Editing Proparoxytone (section)

== Mentions in literature ==
[[Ernst Robert Curtius]] offers an interesting use of the term in a footnote (Ch. 8, n. 33) of his ''European Literature in the Latin Middle Ages''. He is commenting on this passage from [[Smaragdus of Saint-Mihiel]]'s didactic poem on grammar:

: {{lang|la|Partibus inferior jacet interiectio cunctis}}
: {{lang|la|Ultima namque sedet et sine laude manet.}}

Here is Curtius' note:
<blockquote>
Sad is the lot of the interjection, for of all the parts of speech it has the lowest place. There is none to praise it." On the way from Latin to French, the penultimate syllable of the proparoxytone succumbed. Mallarmé was so touched by this that he wrote a [[prose poem]] on the "Death of the Penultimate" ({{lang|fr|Le Démon de l'analogie}} in {{lang|fr|Divagations}}). It ends: {{lang|fr|Je m'enfuis, bizarre, personne condamnée à porter probablement le deuil de l'explicable Penultième.}} (Eerie, I flee: likely some (no-)one doomed to wear weeds for the explainable second-last.)
</blockquote>
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Stephan Dedalus in [[James Joyce]]'s [[Ulysses (novel)]] uses the term to comment on the time being eleven o'clock, with eleven being a proparoxytone:

:"Why striking eleven? Proparoxyton. Moment before the next, Lessing says."<ref>Joyce, James.  ''Ulysses.''  Vintage Books: New york. 1990.  Page 559.</ref> -->