RARA-AVIS: Re:Edgar Allan Poe

From: jacquesdebierue (jacquesdebierue@yahoo.com)
Date: 07 Sep 2008

  • Next message: Edward Pettit: "Re: RARA-AVIS: Re:Edgar Allan Poe"

    --- In rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, "Neil Ian MacKillop"
    <rollotape@...> wrote:
    >
    > What happened to Boston? Massachusetts? Lest we forget! Everywhere
    else, except where he was born and died, Poe was just passing through.
    >

    The birthplace should be important, I think. But all these claims have more to do with tourism than with any serious claims. And Poe is dead, so he can be claimed. The most preposterous such claim was a recent one by a village in northern Spain claiming that it was "the cradle" of the _Spanish language_. Can you imagine a language as municipal property? Then another village, which also has an old manuscript in a type of Romance language, counterclaimed that they, too, are "the cradle". Absurd claims, something to boast about, get some tourists... By the way, the ancient document is a shopping list from an unknown person. It includes cheese...

    So, if people can claim that a language is municipal-born, Poe can be claimed by, say, Hawaii, on the basis that he would have loved to go there or something like that.

    Best

    mrt



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