[lit-ideas] Canine Masculinity: The Greek Root to It
- From: jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 09 Jan 2008 14:26:59 -0500
Geary writes:
"Cats are disgusting creatures. Normally they're creatures of
extraordinary dignity but not when it comes to sex. Then, in the throes, they
throw in the towel and begin this godawful sexual begging -- it's disgusting.
I have to wonder, is that what I sound like?"
I have to agree with Geary. I once did a philosophical study of this. I was
browsing S. Toulmin (the sometime Oxonian philosopher) and his ¨Uses of
Argument", where I saw for the first time in my serious study of philosophy an
iconic representation of the sentence used by Brits to learn the proper vowel
sounds. The sentence for which Toulmin provided a diagram -- to illustrate the
pictorial theory of meaning -- was:
The cat is on the mat.
I had then not access to the OED, just a much-used copy of (post-colonial) the
Longman Dict. of Contemporary English (ed. G. N. Leech), where I found:
cat: slang, nasty woman
mat: to be on the mat: to be punished.
I then following Toulmin inferred the use of argument,
The nasty woman is being punished.
So my point is that ´cat´is essentially a feminine noun, die Kaetz. It´s also a
Jewish surname in America, as in Jerry Katz.
(never in Anglo-Saxon).
The kit-kat was a type of frame similiar to the Clarendon. I learned that in C.
Osborne´s Oxford Dict. of Art.
When Isherwood´s ¨Berlin Stories¨ were adapted for the big screen, the club
were Sally Bowles is supposed to perform her cabaret perverted acts is called
the Kit Kat Klub.
I always loved the nasty sound to it.
Then there´s the Chat Noire -- another famous (Parisian this time) cabaret.
And Cat Woman, but never Cat Man.
Males are canine (hence cynicism); females feline. I wonder if the same applies
in Venus and Mars.
Greeks adored a dog -- he was and is still called the ¨Hellenic hound". On the
other hound [sic], the much much more primitive ´oriental´gypsies (Egyptians)
adored a cat to the point of embalmation. Can someone explain this? (Loeb
references preferred, Cyneica).
Cheers,
J. L. Speranza
Otherwise Canine.
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