10.0610 humble trope

WILLARD MCCARTY (willard.mccarty@kcl.ac.uk)
Sun, 19 Jan 1997 17:32:12 +0000 (GMT)

Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 10, No. 610.
Center for Electronic Texts in the Humanities (Princeton/Rutgers)
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
Information at http://www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/

[1] From: "Peter D. Junger" <junger@samsara.law.cwru.edu> (3)
Subject: Re: 10.0602 unknown genre?

[2] From: Francois Lachance <lachance@chass.utoronto.ca> (6)
Subject: most humble genre

[3] From: Patricia Galloway <galloway@mdah.state.ms.us> (7)
Subject: Re: 10.0602 unknown genre?

--[1]----------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 17 Jan 1997 21:19:25 -0500
From: "Peter D. Junger" <junger@samsara.law.cwru.edu>
Subject: Re: 10.0602 unknown genre?

From: "Peter D. Junger" <junger@samsara.law.cwru.edu>

Would not an example of your genre be Wittgenstein's Tractatus,
with its famous conclusion---rather than beginning---``Wovon man nicht
sprechen kann, davon muss man schweigen''?

--[2]----------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 17 Jan 1997 16:52:37 -0500 (EST)
From: Francois Lachance <lachance@chass.utoronto.ca>
Subject: most humble genre

Willard,

The genre you descibe sound like "sermo humilis" in the Christian tradition.
Eric Auerbach offers in <cite>Literary Language and Its Public in Late Latin
Antiquity and in the Middle Ages</cite> a paper on the subject.
There maybe something similar in the Taoist tradition...

-- 
Francois

--[3]---------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 17 Jan 1997 15:43:49 -0500 From: Patricia Galloway <galloway@mdah.state.ms.us> Subject: Re: 10.0602 unknown genre?

"start out with or are shaped by an explanation for why the author cannot say anything useful about an assigned topic but which nevertheless succeed in contributing to this topic or are otherwise worthy."

Doesn't this fall under the so-called (because usually ironic) modesty topos?

Pat Galloway MS Dept. of Archives and History