5.0824 Rs: Stabbing with Styluses; ... (2/27)

Elaine Brennan & Allen Renear (EDITORS@BROWNVM.BITNET)
Tue, 14 Apr 1992 21:03:15 EDT

Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 5, No. 0824. Tuesday, 14 Apr 1992.

(1) Date: Thu, 9 Apr 1992 18:10:09 -0700 (PDT) (15 lines)
From: Paul Pascal <paulpasc@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Stabbing teachers with styluses

(2) Date: Wed, 1 Apr 92 20:23:06 EST (12 lines)
From: Bernard.van't.Hul@um.cc.umich.edu
Subject: 5.0808 Rs: More on Names; X-Posting from WORDS-L

(1) --------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 9 Apr 1992 18:10:09 -0700 (PDT)
From: Paul Pascal <paulpasc@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Stabbing teachers with styluses

Welcome back from your wanderings. I hope it is not too late to set
the record straight on the poignant matter of the schoolmaster who was
stabbed to death by his pupils' styluses. The issue was still sub iudice
when you left. Perhaps the story is told about Duns Scotus and about
Abelard, as James Marchand has it, but it goes back a lot farther than
that. The most prominently recorded victim was St. Cassian of Imola
(Aug. 13), whose martyrdom forms the subject of one of Prudentius' poems
(Peristephanon IX). A similar story is told about St. Mark of Arethusa
(Mar. 29). Styluses (or graphia) must have been formidable weapons
indeed; in classical sources their use as instruments of execution is
recorded bSeneca (De Clementia I.14) and Suetonius (Caligula 28).

(2) --------------------------------------------------------------21----
Date: Wed, 1 Apr 92 20:23:06 EST
From: Bernard.van't.Hul@um.cc.umich.edu
Subject: 5.0808 Rs: More on Names; X-Posting from WORDS-L (2/71)

Dan Lester's forwarded paragraph ("How fast can you spot. . . ?") is
a-typically verbal (vs. Jos. Wms.' "nominalized"). This is to stick
out one neck by guessing that its author's own moral would be that
the paragraph is accordingly "direct," "forthright," "UNbureacratic,"
ergo admirably "honest."
But the agentive "abnormality [that may 'dawn on (a reader)']" --
it "calls attention to itself," no?