J writes genially in "meaning =/= use":
""Get thee to a nunnery!" said Hamlet to
Ophelia. Read the footnote and some Oxbridge
type informs you that "nunnery" was also slang
for...whorehouse at the time."
Very clever.
So, here I think we can apply what Grice is up to when claiming 'meaning =/= use':
1. 'nunnery' means nunnery.
---- This above is odd, but true. I mean, try to imagine a context where you would be willing to have that. It's however, Tarski at his worst, as used by Davidson in 'Truth and meaning' in Synthese, and that Grice is trying to defend in "Logic and Conversation" and his other essays on "Meaning", more speficically (his "Utterer's meaning, sentence meaning, and word meaning").
2. "nunnery" means whorehouse.
Is FALSE. What that Oxbridge type above should have is THIS footnote:
---- "It may be claimed that Hamlet is conversationally implicating -- apres jargon by H. P. Grice -- that Ophelia should get to a whorehouse -- vide Birth, "Notes on 'nunnery' as code for 'whore house' in Tudor England: the "Hamlet" evidence". It turns out that the main evidence for nunnery implicating 'whorehouse' comes from Hamlet!
-----
"nunnery" is a composite out of "nun" -- not a composite out of "whore". So the idea is that 'nun' was also used as 'whore'. But no such record exists!
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ReplyDeleteThe opinion of most in the belle-lettres biz appears to be that nunnery was used as a euphemism for brothel (as well as conventional convent). Now, did Shakespeare, vis a vis his hero Hamlet, intend nunnery as in convent OR as brothel...or perhaps both??. Ham. might have intended the convent, but knowing a bit about Shakespeare's wit, I'm quite sure he would have been aware of the euphemism, and given Hamlet's....misogyny (also seen in his comments to his scheming mother Gertrude) the brothel meaning, or at least connotation seems likely.
ReplyDeleteOther writers have made use of the euphemism:
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=nunnery
Shakespeare's wordplay--puns and irony and euphemism, etc--are probably more evident in the comedies, like 12th Night, or As you like it. I don't really enjoy it so much--tres anglais-- but at times (as with the fools such as Feste) S.s. created a Monty Python-like banter--
To wax pathopsychological for a few seconds, I would say S.s's famous fools are not merely zany wits, but...symbols of a type, not altogether pleasing. What's the word--equivocators!--they equivocate, which was actually a sin of a sort; really the Fool often seems a bit like a ...priest . No wonder Johnny Locke and his baptist pals demanded the theatres be closed. The politics of implicatures...
Excellent, we should write a book about that J: or a pamphlet. You write it and I sign it! Just teasing. No, really. You should write more your own titled posts. "The politics of implicature" is just too genial and I don't want to borrow because I may not return it!
ReplyDelete-----
You know so much about Shakespeare! Oddly, I'm very familiar with Stratford -- but not the one on Avon, but the one on Long Island Sound! It's a fascinating place! It's on the Housatonic and sort of the beginning of Fairfield County. They host an annual celebration of the Master. And it WAS named, the town, after Shakespeare! Most towns on the Long Island sound have names from England. The most infamous one being Stamford which Levin reworte as "Stepford" in his parody on "Stamford wives" -- which you'll be familiar if you saw the Nicole Kidman/Matthew Broderick film version. "We are moving to Connecticut!" -- I LOVE Connecticut!
There's also Guilford, which the pretentious locals claim is after Guildford, Surrey, but a resident proved that the marina actually resembles East Guilford in Kent -- and which makes much more sense, since at least it's on the water!
Anyway, I should go back to Shakespeare soon. Recall that we also dwelt with "Shakespare" as an odd 'dossier' (if not a vacuous name).
Yes, I think Hamlet possibly did NOT implicate 'whorehouse'. That would rather be an advice to a MALE friend ("Get to a whorehouse, and talk to some of the whores"). In the case of Ophelia, if he meant, "whorehouse", why would she just GET there. Shouldn't she be 'interned' there. I mean, 'get' is rather a soft thing to say. Why not 'go to a nunnery/whorehouse'.
The OED notes that 'twat' was misinterpreted by Browning to mean the part of a nun's attire (since we are doing words), and used it in a rhymed couplet. But that was unphilosophical. Putnam went philosophical when he spoke of the taste of twater (as XYZ rather than H20 in "The meaning of meaning").
Well, small latin, less greek here, but.... back in the day, I did as it were complete a few of Shakespeare's plays, as well as Lobbes and Hocke--not quite sure who was the mo' bettah philosophaster, but I suspect the Bard (whoever he was) knew as much of Aristotle and latin scribes (Cicero, Plutarch, etc) as the empiricists did. Hume a bit more ..analytical, but ...whatever. Really, Shakespeare tends to caricature academics, and pedants--Polonius, for one.
ReplyDeletePhilosophy people tend to equivocate themselves. One day they're objecting to logic choppers, reductionists, Humes, Carnaps, or the Polonius-like Russell, chatting about "Weltanschauungs"; the next they're saying how useless literature is, or demanding validity, proof, etc. That's their...predictament in a sense: neither scientists, nor hip-literatteurs (tho a few have been) the philosopher's one of the most anachronistic creatures on the planet.
J, the reluctant Hegelian (like his maestro Aristotle, Hegel allowed for great literature, music, etc. Not the case with the Carnap-Quine school)
Mind, equivocate can be a good word! Love you, J!
ReplyDeleteScuzi, bit of a tangent there. Either way, I'm pretty convinced Hamlet intended the euphemism. He's not exactly pious (e.g. he kills O's pops Polonius a few scenes later), sort of a soldier-braggart (and scholar), and....since his mama Gert. took up with the rascal Claudius, not too happy with the state of affairs--and there are hints that Ophelia's... eh....used goods perhaps. But....I might accept the conservative reading, with some imprimatur from an Oxbridge type.
ReplyDeletePeople hearing their favorite Schack-a-speare BBC production (e.g. Jacques' Pere..aka Billy JackDaddy) don't realize that the Elizabethans were quite...nasty (bawdy in the usual ugly sense). Half the royals were infected with clap--syphillis, which is to say Big House, aka Muerto--Rev's in the air, the peasants were unruly, the puritans, like fundamentalists today were barking for an end to all the immorali-tay, etc. So nunnery=whorehouse quite bloody likely (and meaning as use quite applicable to the language of thea-turr. Beckett's characters don't exactly chitchat like lawyers...or shakespeare on PBS either).
OK. But I wonder if you agree if this is metaphor, metonymy, or metaphtonymy. It's not easy to say:
ReplyDelete'nunnery' = 'whorehouse'.
It's better, as I hope you agree, to think that Hamlet is CONVERSATIONALLY implicating that Ophelia should get to a whorehouse.