*sigh*

[ricardienne]

F(urther) from the annals of of People Are Stupid When It Comes to Stuff Outside Their Major:

"I mean, Dante more or less saved Virgil by putting him into [i]Divine Comedy[/i]."

I know the girl in question is a) An Italian major and b) hadn't been assigned the reading about the manuscript tradition we were discussing, but… And that was only the most obvious and egregious piece of wrong in all the medieval-hate that went on.

I can see that classicists are understandably cranky about how (relatively) little has survived, and the condition in which it (often) has survived. And yes, there were book-burnings in late Antiquity/early Middle Ages, and yes, they were religiously motivated. And I am completely in agreement that it was awful, and how could they have been so blind to what they were destroying. In fact, when I'm depressed, I lie awake at night and get really upset about how much and what has been lost.

But in light of that, to accuse the monastic traditions that DID preserve and recopy things of being ignorant zealots who only by some miracle happened to transmit important texts instead of burning them is REALLY REALLY STUPID. Also not terribly accurate.

Comments

[existentialgoat.livejournal.com]

This person is an Italian major?

She's going to have to read La Divina Commedia at some point, if she hasn't already. Hopefully, that'll help her understand the background a bit better. And if she's already read it...OY.

Just...OY.

[ricardienne.livejournal.com]

She might be an art history major -- but if that's it, then she's mainly doing Italian Renaissance art. So yeah -- she should know that Dante didn't "discover" Virgil and his prophetic potential.