"Even his name means wanker."

[Jonathan Lighter]

The book is no longer in front of me (don't know why), but "beauteous
niggard" may not be filthy enough to mention.

Indeed, it was Heraclitus (even his name reeks of porn) who said, "You
can't read  Wanker's fourth sonnet the same way once."

I stand corrected.


JL


On Thu, Aug 14, 2014 at 10:49 AM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: "Even his name means wanker."
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Aug 14, 2014, at 10:35 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>
> > You know who. Think about it. Oxford educator Pauline Kiernan spells =
> it out
> > again and again in her hilarious _Filthy Shakespeare_ (Quercus, 2005).
> >=20
> > But wait... The dust jacket calls this Four-X-rated treatment of the =
> bard
> > "deeply insightful."  So it isn't hilarious after all! It's true! =
> (Maybe
> > both? Naaaa. But postmodernwise you can't tell what's real and what's =
> a
> > riotous put-on. If you think you can, perhaps you're already =
> obsolete.)
> >=20
> > As for Kiernan, you be the judge. In any event, you'll never read =
> Sonnet IV
> > the same way again.
> >=20
> > JL
>
> Referring, I gather, to the references to spending.  Point taken (unless =
> we never read it the same way again in the first place).  But then again =
> it was already pretty challenging (especially in class) to deal with =
> line 5, where the poet addresses his narcissist lover as "beauteous =
> niggard".
>
> LH
> >=20
> >=20
> >=20
> > --=20
> > "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the =
> truth."
> >=20
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



-- 
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org