Opus

See also:   [Literary Terms] 

On this page:  {Opus} (Latin: work)
               {Op Cit} (Latin: The Work just sited)
               {Magnum Opus} (Latin: The Great Work)

   

Opus

Opus (Latin: "the work").  The body of work by an individual. A collective
                           noun.  Thus, "When we examine the opus of 
Mingus' in toto, we are struck by the under-laying order and simplicity
of the complex forms. It is for that reason (more than any other), that
I refer to Mingus as the 'beethoven" of jazz".



Op. Cit.

Latin: Opus citato.  (oh-puhs cih-tato  --or--  oh-puss  cee-tato).

Literally "in the work just cited" (citato --> citation (to refernece)).

For example, if we quote James Burke's "Connections", we might
refer to Page 127, and then later we might make a comment upon
the quote by someone else, then we WANT to refer back to Burke
-- it all becomes quite complex. In the following example, the
PAGE numbers and quotes are bogus (i don't have my copies of 
the texts with me at the moment)

   On the one hand the trend towards de-humanising us all
   by making us into numbers is evident, when we BECOME 
   our number; something resisted by "The Prisoner" when
   he says, "I am not a number, I am a free man". And yet,
   this is in fact what is happening. As James Burke puts
   it, "It is this single fact of plastic as the infinitely
   maleable object that becomes stratified. And in fact
   we can instead of making things differently, make them
   same. We can all own the same pitchers, plates, and
   flatware -- all identtical" (Connection, Pp.123-4).

   But this only half of the story, if we are "plastic" in
   the sense that we *are* cookie-cutter copies of each 
   other, then there *are* differences. As Jacob Bronowski 
   points out in "The Ascent of Man" (Pp.123-4) "This is
   where people are turned into numbers" (he at this point
   picks up the mud that is all that remains of the people
   burned at Auschwitz.  Indeed, numbers *are* what we are,
   at the end of the episode of Connections (Burke, Op. Cit),
   he turns into a Gingerbread man on a conveyor belt and
   then along comes a long line of identical credit cards.

The distinction between OP CIT and LOC CIT is that OP CIT
referse to the SAME work, but not necessarily to the 
SAME LOCATION within that work. 


Magnum Opus

Latin "The great work". For example, "One must admire Beetven's magnum opus 
(the 9th) for several reasons, not the least of which is that it was a
clear sign that he had (at last) emerged from the despondency of his
deafness. When we hear the 8th, we hear that painful sense of loss, but
in the 9th we experience an elation not un-like when Anne Sullivan teaches
Helen Keller the word WATER".
Et. Al. (et alisquam) -- and the others, or and "the rest". As in

Often the phrase refers to the one-trick pony concept; ie, a person
who has only one really outstanding achievement to look back upon.
This is often the case, where the nature of their work spans such a
diverse and expansive vista that unless we try to put it in 
perspective, we would be struck senseless (something like being
shown the "you are here" sign when we are in the Total Perspective
Vortex (42 reference). For exmample, if we look at Asimov's work
(see map), where shall we say is the ONE GREAT WORK?  The Guide
to Shakespear? For any other author, this *would be* their one
great Magnum Opus. The Guide to the Bible? Again, the same can
be said. But, for me, it has to be that great synthesis of his
knowledge of history, science, and belief -- summed up in an oddly
familiar, and yet strangely fantastical work of science fiction.
I am speaking of course of THE FOUNDATION TRILOGY (natch). Where
else, do we see "the great man's" thinking as he read his Gibbons
"Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire", his tongue-in-cheek way of
viewing the politics of his time -- esp in the later editions 
where we see him putting himself and our world into the narrative?
For me, this (Foundation) will have always have been in the futre
and in the past, Asimov's MAGNUM OPUS.  (With applogies to Dr.
Streetmentioner; again with the 42 reference ;)