[lit-ideas] Illeism

 
 
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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