Seven Types of Ambiguity

[Dave Monroe]

"All at once, out of the Murk [...] now strolls a
somewhat dishevel'd Norfolk Terrier, with a raffish
Gleam in its eye,--" (M&D, Ch. 3, p. 18)

>From William Empson, The Structure of Complex Words
(Norfolk [!], CN: New Directions, 1951), Ch. 7, "The
English Dog," pp. 158-74 ...

"From the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries a
number of English words, arch, rogue, fool, honest,
dog and so forth, went through a cycle of curious
slang or 'emotive' uses that invoke patronage, irony
and sympathy, and though we still give them slang uses
we shall keep on the whole to the last stage of the
cycle. It seems to me important, as a matter of
history, to understand how the cycle went, because a
man tends finally to make up his mind, in a practical
question of human relations, much more in terms of
these vague rich intimate words than in the clear
words of his official language....  Also I think that
this family of words carried an interesting and
controversial part.  It is a commonplace that the
formulae of a religion like Christianity or Buddhism
may be interpreted in many ways, some exalted, some
merely civilizing, some definitely harmful, and that
when actively at work in a society they form a kind of
shrubbery of smaller ideas, which may be the most
important part of their influence, yet which also may
be a half-conscious protest against the formulae, a
means of keeping them at bay.... it is this shrubbery,
a social and not very conscious matter, sometimes in
conflict with organized opinion, that one would expect
to find only able to survive because somehow inherent
in their words.  This may be an important matter for a
society, because its accepted official beliefs may be
things that would be fatal unless in some degree kept
at bay.... The web of European civilization seems to
have been slung between the ideas of Christianity and
those of a half-secret rival, centring [sic] perhaps
(if you made it a system) round honour; one that
stresses pride rather than humility, self-realization
rather than self-denial, caste rather than either the
communion of saints or the individual soul; while the
words I want to look at here, whether in their hearty
of their patronizing versions, come somewhat between
the two, for they were used both to soften the
assertion of class and to build a defence against
Puritanism." (pp. 158-9)

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0109&msg=60297

And see further ...

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0110&msg=60342

"It is the pastoral ideal, that there is a complete
copy of the human world among dogs...." (p. 168)

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0110&msg=60343

--- Heikki Raudaskoski <hraudask at sun3.oulu.fi> wrote:
> 
> 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).

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