From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.science.mathematics.categories/5957 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Vaughan Pratt Newsgroups: gmane.science.mathematics.categories Subject: Re: The humility topos Date: Mon, 05 Jul 2010 13:20:12 -0700 Message-ID: References: Reply-To: Vaughan Pratt NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Trace: dough.gmane.org 1278417557 23231 80.91.229.12 (6 Jul 2010 11:59:17 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 6 Jul 2010 11:59:17 +0000 (UTC) To: Categories list Original-X-From: categories@mta.ca Tue Jul 06 13:59:14 2010 Return-path: Envelope-to: gsmc-categories@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from mailserv.mta.ca ([138.73.1.1]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1OW6nx-0000db-GL for gsmc-categories@m.gmane.org; Tue, 06 Jul 2010 13:59:13 +0200 Original-Received: from Majordom by mailserv.mta.ca with local (Exim 4.61) (envelope-from ) id 1OW6Gd-0001v7-7Z for categories-list@mta.ca; Tue, 06 Jul 2010 08:24:47 -0300 In-Reply-To: Original-Sender: categories@mta.ca Precedence: bulk Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.science.mathematics.categories:5957 Archived-At: One would suppose that the notions of literary topos and humility topos=20 were of ancient origin. Certainly "topos" appears in Aristotle's=20 Rhetoric in the original Greek. However its entry into the academic=20 lexicon as an English word relevant to rhetoric and other literary forms=20 would seem, as far as I've been able to tell, to have occurred at some=20 point in the 20th century. 1. Volume Ti-Tz of the OED does not contain the word "topos," nor does=20 it appear under the entries for "humility" or "literary." (Ordinarily=20 the OED can relied on to record just about every English word that has=20 appeared in print prior to the 20th century.) 2. Adams Sherman Hill, Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory in=20 Harvard University from 1876 to 1904, wrote "The Foundations of=20 Rhetoric" in 1892 with no mention of the concept of topos as a notion in=20 rhetoric. The Wikipedia article on Ernst Robert Curtius at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Robert_Curtius says "He is best known for his 1948 work Europ=E4ische Literatur und=20 Lateinisches Mittelalter. It was a major study of the Medieval Latin=20 literature and its effect on subsequent writing in modern European=20 languages. The book was largely responsible for introducing the literary=20 topos concept as a scholarly and critical discussion of literary=20 commonplaces." So unless someone comes up with an earlier use, it looks like 1948 may=20 be the date, and German the language, of the first appearance of "topos"=20 outside the original Greek of Aristotle. Vaughan Pratt [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]