Aspects of the Language of Latin PoetryRoland Mayer, James Noel Adams Of the peoples of ancient Italy, only the Romans committed newly composed poems to writing, and for about 250 years Latin-speakers developed an impressive verse literature. The language had traditional resources of high style, e.g. alliteration, lexical and morphological archaism or grecism, and of course metaphor and word-order; and there were also less obvious resources in the technical vocabularies of law, philosophy, and medicine. The essays in this volume show how the poets in the classical period combined these elements, and so created a poetic medium that could comprehend satire, invective, erotic elegy, drama, lyric, and the grandest heroic epics. These wide-ranging studies will be essential reading for all students of Latin. |
Contents
Poetic Diction Poetic Discourse and the Poetic Register | 21 |
Nominative Personal Pronouns and Some Patterns of Speech | 97 |
The Word Order of Horaces Odes | 135 |
Grecism | 157 |
The Latin | 183 |
Lucretius Use and Avoidance of Greek | 227 |
Archaism and Innovation in Latin Poetic Syntax | 249 |
Tentative Considerations on Shifting Objects | 269 |
Stylistic Registers in Juvenal | 311 |
The Arrangement and the Language of Catullus socalled polymetra | 335 |
This | 337 |
Tibullus and the Language of Latin Elegy | 377 |
Anomaly Innovation and Genre in Ovid | 399 |
| 415 | |
| 437 | |
Its Function | 289 |
Common terms and phrases
Adams adjective alliteration already appears archaic archaism attention avoided called Catullus cent Cicero classical clause clearly colloquial common compared construction context contrast course discussion distinction early effect Ennius epic epigrams especially evidence examples expression fact figure further genres given gives Greek hand Horace instance Italy Juvenal Juvenal's kind language later Latin less linguistic literary Lucilius Lucretius meaning metaphor metrical nature normal noun object occurs ordinary original Ovid parody particular passage pattern perhaps person phrase Plaut poem poetic poetry poets position possible pronoun Propertius prose question rare reference rhetorical Roman satire seems sense Servius shows similar sometimes speech style stylistic suggest syntactical syntax technical term Tibullus tone tradition usage verb verse Virg Virgil vocabulary words writing