Re: Chiasm in Nonnos

From: TonyProst@aol.com
Date: Sat Nov 07 1998 - 13:31:39 EST


In a message dated 11/7/98 10:15:04 AM Pacific Standard Time,
dalmatia@eburg.com writes:

<< And the question that has my ears perked is this: Can the chiasm be
 used to understand syntax? Should we look to the cross of the
 chi[asm] for the grammatical center of a Greek sentence and then work
 our way outward from it to understand its meaning?
 
 I want to think so. And I am not smart and learned enough to pose the
 issues properly.
>>

It is certainly present in the Paraphrase of Nonnos. It is a routine device
for him to have the first and last words in a line the related subject or
object words, and in the middle of the line have the action words or some
related clause. I refer from quick reference to 19:5 (making-one-
shudder....whip) , 19:7 (keen...thorns), 19:10 Sidonian ...sea), 19:44 (very
interesting: antidoton muthoisin amoibaie^n pore pho^ne^n), ktl, just from my
rough translation note, to show both how commonly it appears, and how
necessary it is to analyze the structure of the line, the phrase and the
sentence. My rough notes are covered with red lines connecting the first and
last word of a line. I have not analyzed the work for extended chiasm, but I
will certainly be more ready to recognize it now.

Regards,

Tony Prost

All Nonnos All Day
http://members.aol.com/tonyprost/index.html

---
B-Greek home page: http://sunsite.unc.edu/bgreek
You are currently subscribed to b-greek as: [cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu]
To unsubscribe, forward this message to leave-b-greek-329W@franklin.oit.unc.edu
To subscribe, send a message to subscribe-b-greek@franklin.oit.unc.edu


This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sat Apr 20 2002 - 15:40:06 EDT