Ode on a Gricean Urn

From:

http://lsv.uky.edu/scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind0812D&L=CLASSICS-L&P=R9894&I=-3

I wrote:

"Thanks to M. Davidson for the limerick about the 'certified' (parody on
'professional', which started this sub-thread) poet"


"...half rhyme, imperfect rhyme, near rhyme, oblique rhyme, or off rhyme.
But no matter what you call it or where you find your definition of it, one
cannot deny that poets in English use it, and have done so increasingly in
the past two centuries, as extremely regular rhythm and rhyme have come to
sound stilted."

Five points:

1. I loved the 'near hit'. (I mean 'near rhyme') and do think it translates
to that wonderful Latin prefix, 'quasi-', the implicature of which is
interesting. It reminds me of that book I saw once at a bookshop, called, "Almost
White" -- the problems of someone who doesn't quite _fit_ in the scheme of
American things! -- a very sad book by the blurb of it. I would argue that
'quasi-nero', quasi-bianco, near-hit, near rhyme, pseudo-rhyme (?) all work along
the same implicature mould. Indeed, it has been studied by Schwenter.
That _was_ a near hit. +> (conversational generalised
implicature) That was _no_ hit.

2. I notice the 'burn'/'morn' couplet that
originated this sub-thread. Cfr. the 'slant' one, with 'fawn', and I forget _what_ other word. In any case, D. Tompkins's post included a nice meta-commentary. It was not clear where the Blackwood Magazine staff where coming from: where they
criticising Keats for just being a Cockney (low-class, low-diction) boy (as they never criticised Shelley, the post read, in view of his 'noble birth' -- down in
the deep South, right? -- I think Dame Mary Brown kept the place for years) or
for _pretending_ to _*mean-nn*_ (in Grice's parlance, -- see "Meaning"
reprinted obiquitously, and in WOW) as a Cockney boy? If the latter, it is a
_pose_. Personally, I think he possibly _was_ a Cockney boy. To me, the effect of
_affecting_ a Cockney 'low-diction' in just _one_ couplet requires more
explanations (and thus is not as valued) as the 'natural' effect that to him, or
his addressees, 'fawn' and ... or 'burn' and 'morn' would _not_ offend. From
what I understood, in the 'low diction' Cockney sociolect, it may well be, and
this was the Blackwood Mag. criticism, that 'burn' and 'morn' _do_ rhyme
(and not just "'alf rime", as the Cockneys would have it. The 'implicatures' of
assumed sociolect are interesting per se and dealt at length by Grice's
official biographer, S. R. Chapman, in her first book, "The ontology and
implicature of _accent_". (She understands Scouse so she _knows_).

3. "... rhyme [had] come to sound stilted". But hey, this is the classics-l
list! Imagine someone would say: I love Harold Pinter's plays (poor man died
on Xmas Eve, Jewish emigre's grandson), quite an advance from Euripides. The
'sound stilted' (I hardly use 'stilted' and am unaware of its implicatures --
stilted cheese? --) may justify _anything_, any theatre of menace. The point
of having a classics-l list, and enthusiasts, is that we do not believe in
progress, or in things sounding stilted. We do not _want_ progress. "Stilted"
is fine; it does require some endurement, but once you realise, it's _very
fine_. On a similar vein, I believe all opera post-Bellini is 'wrong' provided
they do not keep the belcanto romanticism that he achieved. Those composers
(notably Americans? Gershwin, Barber, etc.) who had come to believe that
Bellini had come to 'sound stilted' are _wrong_ and in no case should get grants
from the government! Classic Rules!

4. I provided the Italian for the 'burn'/'morn' couplet, to show that there
_was_ an alternative open to Keats, where the 'near rhyme' or 'off [putting]
'rhyme'' (sic with scare quotes) is avoided.

5. The poet's intention. Cfr. this thing about 'diegesis', but of
course, the urn (vase?, bedpot?) that is 'Grecian' and Keats describes is not
_narrated_, I wouldn't think. It's _described_. But the _rhetoric of fiction_
work similarly. Is poetry _fiction_ though? There has been quite a polemic
recently about that, along precisely Gricean lines. In any case, I am reminded
of Owen Barfield. His seminal book predated, I believe, Booth, or Maria-Luisa
Pratt, but opened in English criticism the gate for Gricean analyses. M.
Broder has defended 'anything goes in interpretation', 'over-interpret if you
wish'. 'Sticking to utterer's intention violates the addressee's _liberties_'.
I disagree! I feel the most liberal when I DENY a right to over-interpret on
the part of the addressee. First, we should speak of _intended_ addressee.
And it's no miracle that I. A. Richards (a genial Cheshire born man) would have
"Ode on a Grecian urn" analysed by his Harvard students as _deprived_ of the
title, and see what they got from it! So, an interpretive decision as to
what Keats _meant_ by this and that ('low diction', reference or denotatum of
the whole poem, etc.) should be made, while laughing at Umberto Eco's 'opera
aperta', everytime we _enjoy_ the 'ode'. Grice's five or six examples of lit.
crit. in WOW, 2 -- notably his complex exegesis of Blake, "I vowed to tell my
love, love that never told can be" is a good example of the application of
'implicature', 'entailment', 'implicatum', recipient-meaning, and 'uptake'
versus 'mistake' in the poetic process.