Question…what are your favorite literary puns? Musical puns? Others?
Comment…Shakespeare’s anniversary was last Saturday…expect some Shakey-related links this week.
WORK
i.
he sat
on the edge of his bed
all night
day came
& he continued to sit there
he thought he would never be able
to understand
what had happened
—Robert Lax
—from Love Had a Compass: Journals and Poetry
WORD(S)
paronomasia /pair-on-ə-MAY-zee-uh/. noun. A play with words using words that sound alike but have different meanings. A pun. Perhaps the most famous example in literature are the opening lines of Shakespeare’s Richard III, “Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this sun of York,” in which the “sun” also refers to Richard himself, a son of the house of York. Paronomasia, in fact, can be broken down into five types…which I leave as an exercise for the Clamor. From Latin, from Greek paronomasia (play upon words which sound similarly), from paronomazein (to alter slightly, to call with slight change of name).
A few more examples of (literary) paronomasia:
“You see the earth takes twenty-four hours to turn round on its axis—” ¶ “Talking of axes,” said the Duchess, “chop off her head!” (Lewis Carroll)
“We had breakfast in the township of Soda, pop. 1001.” (Vladimir Nabokov)
“You can tune a guitar, but you can’t tuna fish. Unless, of course, you play bass.” (Douglas Adams)
“What is majesty, when stripped of its externals, but a jest?” (Edmund Burke)
And some thoughts on paronomosia, high and low.
“The point of paronomasia is that a mere accidental phonetic relationship assumes the appearance of a semantic relationship.” (Wolfgang Müller)
“Paranomasia: words that are unrelated but sound alike, placed in proximity for the fun or pleasing sound of it. Kissing cousins-in-law, couples that look good in public (or on paper) but aren’t, in fact, compatible. Not croce/crochet (false friends), but a place for the plaice or traditore-traduttore. The heart’s hurt, if you stretch it.” (Rachel Cantor)
“Paronomasia is a kind of verbal plague, a contagious sickness in the world of words…” (Vladimir Nabokov)
WEB
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Which Shakespeare Play Should I See? An Illustrated Flowchart
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Leaving the clickbait headline intact… → People obsessed with grammar aren’t as nice as everybody else, study suggests
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The Guardians Shakespeare 400 series is chock-a-block with interesting articles, columns and quizzes.
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The Medieval Death Bot tweets “real deaths from medieval coroner’s rolls.” [Indirectly via Reader B.]
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Today in 1859, U.S. Congressman and General Daniel Sickles is acquitted of murdering Philip Barton Key II, son of Francis Scott Key (composer of the “The Star Spangled Banner”), becoming the first person to successfully employ a defense of temporary insanity. Sickles, himself a serial adulterer, had suspected his wife of illicit liaisons before, but she’d successfully denied the accusations until an anonymous poison pen letter arrived…spurring Sickles to force his wife to write out a confession before he ran out and shot the unarmed Key multiple times. Newspapers at the time called Sickles a “hero” for “saving women from Key.”
WATCH/WITNESS
Scanned in its entirety, The First Book of Jazz is a charming little book by Langston Hughes (illustrated by Cliff Roberts).
REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES
- Reader B. has a (sad) point: “‘Aftermath’ is especially grim if we think of its application to mass casualty incidents, with humans being mowed down/under. All flesh is grass, eh?”
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