Dear Phil, If I had received your much better and clearer explanations in time, I would have restrained from posting my own musings about incestuous rabbits and X's and Z's. It seems that your dissertation is something that could help me to bring some clarity into my own thoughts about number composition in patristic/medieval writings. Yet there is one point where I would like to add a marginally dissenting comment:
>2) According to Duckworth, the whole poem, on scales large and small, is >structured with these ratios. What perceptable effect could this pattern >possibly have? Vergil has written all of his poem according to the >numerical pattern of hexameter verse, but at least hexameters can be >expressed of something, such as speed. And how are we supposed to detect >the pattern? Nothing in the text prompts us to look for the pattern, after >all. The only answer usually given to the question of detection is >something like, 'one senses it unconsciously', which is really no answer at >all. Although I am more than inclined to share your agnosticism, I would suggest to view the problem in the frame of a slightly more flexible theory of literary creation and possible (or possibly intended) readers' responses to numerical composition. The argument "one senses it unconsciously" is not really no answer at all, but would be a legitimate answer in the context of, for instance, Augustinian number aesthetics as discussed in _De musica_. According to Augustine, the numerical ratios which rule (or should rule, because his theory is partly descriptive and partly normative) classical meter create an effect of sensible beauty which is sensed by the hearer/reader even if the numerical causes of this effect are not consciously noticed. Similarly, the individual poet can create verses ruled by these ratios and reaching the intended effect of beauty without being consciously aware of the mathematical principle, if he simply imitates appropriate models or follows habitual conventions of producing metrical language. It is true, Augustine is not concerned with Golden Sections, but with comparably more simple ratios; and he is concerned with small textual units like foot and verse, not with ratios dividing a textual body which comprises several verses or even entire books. But if we concede that Golden Sections, too, have a certain aesthetical effect (and I suppose that this is a fact which can be demonstrated experimentally), and if we admit further that this effect can be reached also by numerical divisions of larger portions of text (within the limits of what can be 'heard', limits that may be subject to historical change and may also be largely depending on individual training), then I could imagine a scenario where poets more or less purposefully arrange portions of their works in a way which yields Golden Sections and creates the intended aesthetical effects on their readers. This would be a more sophisticated technique than simply adopting the convention of writing in dactylic feet or hexameters, and the effect would be less unavoidable than the effect created by repetions and variations of patterns of short and long syllables. But the technique and its effect would be there and would be waiting to be demonstrated by our historical and statistical analysis. And in this case we could not really expect that poets do us the favour of pointing us explicitly to a technique which they practiced more or less habitually and which did not need to be noticed consciously by their hearers/readers. This being said, I nevertheless admit that it is unpromising to invent a scenario first and to investigate then how well given texts would fit into this scenario. Quite to the contrary, I myself recommend to begin with explicit textual and contextual evidence of techniques of writing/reading that were actually practised, and to investigate how they have shaped the textual design of the works we are interested in. I also recommend to focus on techniques of writing which can be assumed/demonstrated to have been practised consciously and which authors expected their hearers/readers (or at least the pro's among their readers) to notice, because I as a philologist find it difficult enough to grasp the conscious, whereas I prefer to leave the grey zones of the habitual and semi-/un-/subconscious to pychologists and anthropologists with the necessary confidence in their own disciplines. If you will be so kind to send me the four pages attachment from your diss to my email address <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, I will be so kind in return not to send you a 256 pages attachment of my own diss! Best, Otfried ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Otfried Lieberknecht, Schoeneberger Str. 11, D-12163 Berlin phone & fax: ++49 30 8516675, E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Homepage for Dante Studies: http://members.aol.com/lieberk/welcome.html Listowner of Italian-Studies: http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/italian-studies/ Listowner of Medieval-Religion: http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/medieval-religion/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ----------------------------------------------------------------------- To leave the Mantovano mailing list at any time, do NOT hit reply. Instead, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message "unsubscribe mantovano" in the body (omitting the quotation marks). You can also unsubscribe at http://virgil.org/mantovano/mantovano.htm#unsub
