From jbutrica@morgan.ucs.mun.ca Fri Nov 15 10:11:36 2002 Received: from mailscan2.cac.washington.edu (mailscan2.cac.washington.edu [140.142.33.16]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.12.1+UW01.12/8.12.1+UW02.11) with SMTP id gAFIBYkW066888 for ; Fri, 15 Nov 2002 10:11:34 -0800 Received: FROM mxu3.u.washington.edu BY mailscan2.cac.washington.edu ; Fri Nov 15 10:11:34 2002 -0800 Received: from cerberus.ucs.mun.ca (cerberus.ucs.mun.ca [134.153.2.162]) by mxu3.u.washington.edu (8.12.1+UW01.12/8.12.1+UW02.11) with ESMTP id gAFIBXFq030735 for ; Fri, 15 Nov 2002 10:11:33 -0800 Received: from [134.153.128.98] (drusus.clas.mun.ca [134.153.128.98]) by cerberus.ucs.mun.ca (8.12.3/8.12.3) with ESMTP id gAFIBNdp014585 for ; Fri, 15 Nov 2002 14:41:25 -0330 (NST) X-Sender: jbutrica@pop.morgan.ucs.mun.ca Message-Id: In-Reply-To: References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Fri, 15 Nov 2002 15:41:46 +0100 To: classics@u.washington.edu From: James Butrica Subject: Re: The Dark Ages have begun At least in the study of Latin poetry. Not only is it now possible to have a British Ph.D. dissertation, published by Oxford University Press, supervised, written and edited by people who think that the singular of "marginalia" is "marginalium" (folks in North America used to envy the superior philological skills of British-trained scholars; now let them shuck that greenish hue) ... We seem to be training a whole generation of classicists who don't know the difference between an epigram and an elegy (a very few poems seem to sit on the edge, but the general differences should be clear enough) -- and, considering how fundamental genre is supposed to be, this is pretty amazing. And think of the consequences: if obvious Latin epigrams like Catullus' "Odi et amo" can be passed off as elegies, then nothing forbids regarding the entire contents of the Greek Anthology (for example) as elegies, or every poem of Martial in couplets. And if the terms have become interchangeable, then we can call Catullus 68 (for example) an epigram. I'd ask how this stuff gets published, but I think the answer would probably be even more depressing than the need to ask the question. James L. P. Butrica Department of Classics The Memorial University of Newfoundland St. John's NL A1C 5S7 (709) 737-7914 / (709) 753-5799 (home) .