Antimetabole, or, at Republican National Convention, language inverts YOU!!

For those of you who like these things, or who survived CL 212, or who can't get enough of political rhetoric: Juliet Lapidos at Slate has a piece on antimetabole, the trendy figure of speech that's all the rage at the RNC. It's like chiasmus on steroids. Example, courtesy of John McCain: "We were elected to change Washington, and we let Washington change us." This blog is about language and style, not politics, so I'll just leave it that.

For those of you who grew up during the Cold War, or have loved ones who did, or who remember the heyday of Yakov Smirnoff: google "soviet russia jokes" for much funnier uses of antimetabole in the "Russian Reversal". Example (say it with a fake Russian accent, à la Lampeto in Henderson's translation of Thesmo): "In America, you can always find a party. In Soviet Russia, party finds YOU!!".

Latin and Greek Treebank Data at Perseus

This is basically a linkdump for my own future reference, but I don't begrudge the project a little (er, very little) extra publicity, either.

A "treebank" is a database of syntactical structures used by linguists. Thanks to a post on the Stoa Consortium, I found out that the Perseus Project is soliciting help in compiling such a database for the numerous Greek and Latin texts that it contains. They suggest that it could be incorporated into a classroom project.

The Stoa Consortium, by the way, is the wave of the future. It is a collaborative effort dedicated to finding ways to integrate technology and classics, and has an open-source attitude.

Readings for Mon 19 Mar: farewell to Dido

For Mon 19 Mar please read 4.642-705. We will obviously not get to translate all of it in class, but I do want you to be able to talk about it. We will *definitely* get to Dido's and Anna's speeches, but things will make much more sense if you read the entire passage all the way through.

review sessions for cl 212 midterm

Review sessions for the CL 212 midterm are as follows:

Wed. 5-7 pm CAS 424
Thurs 3-5 pm CAS 315

This will be a fun adventure; I don't think I've ever set foot on the fourth
floor of CAS before.

Aeneid readings for Fri 26 Jan

CL 212
Please read for Fri. 26 Jan.:

Aeneid 1.46-49 (the end of Juno's speech)
Aeneid 1.335-352 (Venus' speech to Aeneas)

What happens between lines 49 and 335?
--Juno creates a storm on the sea. To do this, she appeals to Aeolus, the king of the winds, and offers to set him up with a hot nymph she knows in exchange for unleashing the winds. Aeolus accepts.
--During the storm, we meet Aeneas and the other Trojans on board their ships. Aeneas complains about the storm, and says that the Trojans who died at Troy were lucky because they didn't have to put up with this.
--Neptune, god of the sea, finds out about this unauthorized storm and yells at the winds. They simmer down.
--Aeneas and friends end up on the shore of Libya, North Africa (Carthage, although they don't know it yet). Aeneas goes hunting and brings back seven deer for his people to feast on. Aeneas makes an encouraging speech to his people and reminds them of their (his) destiny (which he knows about) to head toward Italy.
--Venus (mother of Aeneas, on the side of the Trojans during the Trojan war, goddess of love) appeals to Jupiter, king of the gods on behalf of her son. She reminds Jupiter of the prophecy that Aeneas will found the Roman people, and asks why he's being prevented from achieving it.
--Jupiter tells Venus not to worry; the Trojans/Romans will achieve their destiny and will become a great nation (eventually).
--Jupiter sends Mercury (the messenger of the gods) to put Dido in a friendly state of mind, so that she won't turn the Trojans away when they show up on her shores.
--Aeneas finds a good place for the ships near Carthage. He and his faithful buddy Achates (fides Achates) go out on a scouting mission. A young woman appears, dressed like a huntress. We know she's Venus in disguise, Aeneas doesn't.
--Venus: "Hey, young men, did you happen to see my fellow huntresses around here?"
--Aeneas: "No, sorry...and by the way, you must, like, be a goddess or something. Can you tell us where we are? We're lost."

We'll pick up with Venus' response.

On-line Poetry Recitation handout posted on courseinfo

A PDF file of the handout has been posted on courseinfo under Course Documents.

No text version, sorry! (too many funny characters.)

Second Post

Second post. Whee!