--- a memoir of Gongora
---------- by J. L. Speranza
--------------- for the Grice Club
--- KRAMER was mentioning 'preciosite' (wiki essay) which cross-references with preziosismo: marinismo in Italy, euphism in England, and "culteranismo" (wiki entry) in the Iberian peninsula.
There are eight features of this as identified by the wiki entry:
"Ornamentación sensorial del verso (aliteraciones, epítetos, etc.)."
-- sensousness of the verse.
"Preferencia por una sintaxis de largos y laberínticos periodos de compleja rabazón hipotáctica."
hypotactic syntax.
"Latinización de la sintaxis mediante un extremo y violento hipérbaton y el uso de ciertas fórmulas, (A si no B, etc.) y construcciones propias del latín."
hyperbaton
"Abuso de los cultismos o palabras extraídas sin cambios del latín, que de esa manera pasaron a enriquecer el idioma."
parvenus.
"Uso de la metáfora pura y de la imagen más audaz."
Grice, You're the cream in my coffee.
"Sublimación de lo humilde y denuesto de lo noble."
inverse snobbery.
"Abundancia de perífrasis en forma de alusiones y elusiones de términos léxicos o referentes mitológicos y culturales."
etymythology.
"Una abundante intertextualidad entre autores latinos, griegos y modernos."
"et in Arcadia ego"
--- the main Gricean connection seems to be via implicature. I.e. the idea that these movements were into seeing the literary work as a 'decipherment', as it were. The idea that direct is bad, indirect is good. So, the more work on the part of the addressee to 'decode' the inferential pattern of the utterer the better. (Cfr. use of 'decipher' in essay).
Again from the wiki article:
El Culteranismo, término despectivo creado desde la palabra "luteranismo" para parangonar a los culteranos como herejes de la verdadera poesía, es en realidad una rama de la estética barroca del Conceptismo en cuanto dificulta cortesanamente el entendimiento de la obra literaria, no mediante la concisión y la concentración de significado (la llamada agudeza de Baltasar Gracián), como era lo habitual, sino mediante su dispersión y organización en forma de enigma para ejercitar la cultura y la inteligencia al descifrar una forma más dilatada y sensorial."
"Culteranism, ... complicates in a courtly way the understanding of the literary work ... through the dispersion of meaning and the organisation of the literary work in the shape of an enigma or 'riddle' to exercise the 'culture' and intelligence in deciphering a more extended and more sensuous form."
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Up here, "March Madness" refers to the NCAA basketball tournament. In B.A. it seems to be a sort of end-of-summer explosion of blog posts.
ReplyDeleteThe idea that direct is bad, indirect is good. So, the more work on the part of the addressee to 'decode' the inferential pattern of the utterer the better.
I would speculate that it's about how much work the reader who does not know the secret handshakes of the writer's social circle would have to do, i.e., how little work the "hip" reader would have to do. It's called "culturism," and it exercises (and, therefore, both asserts and tests) cultural literacy.
I would expect to find this sort of thing at a time when social walls are decaying as part of an effort (perhaps unconscious) by the upper classes to remind their insecure little selves that they can do things, however inconsequential, that hoi polloi cannot.
Very true -- I'll elaborate on this on perhaps another blog post!
ReplyDelete--- The social thing was pretty evident in the French version -- the Versailles set. But what struck me as rather irritating is this feature No. ... let's check, five above -- which I rendered as 'inverted snobbery' but which goes:
sublimación de lo humilde y denuesto de lo noble.
Since wiki entries are anonymous one shouldn't weight the contributions so much but there you go.
"sublimation" (the prefix sub strikes me as odd here when it seems to mean just the opposite, supra-) of the humble ('lo humilde', neuter in Spanish) and "denuesto" (I'd never use this 'culteranist' expression -- but it seems to mean derogation, deprecation, "of the noble" ('de lo noble', again neuter).
This struck me as _false_. I am a fan of the Arcadian movement in Italian opera (Scarlatti, "Il pastore di Corinto', now on DVD for example), and this 'inverse snobbery' was so COMPLEX:
-- 1) on the one hand, the author WAS 'courtly'.
But 2) the character was usually a shepherd, and thus illiterate, but who would abound in implicatures, figures of speech, transcategorial eschatologisms, to use Griceanism and other Griceian mannerisms.
This strikes me as odd. The 'Arcadian' instinct is as old as the hills -- and the Athenians knew it: the idea of the 'noble savage', so this above as a feature of 'cultism' should be perhaps qualified.
Re: Kramer's point about the 'hip' addresee et al, I do agree. The wiki entry for euphuism cared to mention Shakespeare in a play I saw recentl on stage: Benedick in "Much ado about nothing". His verbal duets with the Girl are very apt for Gricean analysis. He is, basically, a prick, and everybody laughs at him, both on stage and I assume in the Globe when the thing opened --.
A similar case would be H.M.S.Pinafore, or the Lass who loved a Sailor. "Unlearned he in aught save that which Love hath taught, for Love had been his tutor"... sings the sailor -- I know the aria by heart. The idea: that the effect is funny. But the sailor -- due to baby swapping, was indeed a noble soul of high birth.
I do like Spenser who apaprently did criticise Euphuism, but on grounds of an excess of similes, apparently. In the case of those works of art that were typical, we don't seem to have a lot of "Rape of the Lock" scenario, where it's upper classes talking upper class: it's more the ridiculous idea that a lower-classer could speak uppity, or something.
"I would speculate that it's about how much work the reader who does not know the secret handshakes of the writer's social circle would have to do, i.e., how little work the "hip" reader would have to do. It's called "culturism," and it exercises (and, therefore, both asserts and tests) cultural literacy. I would expect to find this sort of thing at a time when social walls are decaying as part of an effort (perhaps unconscious) by the upper classes to remind their insecure little selves that they can do things, however inconsequential, that hoi polloi cannot."
ReplyDeleteWell said, but I would change 'upper classes' to 'members of the historical avant-garde', who are not all, these days, drawn from the upper classes. I spent three years submerged in the world they built themselves at a tiny arts college, and there was this continual problematic experience (only on the part of the students, it seemed) of attempting to divide works that might have an obscure or complex design for a reason, and a heap of other works that seemed to be equally prized (or more) that were simply very heavily encoded, to provide the experience Kramer terms 'culturism'.
This perhaps also explains the collective fascination there with unreadable critical theory such as Judith Butler, that called to mind, who was it? Poe? Lamenting that while mystics appeared to possess all sorts of amazing powers, they singly lacked the ability to relate their experiences in anything approaching readable prose.
Yikes, I am not suggesting a straight replacement of 'historical avant-garde' for 'upper classes' just that, in my example, I'd replace it.
ReplyDelete