The English Miscellany

Anaïs Nin Dedications, like Prefaces, are a neglected field in the study of book construction and creative composition. But they can reveal quite a lot about power and politics; authorship and authority; celebration and bitterness. In critical terms deconstructionists would argue that a preface displaces and defaces the text that follows, perhaps (humorously?) tripping it up, or tying it up in precursor knots.Often Jacques Derrida never got past the deconstruction of the preface, or a footnote therein, in order to make his 'point'. And you probably recall all the levels of ludicrous entrapment that Jonathan Swift employed in A Tale of a Tub (1704) ? Have dedications grown shorter and more ironic (or bitter) since the dec line of aristocratic patronage? Are they still a zone of praise or insult? What about this one, taken from Herman Melville's Israel Potter: His Fifty Years of Exile (1854) TO His Highness THE BUNKER-HILL MONUMENT (Discu

Since the replacement of the octagonal mahogany dining tables with pine benches you can never be quite sure who you'll end up sitting down beside during the lunch break in the Senior Common Room. Yesterday, Dr Ptolemy Macrobius, Reader in Paranormal Psychology, was expounding some of the key advances that had taken place in reaction to the limitations exposed in Theodor Adorno's dialectical materialist debunking of the topic in The Stars Down to Earth and other Essays (1952-3 / 1994). Yet this work deserves a little respect! I responded: “It pretends to a higher level of scientificness than the supposedly more primitive forms of esoteric wisdom without, however, entering into the argument itself: the lack of a transparent interconnection between astronomical observations and inferences pertaining to the fate of individuals or nations… Astrology attempts to get away from crude and unpopular fatalism by establishing outward forces operating on the individual’s de

Slavoj Žižek The anxious researcher is unsure about placing the entry on philosophical humour between phallic ritual and physical comedy . Encyclopaedic collisions and incongruities abound. Is this a breach of academic decorum? Would it be safer simply to abandon the alphabetical approach to comedy and humour in this book on Aspects of Comedy ? Another anxiety: is this entry concerned with the philosophy of humour, or humour in philosophy? How much space should be allocated to Slavoj Žižek? (A philosopher, a public intellectual, and a comedian). In parenthesis --- ("there is a case to be made that Slavoj Žižek is really the Ken Dodd of post-Lacanian Hegelianism." --- Lindesay Irvine, Guardian , 6 January 2012, here ) --- And how funny is Žižek's The Ticklish Subject: the absent centre of political ontology (Verso, 1999)? I have my doubts. I guess his work will always divide opinion. Take a look at his highly controversial review essay on Benig

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City Scenes, Or, A Peep Into London,  for Good Children (1809) COME, peep at London's famous town, Nor need you travel there; For one foot up, and one foot down, In future, you may spare: At home, a hundred miles away, 'Tis easy now to look, At City Scenes, and London gay, In this my little book.       (“Introduction”) I've recently been examining a wide range of sketches, illustrations, scenes and caricatures from the eighteenth and nineteenth century. I'm particularly interested in the inter-connections between visualised text and the 'reading' of images. I'm also interested in how other senses are called upon to suggest the smell, feel and touch of the writings and depictions. There is also the deconstructive question concerning the image/text relationship. To what extent does the one silence, screen, or block out the other? Does the book as supplement to a real jounrey engage with an imagined journey that supplants the

Discriminate. A companion to "don't." a manual for guidance in the use of correct words and phrases in ordinary speech , (New York: 1891.) instructed its readers Discriminate in the use of CAPTION and HEADING. It is a perversion of the word caption to use it in the sense of heading , although this is frequently done in the United States. Caption means seizure or act of taking, and not headship. Don't say, “The caption of a chapter, section, or page”; use heading . (p. 22) In his Dictionary of Americanisms: a glossary of words and phrases, usually regarded as peculiar to the United States (1848), John Russell Bartlett explained Caption , this legal term is used in the newspapers where an Englishman would say title, head , or heading .   On the other hand ... Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage (1995) noted You will find few of them who object to December being used for the twelfth month, when

The anecdotal jocularity of sexual frisson has never been far from Raine's World. A review of Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years by Brian Boyd (Chatto, 783 pp, £25.00, January 1992) is perhaps symptomatic: His private manner was utterly winning, particularly his comic mode. Boyd includes two anecdotes, both innocently revealing. In the late Sixties, Nabokov asked Alfred Appel if student unrest was disrupting his lectures. The only demonstrations were demonstrations of affection; I told him about a nun who sat in the back row of one of my lecture courses, and who one day complained after class that a couple near her were always spooning. ‘Sister,’ I said, ‘in these troubled times we should be grateful if that’s all they were doing.’ ... ‘Ohhh,’ moaned Nabokov, mourning my lost opportunity, clapping his hand to his head in mock anguish. ‘You should have said, “Sister, be grateful that they were not forking.’ ” ["Craig Raine fondles Vladimir Nabokov" ;