[lit-ideas] Conversation - "not permitted without tropes"?
- From: "" <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> (Redacted sender "Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx" for DMARC)
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 1 Mar 2015 12:38:24 -0500
In a message dated 3/1/2015 12:22:52 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
_lawrencehelm@roadrunner.com_ (mailto:lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx) in
"Emerson and
Surprise" quotes from Bloom quoting from Emerson's "Poetry and Imagination",
"where," Bloom writes, "after rightly observing that ‘conversation is not
permitted without tropes,’" Emerson does something that confirms that
allegedly right observation.
Perhaps the pre-text (or context leading to that) might help (but then it
might not!). "Not permitted" usually suggests some authority. Now, I would
NOT be surprised if Popper would think that even the conversation between
Einstein and someone who tried to refute him (Einstein) sprinkled their
conversation with this or that trope!
Yet another thing is that 'conversation is not POSSIBLE without tropes'!
If by 'trope' we mean something like a 'rhetorical figure' -- "figura
rhetorica" in Quintilian's phrase, then I think the above may be tautologous in
that even LITERALITY is a _trope_. (i.e. we tend to think of 'figuratively
speaking' as contrasted to 'literally' or 'non-figuratively speaking', but
EVERYTHING is a 'figure' for Quintilian. Go figure!
And, while we're at it, have you noticed how many conversationalists add
'literally' to utterances where the invited implicature seems confusing?
"Literally, it was snowing!" -- Geary may have some better specimens!
Cheers,
Speranza
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