This paper aims at an accurate and detailed analysis of some of the main echoes of the Latin comedy of Plautus and Terence in Morean epigrams. The fundamental Greek background from which More’s epigrams spring is somehow enriched by the Latin contributions by virtue, among other factors, of the cultural legacy of the language in which the humanist chose to write them. A contextualized analysis of the clearest echoes found allows distributing them in a general way in two global types: (...) (1) those of a more formal nature (morphological, lexical-semantic, syntactic) and (2) those that convey a debt of content, concept, or topic; it is shown that both types can occasionally be interrelated in a particular and original way. (shrink)

This paper aims to identify and analyze some of the substitutions of the particle sed (> ceterum/verum/at), visible in the manuscript of More’s De Tristitia. In this study, the theoretical framework of Functional Discourse Grammar is applied for the first time, and it helps to explain some of the reasons underlying More’s final choices. One of the clearest conclusions is that More tries to show that the particle chosen does not function as a conjunction at the sentence level but as (...) an adversative connector at the presentational level; this level has to do with the presentation and organization of the information in the text, and can serve to offer an explanation, justification, clarification, context, etc. between the various textual units. The examination of the passages in context also shows how More was careful to avoid repetitions which could diminish the elegance of the chosen linguistic expression. (shrink)

This article addresses Thomas More's use of an especially complex Latin predicate, fio, as a means of examining the degree of classicism in this aspect of his writing. To this end, the main lexical-semantic and syntactic features of the verb in Classical Latin are presented, and a comparative review is made of More's use of the predicate—and also its use in texts contemporaneous to More, as well as in Late and Medieval Latin—in both prose and poetry. The analysis shows that (...) he works within a general framework of classicism, although he introduces some of his own idiosyncrasies, these essentially relating to the meaning of the verb that he employs in a preferential way and to the variety of verbal forms that occur in his poetic text. (shrink)