Tuesday, April 02, 2024
Lots of Questions
James J. O'Donnell, Augustine, Confessions II: Commentary on Books 1-7 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), p. 20 (on 1.3.3):
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There are almost 700 question marks in the text of conf.: many are explicitly 'rhetorical' ('put not to elicit information, but as a more striking substitute for a statement of contrary effect': Fowler, Modern English Usage), and most of the rest are like those in the last two sentences here, open-ended when asked, but swiftly resolved by A. This is a high frequency of interrogation, but ancient practice was more abundant in this regard than modern: in 31 OCT pages of Cic. har. resp., e.g., there are 38 question marks (about half the conf. rate), while in a comparable piece of modern expository prose, there are only 15 (less than a quarter the conf. rate).
