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That is a very profound and searching critqiue: the non-literal is different from the literal, but to ask what the literal is is "silly." You were wandering on abut Derrida some time ago but apparently you were just spoofing us. I is precisely the difficulties of the _literal_ (which exists only in quoted texts) that was the point of departure for that "radi al uncertainy" you bloviated on. Now the very first time that someone seriously approaches a text in that "postmodern" fashion, recognizing the radical uncertainty of the text (as contrasted to the metaphysics of presence in oridnary speech) you retreat the most naive and silly of all the complaints abut "postmodernism" -- it's SILLY. A text (written rather than spontaneously spoken) is _encoded_ and has to be decoded by the reader. (See any of the studies in semiotics published in the lat 60 years and you will find that matter discussed at some length.) Literal cannot mean anything else that what is _thee_ on the page, and what is on the page is a cdoe which is meaningless until painfully decoded. That this process is not automatic is shown, for example, by the phenomenon of dyslexia. Most dyslexics have a good comand of English; they can follow complex oral staatements and they can formulate complex arguments in flexible and precise Enlish, but they cannot decode those inscrutable marks on the page. You recently yourself sufferered from a tmporary attack of dyslexia when you consturd _tion_ as _ing_, and have been digging a deeper and deeper hole for yurself as you stubbornly try to defend this error in decoding the literal. (Incidentally, the radical uncertainty that Derrida focuses on has nothing whatever to do with quantum mechanics, which is why the phrase is in scare quotes above. That uncertanty was one of the discoveries of modernism, not postmodernism. And of course the really serious uncertainty is the subect of the opening line of the oldest complete document we possess, neither modern nor postmodern, the Iliad which is all about what are sometimes now called "unintended consequences," i.e. the toatl inability of humans then and now to know what _all_ the consequences of any act will be, however simple that act.) "Gerontion" on the page has no meaning whatever -- literally it is unintelligible, and in gaily disregarding that and pursuing the figurative meanings of a non-existen literal meaning you show yourself utterly blind to all the tough issues of the hermeneutic circel. So let's rehearse. You cannot begin to speculate on the non-literal meaning of a word until you have (at least provisonally) construed the inconstruable, the word's _literal_ 'meaning,' that is, until you have somehow decoded thos strange marks on the page. For example, I'm a bit confused aboaut the lemon juice your refer to in the first line of your post. It makes little s ense to say that the literal was not lemon juice. Perhaps another example hypothetically contrasting the quoted from the unquoted will help here. (You have to remember that Derrida analyzed _some_ spoken language as "written," that is, as text. Suppose you were to hear someone in an auditroum or perhaps off to one side in a park singing one of the old Civil-Rights/Union songs -- say the one with the puzzling lines (when quoted in a text) "Like a tree that's standing by the river / We shall not be moved." It's really a pretty dumb song WHEN QUOTED, AS TEXT -- quoted either on the page or by the group singing it in the park. It not only is pretty banal and unintesting but it is nearly uninntelligible. To make sense of it we are thrown back in the hermeneutic circle of understanding the part before we understand it so we can understand the whole so then we can understand the part which we understood before without understanding it. But now let's (in our imagination) move to a location/time when the words were not quoted (even though they were not new but merely recited an older song they were still not text, not quoted) but were mouthed in the fac3 of the fire hoses and the police clubs and dogs by those who were, albeit stubbornly, moving, being moved, but continuing to sing "we shal not be moved," like a tree. Now the words are NEITHER litral nor metaphorical. There is nothing to construe, no 'literal' and 'non-literal" "meanings" to link together someohow, but an idividble unity of people, firehoses, police dogs, clubs, excited radio reporters, photogrpahers, water running down the gutters, bleeding foreheads. . . No text. Nothing quoted. Andthereareincidentalllynospacesbetweentheordsforspacesexistonlyintextnotinspeech. I guess you may not have realized that spaces were a code and like any code meaningless until the code is broken as it were. The genre of the word "Gerontion" is a title, and titles are empty until completed by the text of which ther are the title. (What is the 'literal' meaning of "his" in the title, "To His Coy Mistress"?) What is the literal meaning of "Paradise Regained" when the story ends with the hero merely returning unobserved to his mother's house. I inquired some weeks ago if anyone cudl link the varus pasages in 4Q to the instruments in a qurtet. Is it a violin, viola, or cello that sounds in theopening lines of Burnt Norton or is it some combination of two or all three of the instruments? No one responded: that is, none of us kows the literal meaning of the title under which the four poems were pbulished. And I've slipped into your vocabulary here, for obviously the printed marks (nine of them altogether including the spaces on both sides) don't refer to any instruments but to the quoted word "quartet." I believe Northrop Frye called this level, the level in which we have departed from the literal and are focusing on the sign theliteral refers to, as the historical level. So none of us is very sure abut eithr the literal or the historical meaning of this title, and probably before we start talking about the symbolic meaning of the phrase we should be a bit more certain aboaut those 'lower' levels. I would suppose the historical meaning of "Gerontion" (looking back on it from a prelinary 'reading' of the rest of the pome) has to be a person rather than some unkown speaker Geronting whatever that might be. The text retains its radical undecidability but at least we have a provisonal basis for talking about it with each other. If we start with neither the literal nor the historical meaning and plunge into some alleged symbolic meanign we are poor little sheep who have lost our way. Nothing connects. And while it is true that we will never have more than a provisional and uncertain understanding of the (historical and symbolic) meanings of the whole, we really can't talk abut the (historical) meaning of any one word, including the title) except by referring back to that (provisioal and undecidable) symbolic meaning of the whole. And unless we wish to launch into complete originality (which Eliot notes would be hpelessly unitelligible), we need to start with somethning fairly simple (unlie the quite unimple literal meaning and the onl slightly less complex than the historical meaning) -- which wuld seem to be an old frustrated man remembering his many failures to act. That's pretty simple, and quite unsatisfactory as an end point of our discussion, but it does enable discussion, which any attempt to move from the literal to the symbolic of the title word in isoaltion frustrates. And of course this is what Nancy has been trying to hammer into closed ears -- we need a place to start, and playing around with the unintelligible literal meaning of the title by itself frustrates even beginning to talk abut the poem. And now you should answer Marcia's quetion: "The chair's leg. A metaphorical usage, don't you think?" Again, a failure to grant the complexity of the literal and historical meanings can frustrate discuusion. If we focus on the historical meaning of "chair" by itself we cannot tell whether we are referring to an article of furniture or the Vice President of the United States while he ispresiding over the Senate. If that is the historical meaning here, then, I guess, Marcia is wrong and "leg" is quite non-metaphorical. So before we deicde the "literal" or "non-litereral" status of leg we do need to decode "chair," which taken by itslef we could not do. (Note, there is no problem in speech, with its metaphysics of presence: we are all standing in a room togeher and oneof us points to the chair and notes that the chiar'sleg is scratched. No problem with the Vice President here.) I'll stop here because I can't quite figure out even the correct question to ask of "leg." But before say8ing it's all simple, I really think you shouldanswer Marcia's question. Carrolu P.S. I advixe against anyone trying to show familarity with Derrida or decosntruction on the basis of my remarks, since I haven't really done the homework to cosntru "metaphysics of presence," "radical undecidabilty," "qutation," and "text," which are all technical terms I haven't myself fully mastered at all. DIana Manister wrote: > > Carrol, > > Granted that "literal" was not le mot juste for what I was trying to > say, but your explication is silly. Being literal does not mean > focussing on the letters in a word. A literal meaning is simply > different from a metaphorical or symbolic meaning. > > Diana > > Sent from my iPod > > On Feb 22, 2010, at 7:15 PM, Carrol Cox <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > > > Diana Manister wrote: > >> > >> Dear Nancy, > >> > >> I think it's counterproductive to be strictly literal about meanings > >> in poetry. > > > > Probably not possible. And if one wants to try to be literal, the > > place > > to start is with "literal," which if understood literally means > > focusingon the letters, their sounds, the progression of those sounds, > > etc etc. It would be the equivalent of geting so close to Picaso's > > Gurnica that all the lines and shapes disappeared and all one was > > examing were the brush strokes. As soon as you go by that 'level,' > > youcan no longer be literal, for words literally focused on are > > literally unitelligible. Look at "strokes" above. Does it refer to > > strokes of an oar, a medical condition, parts of love-making, parts > > of a > > lashing abut the fleet in the Royal Navy of the early 19th-c, > > instances > > (as in "strokes of luck"), a misprint for "sokes" as in "stoes the > > fireplace") or for "spokes" (as in a wheel), and so forth. (These are > > the kinds of difficulties, incidentally, that those who cry for a > > "literal" interpretation of the Constituion purposely ignore, for to > > take them into consideration is to show their hypocrisy.) To escape > > the > > trap of literalism means putting the letters, and thus the word, in > > some > > context, that is to identify the genre of the sentence, or larger > > unit, > > in which the word appears. (This is one version of what is called the > > hermeneutic circle: one must understand the whole to understand the > > parts but the whole can only be understood by understandin the > > words. It > > can be either a vicious or benevolent circle. And at that point it > > really becomes complicated.) > > > > Carrol > >