[ilds] T. S. Eliot and cento construction

[slighcl]

> On 6/16/2007 5:33 PM, Marc Piel wrote:
>
>Can someone please give me an official definition 
>of "cento"? You have all used it as a term but 
>nobody has been specific as to what it means.
>


Look back in the posts, Marc.  I submitted the Princeton definition a 
week or so ago.

> CENTO
> from The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics.
> Preminger, Alex; Brogan, T. V. F. (co-eds); Warnke, Frank J.; Hardison 
> Jr, O. B.; Miner, Earl (assoc. eds).
> Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1993. xlvi, 1383 p.
> Copyright © 1993 by Princeton University Press.
>
> (Lat. "patchwork"). A verse composition made up of lines selected from 
> the work or works of some great poet(s) of the past. Homer largely 
> served this purpose in Gr. lit., ranging from the adaptations by 
> Trygaeus of various lines in the Iliad and Odyssey reported by 
> Aristophanes (Peace 1090-94) to the Homerokentrones of the Byzantine 
> period. Similarly, Virgil was the most popular source for centos in 
> later Roman times. The oldest of those extant is the tragedy Medea by 
> Hosidius Geta (2d c. A.D.), while the C. nuptialis of Ausonius and the 
> C. Vergilianus of Proba (4th c. A.D.) are among others drawn from his 
> work. Ren. and later works of this kind included the It. Petrarca 
> spirituale (1536) and the Eng. Cicero princeps (1608), which was a 
> treatise on government compiled from Cicero. Centos are still 
> occasionally published, e.g. in the first issue of The Formalist 
> (1990), and are now almost invariably humorous, the humor arising from 
> both the clever juxtaposition of famous lines into a new semantic 
> matrix and also recognition of the diversity of their sources.
>
> J. O. Delepierre, Tableau de la litt. du centon chez les anciens et 
> chez les modernes, 2 v. (1874-75)
> R. Lamacchia, "Dall'arte allusiva al centone," Atene e Roma n.s. 3 (1958)
> "C.," Oxford Cl. Dict., 2d ed. (1972)
> T. Augarde, Oxford Guide to Word Games (1984).
>
> Robert J. Getty
> T. V. F. Brogan




On 6/16/2007 5:33 PM, Marc Piel wrote:

>Can someone please give me an official definition 
>of "cento"? You have all used it as a term but 
>nobody has been specific as to what it means.
>I have now, by your reactions, eperdemic or 
>intellectual, I have been able to classisify you 
>as you are tying to classify the tallent (or not)) 
>of LD. Most interesting excercise.
>@+
>Marc Piel
>
>william godshalk wrote:
>
>  
>
>>>Jamie, just a word to push my idea that Durrell is a cento writer, and 
>>>the cento appears at different levels and in different forms. Here the 
>>>cento is not a matter of close copying, but a matter of allusion 
>>>and/or influence. When I first read Durrell, I too was taken by the 
>>>allusiveness of the prose. 
>>>      
>>>
>>Bill
>>
>>
>>    
>>
>>>If we're diving into Section III of Justine (all four sections), I can't
>>>help but note that after all the Eliot references we've had before 
>>>(and the
>>>upcoming ending of Section IV with the same ending as Ezra Pound's "Canto
>>>I"), that the season is Spring, the morbid season of "The Waste Land."
>>>_Balthazar_ opens with a denial of Spring ("And spring? Ah! there is no
>>>spring in the Delta.  No sense of refreshment and renewal of 
>>>things."), yet
>>>Justine's climax is in this absent season.
>>>
>>>As may be cliched by now on this list, I think there's a coded wink at 
>>>T.S.
>>>Eliot.  After all, the narrator sees the bodies moving about the town
>>>("Clouds of dried blood walk the streets like prophecies"), which is not a
>>>far stretch from the corpses and crowds in Eliot's poem
>>>      
>>>
>>***************************************
>>W. L. Godshalk           *
>>Department of English         *
>>University of Cincinnati            Stellar disorder  *
>>Cincinnati OH 45221-0069      *
>>513-281-5927
>>***************************************
>>
>>
>>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
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>  
>

-- 
**********************
Charles L. Sligh
Department of English
Wake Forest University
slighcl at wfu.edu
**********************

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