Gricean Mythology

Grice loved a myth, and so do I -- and so does J. As J notes, the Oedipus myth, etc. Myths are very intersting. L. Horn loves myths so much that he coined a word: etymythology. This is the study of myths as they belong to etymology.

The Welsh rarebit, for example -- Horn wrote an excellent essay which he presented to the distinguished Elizabethan Club at New Haven -- on that. He analyses all the wrong etymologies. Spitting image, for example. And a few others.

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A myth is an important thing. In his book on Grice and stuff, Timothy Wharton closes the thing (the book) with a note on 'a myth' -- he refers to what Grice refers to as a 'myth'. To wit: how lingo got started!

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When I was studying Greek (and indeed Latin), my teacher, C. Disandro, would spend HOURS (some of them pretty boring) into lecturing us into the differences between 'mythos', 'epos' and 'logos'. He even wrote a book about that. What bored me was that, in his view, and everybody's view, really, this triolet of lexical entries in Greek (mythos, epos, logos) all translate as "word"!

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For Plato, the mythos was indeed the word. I would often quarrel with M. Chase about that. I mentioned to him that if there's a boring thing about a Platonic dialogue is the dialogical form -- which makes the schematisation of arguments a dull thing -- and second, his unashamed use of myths! But he would disagree!

As a student of opera, I know ALL (that any habitue to LaScala should know) about myths. Myths come in two types: good and bad. All myths have been given operatic treatment. If you want to get bored by the Oedipus myth, rent the DVD on "Oedipus Rex" which is an opera by Stravinsky -- to a libretto written by a French monk!

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My favourite operatic myths are in the operas of Gluck: Iphigenia, for example. Strauss has some good myths set to music: Daphne, and notably Electra.

In those days, opera WAS myth.

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Grice cites and cites and cites "Pegasus" and Bellerophon -- and as he notes, they are 'vacuous' names. As J suggests, possibly Pegasus is very important, mythically.

R. M. Martin, the semanticist, got to bored by Quine's and Grice's use of "Pegasus" and 'x pegasizes', that he named his cat "Pegasus" just to prove that it is not ALL ways a vacuous name!