Seven Types of Ambiguity

[Paul Mackin]

On Wed, 2005-01-26 at 22:48 +0200, Heikki Raudaskoski wrote:
> 
> On Wed, 26 Jan 2005, Paul Mackin wrote:
> > On Wed, 2005-01-26 at 10:20 -0800, Glenn Scheper wrote:
> > > What are the seven?
> > know the answer, has the original handy. I think it's still read and
> > discussed.
> 
> All those years as a litcrit teacher were not totally useless, after all:
> 
> 1) A piece of language is effective in several ways at once
> 2) A piece of language has alternative meanings that are
> reducible to the meaning intended by the writer (?)
> 3) A piece of language contains two seemingly unconnected meanings
> 4) Alternative and contradictory meanings of an utterance add up to
> reflect the writer's complicated mind
> 5) A simile refers imperfectly to two connectable things - this "fortunate
> confusion" shows the writer discovering the idea when writing
> 6) An utterance is contradictory or irrelevant enough to make the readers
> invent their own interpretations
> 7) An utterance is so fundamentally contradictory that it reveals
> a basic division in the writer's mind

Bravo, Heikki

Looking back a few pages in the novel Perlman has his poet hero
reproduce  types one through four and seven with essential correctness.
(I think)  Five and six draw a blank however. No explanation why.





> Quite ambiguously stated here. Read Empson's fine book instead.
> 
> If his IMHO greatest study, "Some Versions of Pastoral", were written half
> a century later, it might well have included, besides Carroll etc, TRP too
> (I'm thinking of GR and VL).
> 
> 
> Heikki