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quinaraTerm starts in less than a month (I'm actually looking forward to it, but I need to keep the reading-momentum up these last few weeks because there's still quite a lot to do) and one of my papers is on these four Neo-Latin authors, so today I was reading Poliziano's Silvae - a collection of four poems that (I think) he supposedly used as introductions to his lessons on Latin and Greek literature.
The longest, Nutricia, kind of has me scratching my head, because it doesn't really "serve as a general introduction to the study of ancient and modern poetry" (as Wikipedia would sensibly have it). Instead it seems to be basically 800 lines of SQUEE about Spig and Spog and Oh Do You Remember When and Lucan was cool (but not as good as Virgil)... Because when you squee about Classics, it's all relevant and good!
Not that that isn't exactly how it should be, but it's an interesting insight into how to make fanboying/girling be accepted as srs bsns - apparently we all just need to leave it 1500-odd years (or a lot fewer, considering Dante does get a look-in), then write our squee in hexameters! They'll even put it on uni syllabuses (though, to be fair, it won't be a very popular option...).
The longest, Nutricia, kind of has me scratching my head, because it doesn't really "serve as a general introduction to the study of ancient and modern poetry" (as Wikipedia would sensibly have it). Instead it seems to be basically 800 lines of SQUEE about Spig and Spog and Oh Do You Remember When and Lucan was cool (but not as good as Virgil)... Because when you squee about Classics, it's all relevant and good!
Not that that isn't exactly how it should be, but it's an interesting insight into how to make fanboying/girling be accepted as srs bsns - apparently we all just need to leave it 1500-odd years (or a lot fewer, considering Dante does get a look-in), then write our squee in hexameters! They'll even put it on uni syllabuses (though, to be fair, it won't be a very popular option...).