'Sliabh in Irish place-names' in Nomina 32 (2009)

This article deals with one of the most common elements in names of Irish hills and mountains. The grammar, phonology, etymology, semantic range and chronology of the element are examined. Sliabh is particularly complex in terms of its semantic range, which includes the following senses: 1) a mountain or hill (standing alone or forming part of a range); 2) a range of hills or mountains; 3) an moor or area of upland. The word is present in the earliest attested stages of the Irish language, and there is some evidence for all three meanings in Old Irish, though senses 1 and 2 are best attested. It is suggested that the view advanced by MacBain and Thurneysen that sliabh is etymologically related to Eng. slope and that this reflects its original meaning is open to some doubt in view of the lack of evidence for this sense in early Irish and the lack of clear cognates in other branches of Celtic and Indo-European languages.

Digital Exposure of English Place-names (DEEP)

Place-names are a fundamental concept in all academic collections: everything happens somewhere. Contemporary place-names are comprehensively represented in digital gazetteer and geospatial web services such as GeoNames. However, despite millions of pounds of investment by JISC and other agencies in historical online resources in recent years, there is currently no equivalent for historic place-names. This project will digitize the entire 86 volume corpus of the Survey of English Place-Names (SEPN), the ultimate authority on historic place-names in England, and make its 4 million forms available.

Mapping Medieval Geographies: Geographical Encounters in the Latin West and Beyond, 300–1600

'Mapping Medieval Geographies' explores the ways in which geographical knowledge, ideas and traditions were formed in Europe during the Middle Ages. Leading scholars reveal the connections between Islamic, Christian, Biblical, and Classical geographical traditions from Antiquity to the later Middle Ages and Renaissance. The book is divided into two parts: Part I focuses on the notion of geographical tradition and charts the evolution of celestial and earthly geography in terms of its intellectual, visual and textual representations; whilst Part II explores geographical imaginations; that is to say, those 'imagined geographies' that came into being as a result of everyday spatial and spiritual experience. Bringing together approaches from art, literary studies, intellectual history and historical geography, this pioneering volume will be essential reading for scholars concerned with visual and textual modes of geographical representation and transmission, as well as the spaces and places of knowledge creation and consumption.

An English Source for a Latin Text? Wind Prognostication in Oxford, Bodleian MSS Hatton 115 and Ashmole 345

This article focuses on a type of prognostication that bases its predictions on the behavior of the wind during the twelve nights of Christmas and in particular on the relationship between the Old English version in Oxford, Bodleian, Hatton 115, and a fourteenth/fifteenth-century English text in Latin of the same prognostication, which appears in Oxford, Bodleian, Ashmole 345, fol. 69r. The wind prognostication in Ashmole 345 is remarkably similar to the twelfth-century OE version in Hatton 115, fol. 149v, to the extent that one might be tempted to argue for direct transmission, if it were not for the large temporal gap between the two manuscripts and for the fact that the two texts are being transmitted in two different languages. Interestingly the Latin text in A contains an Old English word that may make us reconsider the relationship between the two manuscripts and may shed light on the reception and transmission of Old English and prognostication by the wind between the end of the fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth centuries in English monastic centers.

'Translated Verse': Milton's Latin Poetry in the Long Eighteenth Century

This chapter assesses ways in which the emergence in the long eighteenth century of a cluster of verse translations of Milton’s Poemata engendered an intellectual discourse and debate on translation itself, not dissimilar to the magazine warfare of the day. It argues that poetical renderings of Milton’s Latin verse, and the biographical and literary contexts in which they appeared, facilitated the interrogation of key issues that are still being debated by modern translation theorists: the nature and function of translation; the viability of rendering a source text in a target language that is also in this instance a poetic language; the potential ‘fetters’ which, in Drydenesque terms, might constrain ‘the verbal copier’; or by contrast the quasi-liberating fluency, the ‘fluent strategy’, attendant upon recourse to verse as translational medium; canonicity, amplification and omission; the much-debated issue of authorial equivalence, evinced here, it is suggested, by the editorial showcasing of the translator; and not least, the perennial question of translation as reading and critical interpretation. In short, verse renderings of Milton’s Latin poetry and the debates that they engendered assume a not inconsequential place in the history of translation theory, which, as Venuti notes, is forever concerned with ‘the changing relationships between the relative autonomy of the translated text and two other categories: equivalence and function.’

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England, Neo-Latin, and the Continental Journey: Linguistic and Textual Itineraries

This chapter examines the ramifications of continental travel and associated epistolary communication for English poets of the period. It argues that recourse to neo-Latin, the universal language of diplomacy, served not only to establish a sense of shared space—linguistic, cultural, generic—between England and the continent, but also to signal self-conscious differences (climatic, geographical, historical, political) between England and her continental peers. Through an investigation of a range of ‘performances’ on stages that were ‘academic’, poetic, autobiographical, and epistolographic, it assesses the central role of neo-Latin as a language that underwent a series of textual itineraries. These ‘itineraries’ manifest themselves in a number of ways. Neo-Latin as a shared linguistic medium can facilitate, and quite uniquely so, intertextual engagement with the classics, but now ancient Rome, its language, its mythology, its hierarchy of genres, are viewed through a seventeenth-century lens and appropriated by poets in both England and Italy to describe contemporary events, whether personal, or political. Close examination of the neo-Latin poetry of Milton and Marvell reveals, it is argued, a self-fashioning coloured by such textual itineraries and interchanges. The absorption and replication of continental literary and linguistic methodologies (the academic debate; the etymological play of Marinism; the hybridity of neo-Latin and Italian voices) reveal in short a linguistic and textual reciprocity that gave birth to something very new.

An Irish eclipse prediction of AD 754: the earliest in the Latin West

This note announces the discovery of a tract on eclipse prediction in Paris, BnF, lat. 6400b, composed by an Irish scholar in ad 754. It is the earliest such text in the early middle ages and it is here placed in its scientific context.

Review of the genus Bursaphelenchus Fuchs, 1937 (Nematoda, Aphelenchida) with some conclusions on the host-parasite and vector-parasite evolution.

INTRODUCTION AND GOALS: Genus Bursaphelenchus includes several pests of the world importance for the rural economy, the most dangerous are the Bursaphelenchus xylophilus (the pinewood nematode caused decline of the pine trees in south Asia and in one spot area in Europe, Portugal, Peninsula de Setubal) and the Bursaphelenchus cocophilus, causing the decline of coco-palm plantations in Carribean and Latin American regions. The peculiarity of the host-parasite association of the genus that the nematode life cycle includes three trophic components: plant (mostly a tree), insect vector and a fungus. Goals of the presentation is to list all species of the world fauna and all efficient diagnostic characters, then create the identification tool and analyze the similarity of species and possible ways and causes of the host-parasite evolution of the group. RESULTS: Complete list of species with synonymy and a catalogue of all efficient diagnostic characters with their states, selected from papers of the most experienced taxonomists of the genus, are given for the genus Bursaphelenchus. List of known records of Bursaphelenchus species with names of natural vectors and plants and their families is given (for world pests the most important groups of trees and insects are listed). The tabular, traditional and computer-aided keys are presented. Dendrograms of species relationships (UPGMA, standard distance: mean character difference) based on all efficient taxonomic characters and separately on the spicule characters only, are given. Discussion whether the species groups are natural or purely diagnostic ones is based on the relationships dendrograms and the vector and associated plant ranges of Bursaphelenchus species; the xylophilus species group (B. xylophilus, B. abruptus, B. baujardi, B. conicaudatus, B. eroshenkii, B. fraudulentus, B. kolymensis, B. luxuriosae; B. mucronatus), the hunti group (B. hunti, B. seani, B. kevini and B. fungivorus) are probably the natural ones. CONCLUSIONS: The parasitic nematode association includes three trophic components: plant, insect vector and fungus. The initial insect-plant complex Scolytidae-Pinaceae is changeable and only in rare occasions the change of the preferred vector to Cerambycidae (the xylophilus group), Hymenoptera (the hunti group) led to formation of the natural species-groups. From the analysis it is clear that although the vector range is changeable it is comparatively more important for the evolution of the genus Bursaphelenchus than associations with plants at the family level. Data on the fungi species (3rd component in natural Bursaphelenchus associations) are insufficient for the detailed comparative analysis.

A elegia latina em Diogo Bernardes

Tese de mestrado, Estudos Clássicos, Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Letras, 2011

An Old World Yet to Discover? European Studies in the Latin American Southern Cone

In spite of the strong historical links that connect Europe with South America, EU studies are underdeveloped in the latter region. This article takes stock of how European politics in general, and European integration in particular, are studied and taught in Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Uruguay in order to assess such paradox and evaluate its prospects.