Lecture FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC<br><br>The University of Pittsburgh Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program Presents<br>Professor Vance Smith, Princeton University Dept. of English<br><br>4:00 p.m., Friday February 23, Cathedral of Learning 501
<br><br>"Becoming Earth: Mortuary Lyric"<br><br>What can you say about a four-line poem that repeats the same noun twelve times? Especially when it's a poem about death, it would seem to thwart discursive treatment, which has, in fact, been its critical history. Yet there's something about its gnomic and hermetic quality, its very overdeterminations and repetitions, that make it one of the purest poems ever written about dying and the limits of predicative language
<br><br>-----------------------------------<br><br>Margretha's note: the poem the lecture discusses is: <br><br><span class="line">Erthe toc of erthe, erthe wyth woh.</span>
<div class="a"><span class="numb"></span><span class="line">Erthe other erthe to the erthe droh.</span></div>
<div class="a"><span class="numb"></span><span class="line">Erthe leyde erthe in erthene throh.</span></div>
<div class="a"><span class="numb"></span><span class="line">Tho heuede erthe of erthe erthe ynoh.</span></div><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Nothing stays hidden under the sun.<br>Margretha La Fauvelle<br>Deputy A&S minister, BMDL
<br>mka Margarita T. Rankin<br> \ | /<br>--( )--<br> / | \