From: LouisFors <LouisFors@aol.com>
Message-Id: <173e8117.352bd5c5@aol.com>
Date: Wed, 8 Apr 1998 15:53:38 EDT
To: emweb@fmgmt.mgmt.utoronto.ca
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Subject: Re: a re (new?) direction for 544
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In a message dated 98-04-08 13:53:03 EDT, Margaret Freeman wrote:

> I apologize if this posting is way off base, but I'm wondering at the
>  pondering discussions that have taken place so far. It seems as if everyone
>  is reading the noun phrases "The Martyr Poets" and "The Martyr Painters" as
>  if the word "Martyr" were a descriptive adjective describing the head noun
>  of the phrase. But is this necessarily the case? Couldn't the structure be
>  poets and painters that take martyrs as their subject (I'm thinking of
>  Fox's Book of Martyrs, which if my memory serves me correctly Dickinson
>  knew, and the religious paintings of the martyrs)? When we refer to "The
>  Depression Poets," for example, we don't mean that the poets suffered
>  depression, but that they were poets of the Depression period that shared
>  certain themes arising from that period.
>  
>  Margaret
>  
Great!  There's always a new reading lurking someplace, and this one is
useful.  I had played with "Martyr poets" and "Martyred poets," noting that
the shift made a difference.  But I never got through to the one you've
suggested.  I too have reread 544 with your thought in mind, and it works,
although it still works both ways. Now I'll shift for a bit, thinking of
poets, painters, musicians, sculptors, choreographers, etc., who have worked
the theme of martyrs. There are hundreds of them. Then I'm sure I'll swing
back to the other reading of "martyr."  I guess ED would have liked that
ambiguity.

Louis Forsdale

Louis Forsdale