[lit-ideas] Meta-Odic
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 6 Sep 2013 19:56:03 -0400 (EDT)
I read from Wikipedia:
"]The Suwannee river] is the subject of the Stephen Foster song "Old Folks
at Home," in which he calls it the Swanee Ribber."
"Foster had named the Pedee River of South Carolina in his first lyrics.
It has been called Swanee River because Foster had misspelled the name."
"Foster never saw the river he made world famous."
"George Gershwin's song, with lyrics by Irving Caesar, and made popular by
Al Jolson, is also spelled "Swanee," and boasts that "the folks up North
will see me no more when I get to that Swanee shore.""
"Both these songs feature strumming banjos and reminiscences of a
plantation life more typical of 19th century South Carolina along the Peedee
than
among the swamps and small farms of the coastal plain of Georgia and
Florida."
-- So, I would say that Irving Caesar, as per above, is referring, in the
song, philosophically (vide Frege, "Sense and Reference", as 'translated' by
Geach) *not* (immediately, if mediately) to the [real] Suwannee river, but
to Foster's 'odic' Swanee river.
This is what I call 'meta-odic'.
I'm sure there are other examples.
--- (Geary may want to expand on the Caesar/Gershwin reference of the
'Swanee shore' as being 'Dixie' -- or not).
Meta-odic is then a meta-reference, within a song, not to reality, but to,
er, another song.
Cheers.
Speranza
---
PS: McEvoy wrote: "Was: Was is war is war" -- which brings us back to the
current etymology of 'was' and 'war' -- or not.
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