Dante, the one-hit wonder

[George Thompson]

LH, on Anthony Tommasini's ranking of composers:
>  (Tommasini did make it easier for himself by placing strict cultural--European--parameters on his search.)

Exactly.  I read Tommasini's essays with interest, for the sake of his discussions justifying his choices.  But all his candidates were writing in the same language, and a language he understood.  He didn't try to balance Mozart with Ellington with a master of Japanese music.

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.  Working on a new edition, though.

----- Original Message -----
From: Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
Date: Monday, March 7, 2011 9:31 pm
Subject: Re: Dante, the one-hit wonder
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU

> At 11:38 AM -0500 3/7/11, George Thompson wrote:
> >  >From today's NYTimes:
> >In February Dean Rader, an English professor at the University of
> >San Francisco, set out to discover history's 10 best poets (much
> >like Anthony Tommasini of The New York Times recently did for
> >composers).
>
> And did so less ninnily, I'd argue.  Of course I'm probably
> influenced by the fact that the constituency and order of Tommasini's
> Top 4 (Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert) matched exactly the
> constituency and almost (modulo the Beethoven/Mozart ranking) exactly
> the order of the megabytes devoted to composers in my iTunes.  I
> wouldn't begin to assess Rader's nadirs.  (Tommasini did make it
> easier for himself by placing strict cultural--European--parameters
> on his search.)
>
> LH
>
> >  [his top poet i Pablo Neruda]  In second place was Shakespeare,
> >whose name, according to Mr. Rader's "shockingly unscientific
> >measurements," appeared most frequently in reader e-mails, followed
> >by Dante, who Mr. Rader said was the most controversial pick,
> >because "he's only well known for one poem ('The Divine Comedy')."
> >Western literary greats like Walt Whitman, John Donne, Emily
> >Dickinson, William Butler Yeats and Wallace Stevens also appear on
> >the list with the Eastern favorites Rumi and Li Po, whom Mr. Rader
> >called "the great poet of drunkenness."
> >
> >So 6 of the top 10 write in English, and the list is rounded out by
> >a Spanish, an Italian, a Persian and a Chinese poet; no poet who
> >wrote in Russian, Arabic, Japanese, Hindi, German . . . . . measured
> >up.
> >
> >Did I mention that no Greek or Latin poet could make the cut?
> >
> >I post this just to show you folks that Linguistics isn;t the only
> >field of study beset by ninnies.
> >
> >http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/07/books/07arts-THE10BESTPOE_BRF.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=dante&st=cse
> >
> >GAT
> >
> >George A. Thompson
> >Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre",
> >Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.  Working on a
> >new edition, though.
> >
> >------------------------------------------------------------
> >The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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