Criticism
While Fulgentius’ works remained popular during and well after the Carolingian period, his factual inaccuracies and questionable interpretations came under harsh criticism in the 19th century. His work has been overwhelmingly dismissed as trivial and misleading ever since. Historically, Fulgentius’ work has been criticized as being bombastic and foolish. His Latin prose is obscure and often corrupt, making it very difficult to decipher his meaning. He is known for unnecessarily long and wordy prose, along with highly obscure allusions.
Fulgentius is also known to make significant mistakes in his retelling of history, like his conflation of Augustus with Julius Caesar in On the Ages of the World and of Man. In addition, many of his facts, as well as his etymologies, have fallen under suspicion of being based on second-hand sources or completely fabricated.
Read more about this topic: Fabius Planciades Fulgentius
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“...I wasn’t at all prepared for the avalanche of criticism that overwhelmed me. You would have thought I had murdered someone, and perhaps I had, but only to give her successor a chance to live. It was a very sad business indeed to be made to feel that my success depended solely, or at least in large part, on a head of hair.”
—Mary Pickford (1893–1979)
“A friend of mine spoke of books that are dedicated like this: “To my wife, by whose helpful criticism ...” and so on. He said the dedication should really read: “To my wife. If it had not been for her continual criticism and persistent nagging doubt as to my ability, this book would have appeared in Harper’s instead of The Hardware Age.””
—Brenda Ueland (1891–1985)
“The greater the decrease in the social significance of an art form, the sharper the distinction between criticism and enjoyment by the public. The conventional is uncritically enjoyed, and the truly new is criticized with aversion.”
—Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)