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:
“... criticism ... makes very little dent upon me, unless I think there is some real justification and something should be done.”
—Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962)
“Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world—though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst—the cant of criticism is the most tormenting!”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
“The critic lives at second hand. He writes about. The poem, the novel, or the play must be given to him; criticism exists by the grace of other men’s genius. By virtue of style, criticism can itself become literature. But usually this occurs only when the writer is acting as critic of his own work or as outrider to his own poetics, when the criticism of Coleridge is work in progress or that of T.S. Eliot propaganda.”
—George Steiner (b. 1929)