FN + LN

[Jonathan Lighter]

First name "Doctor" ?

  Good one, though, Charlie.

  JL

Charles Doyle <cdoyle at UGA.EDU> wrote:
  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Charles Doyle
Subject: Re: FN + LN
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I'm not sure about the old Rome or Anglo-Sacked Britain, but Renaissance England definitely WAS "a society in which the senses of 'distancing,' 'point of view,' and 'casting oneself as a dramatic protagonist' [were] highly developed." And Marlowe's Dr. Faustus, Early Modern Man epitomized (it could be argued), definitely DOES refer to himself regularly as "Faustus."

--Charlie
_____________________________________________________________
---- Original message ----
>Date: Wed, 6 Jun 2007 17:36:44 -0700
>From: Jonathan Lighter
>Subject: Re: FN + LN
>
> I've reconsidered my pre-Beowulfian hypothesis. To have full-blown "'Bob Dole' illeism," you need more than self-dramatizing speakers. You also need a society in which the senses of "distancing," "point of view," and "casting oneself as a dramatic protagonist" are highly developed. I wonder if the Old English were quite ready for this except, perhaps, in delirium.
>
> Caesar, of course, came close to being a Dolist in his memoirs, but the true Bob Dole illeist refers to himself or herself by name _for emphasis in ordinary speech_, not just as a written literary device.
>
> Theoretically Dolism can pop up anywhere and at any time, but I'll bet it's more common today, not so much because of the trail-blazing Bob Dole, but because modern culture has honed the above-mentioned senses to razor sharpness in more people than ever.
>
> JL

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