Friday, January 20, 2012

 

Greek Accents

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1881), Aurora Leigh, book II, lines 74-77:
Some Greek upon the margin: lady's Greek
Without the accents.
George Eliot (1819-1880), Middlemarch, chapter VII:
But Dorothea herself was a little shocked and discouraged at her own stupidity, and the answers she got to some timid questions about the value of the Greek accents gave her a painful suspicion that here indeed there might be secrets not capable of explanation to a woman's reason.
G.M. Young (1882-1959), quoted in Geoffrey Madan's Notebooks: A Selection, edd. J.A. Gere and John Sparrow (1981; rpt. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), p. 79:
To accent Greek, as absurd as writing it on papyrus.
Hat tip: Ian Jackson, to whom I'm indebted for the gift of Geoffrey Madan's Notebooks.

Related post: Indictment of the Present Age.



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