At 07:22 AM 03/08/01 -0400, Tim Romano wrote: >You are frequenting too many technology newsgroups. You seem to have picked >up a case of Troll's Disease. I deny that on-line technology discussions have more trolls than those dedicated to poetics, but I do apologize for my intemperate tone. I read classics heavily but genuinely fail to understand the popularity of Homer - primarily as I said, because most of his characters are people I wouldn't want to spend time with. Cf. T.E. Lawrence's irritated comments on them in his collected letters, written while he was engaged in translating the Odyessy. I suspect that with Dante the translation is the problem. And still don't buy the premise that you need to have delved deeply in Homer & Dante to deal with the Cantos. -Tim