Lucretius and the Transpadanes
Louise Adams Holland (Author)
"In the absence of tape recordings from antiquity, we have a limited knowledge of how classical Latin prose or verse sounded as it was rendered orally. Yet we do know that the spoken word varied greatly from place to place, regardless of how much uniformity the written language maintained. Louise Adams Holland considers the geographical basis for these linguistic differences, and advances new arguments for the origin of Lucretius. She shows that he came from the same area of northern Italy-the Transpadane-as Catullus and Virgil, and not from Rome as the majority of his critics have contended. Demonstrating the importance of using prosodic detail in reconstructing literary history, the author focuses on Lucretius's use of elision in de Rerum Natura. From Cicero's rhetorical writings, she makes a strong case that such use of elision was not characteristic of the dialect of Rome, but rather of the speech habits prevailing in the far north of Italy. The author places her thesis within a wide context that includes the language-attitudes of the period, the historical relations between poets from the provinces and the urban audience in Rome, and the personal and political connections of literary figures of the period. Her most important finding is that the original dedication of the de Rerum Natura was to Julius Caesar. Louise Adams Holland is the author of Janus and the Bridge (American Academy in Rome). She retired in 1964, after an extensive teaching career, and currently lives in Philadel-phia." -- Publisher
Print Book, English, 1979
Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J., 1979