The Igor Tale: Humor and Irony

[colkitto at sprint.ca]

Original Message:
-----------------
From: Daniel Rancour-Laferriere darancourlaferriere at COMCAST.NET
Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2006 12:20:53 -0800
To: SEELANGS at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU
Subject: [SEELANGS] The Igor Tale: Humor and Irony


> Isn't it ironic, also, that the Igor Tale itself may be a hoax?  (See 
> the recent book by Edward Keenan on Josef Dobrovsky).  Keenan observes 
> that Dobrovsky suffered from severe depression.  When Keenan presented 
> his thesis at a recent Slavic conference, I walked up to him afterwards 
> and pointed out some psychiatric evidence for his thesis: people who 
> suffer serious depression often have serious memory problems as well.  
> It is possible that Dobrovsky literally forgot that he wrote the Igor 
> tale, then honestly came to believe that he had discovered it.  Keenan 
> waved his arm in disgust, and while turning away from me declared he 
> does not believe in "psychoanalysis at a distance." 


The likelihood of the Igor Tale being a hoax is vanishingly small, despite
Keenan's special pleading and ingenious treatment of many contentious forms
therein.  To cite just one example, Zaliznjak's recent work, written from
an exclusively linguistic point of view, is simply the latest in a long
line of studies that show that, given the state of knowledge of the history
of Slavic in the late 1700's/early 1800's, the Igor Tale simply could not
have been fabricated, and must be accepted as genuine. 

Robert Orr



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