"boy friend/ boyfriend" [WAS a new kind of "guy"]

[Laurence Horn]

At 9:54 PM -0700 6/17/07, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>Off topic, but useless information should be shared:
>
>   Later Greek tradition tended to the view that Pat and Ack were
>lovers, and Shakespeare's _Troilus & Cressida_ is in line with that.
>There is, however, nothing whatever in the Iliad to indicate that
>they were anything other than cousins and foster brothers, having
>grown up, as Homer tells us, in the court of Peleus in Phthia. There
>is even a reference to both characters in bed with female concubines.

Right; in fact the relationship between Ack and his concubine--in
particular, his sulking because Aggie filched her for his own
purposes--is what got him into the sulk that set the rest of the
machinery into motion.  As I understand it, though, that wouldn't
have precluded a deeper love between him and Pat, and I remember
being convinced by my "Concept of the Tragic Spirit" when I was an
undergraduate a couple of hundred years ago that that was the only
way to read the Iliad, although I can't remember the details.  I do
have to acknowledge, however, that Wolfgang Petersen's definitive
rendering in "Troy" (not to mention Brad Pitt's moving
portrayal--"Brad Pitt *is* Achilles", as one poster observes) tends
to support the platonic reading.

LH

>
>   The primary source of the assumption that the dynamic duo was gay
>seems always to have been the extreme grief Ack expresses for the
>loss of Pat.  Ack, however, is one-half immortal and nearly
>everything he does is excessive by later, North European,
>stiff-upper-lip standards. (And compare the extreme demonstrations
>of emotion coming out of the eastern Mediterranean and points east
>on video almost every week.)
>
>   One could claim on equal authority that because Hekuba exposes her
>breasts in grief to her son Hektor when his death is imminent that
>something umunusual is going on there. I doubt it.
>
>   There is very little basis in the Iliad itself for assuming a gay
>relationship between
>   A & P.
>
>   JL
>
>Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU> wrote:
>   ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>-----------------------
>Sender: American Dialect Society
>Poster: Laurence Horn
>Subject: Re: "boy friend/ boyfriend" [WAS a new kind of "guy"]
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>At 11:02 PM -0400 6/17/07, Mark Mandel wrote:
>>Whoops, my error. I mistook the aside as part of the quotation, not your
>>comment on it. Color my face red.
>>
>>m a m
>
>Ironically (if I can get away with using that adverb here), Patroclus
>*is* generally recognized as having been Achilles's boyfriend, in the
>value-added sense; it's hard to read either the Iliad or
>Shakespeare's T&C any other way. Not that the Lambs would have so
>recognized him, at least in print.
>
>LH
>
>>
>>On 6/17/07, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>>>
>>>Mark, this is a kid's book. Written in _1911_.
>>>
>>>  JL
>>>
>>>Mark Mandel wrote:
>>>  ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>>-----------------------
>>>Sender: American Dialect Society
>>>Poster: Mark Mandel
>>>Subject: Re: "boy friend/ boyfriend" [WAS a new kind of "guy"]
>>>
>>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>>On 6/15/07, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>  1911 Winston Stokes, Charles Lamb & Mary Lamb_All Shakespeare's Tales_ (
>>>>  N.Y.: Stokes) 302: Troilus and Cressida... Achilles lay idly in his
>>>tent,
>>>>  listening to his boy friend Patroclus. [Not what you think, you filthy
>>>>  rotter!]
>>>
>>>
>>>That aside makes a good case for a common sexual-attraction use of "boy
>>>friend" in 1911.
>>>
>>>m a m
>>>
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