Paper 1812-a | When the Rhône Boils: Literary Uses of Hot Summer Weather in Sidonius Apollinaris's Epistula 2.2 and the Vita Apollinari (Language: English) Richard Rush, Medieval History Research Centre, Trinity College Dublin Index terms: Daily Life, Geography and Settlement Studies, Language and Literature - Latin, Rhetoric |
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Abstract | Paper -a:
This paper will argue that Sidonius Apollinaris's and the Vita Apollinari's descriptions of summer heat are rooted in the authors' lived experiences of summertime along the Rhone, but, due to the authors' rhetorical exaggerations, care must be taken in using these descriptions as climatic observations. When Sidonius wanted to persuade a friend to visit his villa, Sidonius described the Rhone as boiling and the lake by his villa as a cool retreat. In the Vita Apollinari, on the other hand, the water of the Rhone was so hot that no one could drink from it and Apollinaris performed a miracle by finding a well of cool water.
Paper -b:
From de Lorris's 'tens amoreus' to Chaucer's 'joly tyme of May', the seasonal description is an almost ubiquitous feature of late medieval amatory narrative verse. The favourite season is May - the month of dalliance and courtship - but does its significance change in poetry composed in colder climes? This paper examines the seasonal descriptions of the late medieval Scottish poets William Dunbar and Gavin Douglas. For each, the salubrious Spring morning seems an unattainable ideal. However, rather than abandoning the topos, they utilise its inconsistencies within meditations on their art: the extent to which transnational literary traditions can express local and/or personal concerns.
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