No Latin Sappho

To translate Lucretius' duplicitous phrase as “the poverty of our ancestral speech” is to introduce a second duplicity: the Latin refers not to “ancestral” but to “paternal” speech (patrii sermonis egestas). This specificity might mean less if it were not common to speak of English as one's “mother tongue.” In fact, we are dealing with a phenomenon that goes well beyond these two phrases in these two languages, one that involves an extremely widespread problematic whereby classical speech is gendered masculine and vernacular speech is gendered feminine.

The phenomenon is not confined to latinity or even to language as such. In traditional European culture, the life of the mind and of belleslettres in general was considered until fairly recently the almost exclusive domain of men, regardless of what language they used. Isidore of Seville writes that “there is no feminine form of the word ‘author’.” Isidore's point is purely grammatical but, as often, grammatical considerations are emblematic of larger concerns. Mary Ann Evans' decision to publish under the name George Eliot indicates clearly that many centuries later the author function was still gendered masculine. Similarly, within Eliot's own work and that of her contemporaries we find evidence that the cultural space defined by facility with Latin remained a largely male preserve and one from which they implicitly exclude themselves.

The point here is that the feminine gender of vernacular speech is constructed as the defining opposite of masculine, classical speech.