7.0501 Qs: Travel to Kiev; Devil's Dictionary (2/116)
Elaine Brennan (EDITORS@BROWNVM.BITNET)
Mon, 21 Feb 1994 22:39:52 EST
Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 7, No. 0501. Monday, 21 Feb 1994.
(1) Date: Fri, 18 Feb 94 15:22:33 PST (18 lines)
From: Paul Brians <BRIANS@WSUVM1>
Subject: Delivering a book to Kiev
(2) Date: Sun, 20 Feb 1994 02:04:51 -0500 (EST) (98 lines)
From: petersen@epas.utoronto.ca (Eric Petersen)
Subject: no subject (file transmission)
(1) --------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 18 Feb 94 15:22:33 PST
From: Paul Brians <BRIANS@WSUVM1>
Subject: Delivering a book to Kiev
In the past Humanist members have helped me deliver materials to
Chernobyl poet and victim Lyubov Sirota in Kiev. I need help once
again to have a copy of a book containing her poetry hand-delivered
to her. Is anyone going soon that would be willing to carry this
substantial volume (about the size of a moderate Stephen King novel,
hardbound) to her. She has been waiting for well over a year, and
an earlier attempt ended with the volume going astray before it
reached her.
She is a very interesting person, speaks some English, works in the
documentary film industry, and is still battling the aftereffects of
the fallout she received from the Chernobyl explosion.
Paul Brians, Washington State University, Pullman, WA 99164-5020
(2) --------------------------------------------------------------112---
Date: Sun, 20 Feb 1994 02:04:51 -0500 (EST)
From: petersen@epas.utoronto.ca (Eric Petersen)
Subject: no subject (file transmission)
All queries should be sent directly to me (petersen@epas.utornto.ca)
or better yet to Carrie Hintz (chintz@epas.utoronto.ca)
THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY OF LITERARY TERMS
[chintz@epas.utoronto.ca]
ATTENTION critics, scholars, writers, paragons of wit!
Does the current crop of literary glossaries, encyclopedias, and
indices make your eyes glaze over?
Have you ever suppressed a sneer at a particular school of criticism,
a baffling exemplum of Lit. Crit. jargon, or even at the entire discipline of
literary studies?
Do you agree that the most entertaining academic disagreements should
no longer be relegated to the letters columns of book review journals?
If so, take heed: you can finally do something about it! The editors
of THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY OF LITERARY TERMS have conspired to provide
a public forum for the critical disgruntlement which until now has
been suppressed in the name of scholarly propriety. Those other
dictionaries have no sense of the inherent absurdity of the academic
study of literature, and therefore don't allow for the scornful
repartee and whimsical commentary which will characterize our dictionary.
You are invited to send us as many original definitions as you wish.
Choose a term, a theoretical approach, or a literary personage, and
let loose a volley of your most scintillating wit. Be assured that others
will be merrily attacking the literary theories YOU hold most dear.
The completed DICTIONARY will be a compendium of bemused reflections,
pointed critiques and satiric reformulations. Each definition will
have a by-line to identify its author. Don't miss the chance to add
your voice to the most heteroglossic glossary ever!
Anything goes, style-wise. Here are a few sample definitions, but
don't feel obligated to imitate their format:
Allegoresis: A text-specific form of paranoia, in which the patient
appears to find a rigid structure of meaning beneath the "surface" of
the text.
Baudrillardian: Someone who may not believe in Santa Claus but
certainly believes in the omnipresence of Disneyland.
Irony: A conjuring. The true ironist is not the speaker but the
perceiver, who insists on pulling something out of nothing's hat.
MLA: Hypercarnivalesque. Attendees display a remarkable disseverment
of the link between the upper, reasoning portion of the body and the
"material bodily lower stratum". Sexuality is the only topic of
discussion here, yet actual sex is regarded as affrontery. Job
interviews are conducted in hotel rooms which lack beds.
Nothing: That thing about which everything can be said without fear
of censure, since even the most outrageous statements about it will
still come to naught.
Romanticism: A term ingeniously devised by literary historians to
describe a movement composed of writers and artists who, if they were
alive today, would immediately and without hesitation dissociate
themselves from each other.
************************************************************************
Send your submissions to:
chintz@epas.utoronto.ca
Or send with a SASE to:
The Editors, The Devil's Dictionary of Literary Terms
252 Westmoreland Avenue
Toronto, Ontario
Canada
M6H 3A4
You will be notified when our editorial decisions have been made.
Feel free to forward this call for submissions to anyone who might be
interested. Please do not change the text of this announcement.
The Devil's Dictionary of Literary Terms
(Copyright 1994 Warren Cariou and Carrie Hintz)