The creativity of Late Latin authors: The case of marking direct discourse
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| Year of publication | 2021 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | The innovations and creativity of Late Latin authors gave origin to a tangle of old and new traits. The evidence is provided by the change of means used to mark direct discourse from Cicero’s times up to the Carolingian Renaissance. On the one hand, Late texts display some undeniable general trends, such as change of preferred verbs, an increase of diversity of marking means, and introduction of the new marker dicens “saying” under the biblical influence. On the other hand, Late Latin authors did not drop Classical markers altogether. In contrast, some of them tried to adhere to Classical models. However, even these did not use direct discourse markers exactly as Cicero had done. They often changed Classical patterns and combined different elements. Thus, Late Latin authors created a new standard that survived the end of Latin as a mother tongue and is likely to have influenced texts outside the Romance territory, as some Czech Medieval texts suggest. |
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