière de ce qui précède, qu'elle est un faux problème, puisque, à l'aide de trois facteurs indiscutables et complètement étrangers aux notions de temps fort ou d'ictus, on explique le retour régulier de l'accent verbal à des place…
 
2 hours later…
cmw
cmw
19:10
@herisson Thanks for the references! I'll have to dig more deeply into this.

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