The History of the Metaphor

[Dave Monroe]

On Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 2:47 PM, Johnny Marr <marrja at gmail.com> wrote:

> http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qykl

With:

Steven Connor
Professor of Modern Literature and Theory at Birkbeck, University of London

[...]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00w227c

Recall ...

"Sausages hang against the Sky, forming Lines of Text, cryptick
Intestinal Commentary."  (M&D, Ch. 29, p. 289)

... from Steven Connor, Dumbstruck: A Cultural History of
Ventriloquism (New York: Oxford UP, 2000), Ch. 2, "Earth, Breath,
Frenzy: The Delphic Oracle," pp.47-74 ...

   "Even where they do not literally identify the influx of demons
through and utterance from the genitals, other descriptions of the
oracle from the early centuries of the Christian era onwards seem to
insist more generally upon the importance of the ideas either of a
vaginal opening or invaginated hollowness. Accounts speak generally of
the pythia's 'descent' to give her oracles, which has encouraged in
some the belief that the physical space of the oracle was didvided
between the place where the consulter's enquiry was voiced and the
inner space, either below the ground, in an inner space, or behind a
veil, from which the pythia gave her response.  Thus, different
accounts speak of the pythia delivering her oracles from the adyton,
the secret inner space of the temple, or from the stomion.  Stomion
signifies a mouth or opening, and supplies the English word stomach
because of this reference ....   The English word stomach is apt to
suggest belly-speaking [ventriloquism] beacuse the word signifies at
once a kind of burial in the depths of the body and an opening
outwards.  The stomion of the oracle seems to have suggested to many
that the space of consultation was a vocal space.  But it was also an
interior, or visceral space.  Entering the oracle, the enquirers thus
appeared to enter a resonant or speaking body." (p. 54)

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