The title of the book explains the author's aims: through the examination of some essential features of the historical development of the Latin language, to discuss some problems of phonetics and morphology. Latin shows simpler and more ordered structures than Greek; a more original evolution of vocalism, especially for the play of alternations; a verbal inflection dominated by a peculiar binary structure (infectum / perfectum), a tendency to binary opposition that is revealed even in the semantic contrast between simple verb and compound verb. The book aims in particular to highlight which phenomena of Latin phonetics and morphology can be said to have now found a plausible explanation on the historical level and which, on the contrary, continue to remain obscure in their genesis.
Fabio Cupaiuolo in his studies is always driven by the need to explore style, technique, and spirit of literary works, as moments that reveal the writer's inner world: the investigation is conducted on a concrete and global level, with a fixed gaze on the 'formal' values and the 'internal history' of the work (Lettura di Orazio lirico. Struttura dell'ode oraziana, 1967 and 19762; Trama poetica delle Bucoliche di Virgilio, 1969; 19782). His adherence to the solicitations of ideological structuralism and the history of 'forms' or, in any case, to a typological criticism understood as an in-depth analytical decomposition of formal, technical, literary, stylistic, and ideological procedures is particularly evident in the volumes Tra poesia e poetica. On some cultural aspects of Latin poetry in the Augustan age, 1966 and Itinerary of Latin poetics in the first century of the empire, 1973, two literary syntheses of the Augustan age and the first century respectively, founded above all on the research of the contribution of poetics to poetry: a field dear to Cupaiuolo (it is enough to remember Horace's epistle to the Pisoni, 1941; Horace's 'callida iunctura', 1942; A precept of classical poetics, 1954; Two terms of Horatian literary criticism, 1987). Deeply interested in language problems (The formation of adverbs in Latin, 1967; Oblique locative expressions in Cicero and Livy, 1964), he also studied metrics (Latin metrics of the classical age, 1973): his research on verbal typology opened a new path to the problems concerning the stylistic-metric aspect of versification (A chapter on the Latin hexameter, 1963; Studies on Catullus' hexameter, 1965; Problems of versification technique, 1975; The hexameter of Virgil's Georgics, 1986 and various entries edited for the «Enciclopedia Virgiliana»). He has also dealt with Latin historiography (Chance, fate and fortune in the thought of some Latin historians, 1984) and with Cicero (Cic. and the problem of knowledge, 1990): he is also the author of a Latin literature (1990). [Bibliography of the Latin language (1949-1991), 1993; Structure and formal structures of Catullus' poem 64, 1994; Bibliography of Latin metrics, 1995; On the Alexandrianism of the formal structures of Virgil's eclogue VI, 1996; Between prose and poetry. Problems and interpretations, 1996; Observations and digressions on the hexameter of Horace's Epistle to the Pisos, 1997; The voice of the historian. Notes on the proems of some Roman historians, 2002; Bibliographic review of Latin language studies (1992-2003), 2004].
