Good Fences Make Good Neighbors

[Beverly Flanigan]

Right--questioning a time-honored proverb is the point of the poem.  Why
_should_ we love a wall?  (We've just been talking about nationalism and
language identity in my Sociolinguistics class, so divisions are on my mind.)

At 02:34 PM 6/8/2006, you wrote:
>OK, but keep in mind that the speaker of the poem suggests that blind
>adherence to the notion that good fences make good neighbors is rather
>foolish--and
>Frost himself seems more than a little skeptical. Why build a fence
>between an
>orchard and a pine forest, he asks his neighbor. "He will not go beyond his
>father's saying, / And he likes having thought of it so well, He says [it]
>again. ..."
>
>In a message dated 6/8/06 12:41:34 PM, cxr1086 at LOUISIANA.EDU writes:
>
>
> > A colleague, Margaret Freeman, wrote the following paragraph in a recent
> > paper on "Mending Wall"
> >
> > That significance, as George Monteiro (1988:126-129) has shown us, is
> > deeply embedded in two historical, cultural domains: the existence of a
> > Spanish proverbial saying (una pared entre dos vezinos guarda mas (haze
> > durar) la
> > amistad) which goes back "at least to the Middle Ages" and was recorded
> > by Emerson in his journal of 1832 as "A wall between both, best
> > preserves friendship"; and the myth of the god of boundaries, named
> > Terminus by the Romans, who celebrated a Terminalia festival each year
> > on February 23 (in early spring) when "neighbors on either side of  any
> > boundary gathered around the landmark" to offer sacrifice to the god and
> > celebrate with a feast.
> >
> > The 1988 book is: Montiero, George. Robert Frost and the New England
> > Renaissance. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1988.
> >
> > --Clai Rice
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >
> >
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org