At Sat, 15 Dec 2001 20:16:36 +0100, Robert Dyer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >I hope others agree with me that the discussions in the last month have >been extraordinarily interesting and informative.
I quite agree, Robert, and I'm wondering if it has something to do with the subject matter. Over the last year, I've noticed a revival of interest in specifically literary subjects, both in myself and in my students. When I say "literary," I don't necessarily mean "canonical," either. (Though I _was_ surprised at the number of people who showed up for my Milton seminar.) There is a growing hunger, though, to know what a line of verse sounds like, to feel--as it were--the shape of a poem. A few years ago, it seemed to me that the key to understanding poetry better was to read more history. Given what I knew about history when I graduated from an American university, that was probably true! Now, though, I find myself reading books and articles on prosody and poetic diction. Perhaps this just means I'm recovering from grad school. But I think there are larger forces involved -- and not just in English departments, either. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- David Wilson-Okamura http://virgil.org [EMAIL PROTECTED] Macalester College Virgil Tradition: discussion, bibliography, &c. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
