I did see the film, "Wilde", with Stephen Fry, but Reading will always have
with me connotations of Barb'ry Town:
"In Scarlet Town, where I was born,"
Surely a reference to Reading, which the Brits, just to be Brits, spell as
if the wish to paint the town read ("Redding").
The implicature seems to be that since Barb'ry Allen was not exactly a
saint, the re-figuring of 'Redding' into "Scarlet" is meant to be understood as
an implicature.
In a message dated 10/7/2015 9:59:22 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:
"A major portion of "About This" is subtitled "The Ballad of Reading
Gaol." Mayakovsky was only self-imprisoned -- nothing at all like Oscar
Wilde's
two-years in Reading Gaol, but Marshall writes, "The editors of the 1940
edition of the Collected Works give this note to the section headed 'Ballad
of Reading Gaol': 'This work of Oscar Wilde, written in prison, was taken
for its association with the external conditions in which Maykovsky found
himself at the time.'" I'm not so sure about that."
This is a case, mabbe, for an application of what H. P. G. calls
M-intention -- intention to mean. We seem to be having, as Helm realises
(b) Mayakovsky's editors' intentions.
(c) Mayakovsky's m-intentions.
It seems Mayajovsky is not alone in this: a few authors (cf. keyword:
authorial intention) have been 'victims' of their editors, and addressees
sometimes have to follow invited 'implicatures' that belong to the author's
editor rather than the author himself. I think the first to be victimised this
way was Shakespeare, but Geary says Homer.
So, while Helm is explicit that the reference to the gaol in Reading is a
note by the editors, it is interesting to use the example as a case where a
literary critic, say, may end up, via 'echoic mention', as some would say,
attributing to the utterer what merely a co-utterer meant (or failed to
mean for that matter).
Cheers,
Speranza
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