Subject: Fowl Proscriptions
From: Matt Kozusko (mkozusko@parallel.park.uga.edu)
Date: Tue Jan 25 2000 - 14:03:54 EST
A problem with Fowler is that he is comfortably blind to his own
pompous posturing, yet anxious and able to adjudicate everyone
else's. And of course the wonderful colors of his own writing would
not be so rich without the constant creative recombinations of
meaning, idiom, dialect, meaning, etc.
Were everyone to observe, with proper stoicism (and snootiness?),
Fowler's proscriptions for participles, what a limited range writing
would be reduced to! His inexhaustible supply of quotations in which
famous writers commit famous indiscretions suggests one thing about
writing more than it suggests anything about usage: the canon's
greatest writers constantly abuse the language's endless rules.
He would frown on the use of "acutality" in which the reviewer had
activated distant gallic associations and favor instead a strict
demarcation between English and French. But would he be so
enthusiastic about enforcing idiomatic barriers whose violation so
often enriches a story, a comment, an exclamation? Or indeed, the
larger lanaguage barriers that separate, say, Romance from Germanic?
Is there no felicity in Thomas Carlyle's frequent consort with Latin,
just because he writes this or that piece in English?
Besides, it's an old book. Excellent as entertainment and sometimes
useful for advice, but not to be taken too seriously.
-- Matt Kozusko mkozusko@parallel.park.uga.edu - * Unsubscribing? Mail majordomo@roughdraft.org with the message * UNSUBSCRIBE BANANAFISH
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b25 : Mon Feb 28 2000 - 08:38:03 EST