So far so good translating Apuleius :)
That being said, this is one WEIRD story!
I noticed Apuleius used the "royal we" a lot. In addition to having a Vergil/Virgil flashback, I have to wonder why. While Lucius (the narrator) has a fairly distinguished lineage, he's not royal. Why use the "royal we"? Was it just common back then, or do we use "we" for "I" all the time and never realize it? Was this a matter of fitting the meter?
Any thoughts are highly appreciated.
Thanks :)
1 comment:
Salve, Lesley. Your observation about "we" is astute and worth keeping track of. Undoubtedly in poetry the plural might be chosen for the sake of the meter, but in prose this wouldn't be the case. Here is the opinion of J. McKeown, a very knowledgeable philologist, on Latin's use of 1st person plural vs. singular.
"The importance of verbs is reflected in the word “verb” itself, for it is derived from the Latin noun verbum, which means not only “verb” but also “word” (of any kind). Some ancient etymologising was wonderfully improbable: a verbum was thought by some to be so called because the air reverberates when we speak. (There will be a section on ancient etymologising in every chapter from Chapter 11 onward.)
Many languages use different forms to address individuals or groups, according to their status or relationship with the speaker. For example, French uses the second person plural, German the third person plural, in formal address both to individuals and to groups; Italian, the third person singular in formal address to an individual, the third person plural to a group; Spanish usage varies considerably from country to country. Moreover, in spoken French, the first person plural (e.g. nous sommes “we are”) has largely been supplanted by an impersonal third person singular (e.g. on est [literally “one is”], on being derived from the Latin homo “person”). Classical Latin, however, is as straightforward as English in this respect, having only one such idiom, the first person “plural of modesty”, used occasionally instead of the first person singular to draw emphasis away from the speaker’s own feelings and actions, i.e. rather the opposite of the “Royal”We”, as in “We are not amused”, attributed in this sense to Queen Victoria.
The first person plural, but not the second or the third, is used very commonly in Latin poetry instead of the singular, with no significant difference in nuance, but this is a poetic convention rather than a general idiom."
http://www.jcmckeown.com/fch1.php?PHPSESSID=413e62880258330a555b3807b111f256
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