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Throop Movements

While I was in Rome, I got the following query from Ryan McDermott, “Medievalist-in-training.” Can anyone help him?

I just received the two volumes of Priscilla Throop’s translation of Isidore’s Etymologies. From a brief once-over, it looks like a very impressive piece of scholarship. I’ll still probably have to quote from the recent Cambridge translation, since that will probably take on the status of definitive edition, but for a reading copy, this is great. And I actually think only copies affordable to grad students should be the standard works to quote from–provided, of course, the editing and translation are up to snuff.

Here’s a question for the blogosphere: who is Priscilla Throop? Who would engage in a labor of love like this, with no hope of profit, and without the usual academic incentives for such thankless tasks? And who is the handsome man in the small picture on the back cover of the Isidore translations? It’s definitely not Isidore! (Could it be Patrick Stewart??)

6 thoughts on “Throop Movements

  1. Apparently, La Throop has also translated two books by Hildegarde of Bingen (Physica and Causes and Cures), and Sic et Non by Abelard. She also holds an MA from U of Toronto’s entirely wonderful medieval studies program, and a “Certificate of Advanced Theological Studies” from the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge. She lives in Charlotte, Vermont.

    Sigh. I have wasted my life. I could have been translating Isidore and Hildegarde…. :)

  2. According to Wikipedia, the name of the town of Charlotte, VT is properly pronounced “sha-LOT”.

    So who is Priscilla Throop?

    Clearly, she is the Lady of Shalott!

  3. I know Priscilla. She’s my sister. My siblings and I were brought up by parents that taught us that the pursuit of the knowledge and proper execution of purpose were much, much more important than how much one was paid for such effort. Priscilla epitomizes that life view. By the way, there are more books by PBT at lulu.com(or google Priscilla Throop)

  4. I’ve just discovered Priscilla Throop’s trans. of Peter Abailard’s Sic et Non (from the Mckeon/Boyer critical edition). How wonderful and timely for me. I cut my teeth on McKeon, in general, and Abailard/Abelard in particular many years ago and now, in my senior years with not much to do, want to return to a long-postponed analysis of Abelard. I have several of the fascicles Mkeon and Boyer issued in the 1970s, but not the complete text. And my Latin is rusty. To come across Ms. Throop’s work has been a delight and a God send. Thank you, thank you, thank you for taking the time–and showing the intelligence–to make the McKeon/Boyer edition available in English.

  5. I’m trying to contact Priscilla Throop. Does anyone have a public postal or email address for her?

  6. […] Non Defixi blog comments on the two here, and Way of the Fathers also has a post on it.  Sadly the CUP version is likely to be quoted by other […]

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