[lit-ideas] Illeism
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 31 Aug 2004 13:11:34 EDT
In a message dated 8/25/2004 6:16:23 PM Eastern Standard Time,
phatic@xxxxxxxxxx writes:
Phatic answers to his reader
Phatic considered how it was possible that he could be the author of
a work where he figured as a character in a third person narrative.
"I would have to somehow be beside myself," he thought.
--- That's illeism.
Cheers,
JL
From the OED
illeism [f. L. ille that man, he: after egoism.] Excessive use of the pronoun
he (either in reference to another person or to oneself in the third
person).
1809-10 COLERIDGE Friend (1818) I. 36
For one piece of egotism..there are fifty that steal out in the mask of
tuisms and ille-isms.
1817 Biog. Lit. 4
An index expurgatorius of certain well known and ever returning phrases,
both introductory and transitional, including the large assortment of modest
egotisms and flattering illeisms.
So <NOBR>i, one who makes much use of the pronoun he, or writes of himself
as he.
1832 Blackw. Mag. XXXII. 241
Your intense egotist cunningly avoids the use of the first personal pronoun.
He is, in fact, an Ille-ist.
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