5.0206 Lipograms (4/67)
Elaine Brennan & Allen Renear (EDITORS@BROWNVM.BITNET)
Sun, 30 Jun 91 22:36:38 EDT
Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 5, No. 0206. Sunday, 30 Jun 1991.
(1) Date: Fri, 28 Jun 91 9:41 BST (18 lines)
From: Don Fowler <DPF@vax.oxford.ac.uk>
Subject: RE: 5.0193 Notes: ... Lipogrammatic
(2) Date: Fri, 28 Jun 1991 13:18 +0100 (12 lines)
From: KNAPPEN@VKPMZD.KPH.Uni-Mainz.de
Subject: Re: 5.0193 Notes: ... Lipogrammatic
(3) Date: Sun, 30 Jun 91 14:15 CDT (12 lines)
From: Michael Ossar <MLO@KSUVM>
Subject: lipograms
(4) Date: 29 Jun 91 11:19:00 EDT (25 lines)
From: "Mary Dee Harris" <mdharris@guvax.georgetown.edu>
Subject: Lipograms
(1) --------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 28 Jun 91 9:41 BST
From: Don Fowler <DPF@vax.oxford.ac.uk>
Subject: RE: 5.0193 Notes: Plurals; E-Witt; Lipogrammatic; Pogo (4/73)
I can't help with the French lipogrammatist, but one of the early
heroes of the genre deserves a mention, L. Septimius Nestor (2/3 C AD), who
rewrote the Iliad so that book one contained no alpha, book two no beta, and
so on. Acc. to the Souda, Tryphiodorus did the same for the Odyssey. We have
no fragments, but a few years ago a papyrus fragment of a satyr play turned
up which was observed to entirely avoid the letter sigma.
Eleanor Bron, I think it was, used to do a sketch about the Short
Words Club (a parallel institution to the Sesquipedalian Society) who just
made use of words with one bit in them. What if we had a week on the net when
we all did the same?
Don Fowler.
(2) --------------------------------------------------------------19----
Date: Fri, 28 Jun 1991 13:18 +0100
From: KNAPPEN@VKPMZD.KPH.Uni-Mainz.de
Subject: Re: 5.0193 Notes: Plurals; E-Witt; Lipogrammatic; Pogo (4/73)
On lipogramms:
It is a translation of ``La dispartition'':
Anton Voyls Fortgang,
2001, Frankfurt am Main, 1986.
(Translator was Eugen Heml'e)
J"org K.
(3) --------------------------------------------------------------17----
Date: Sun, 30 Jun 91 14:15 CDT
From: Michael Ossar <MLO@KSUVM>
Subject: lipograms
The following information is from Warren Motte of the University of Colorado:
Michael-
Thanks for the lipogram stuff. The seminal study is Georges Perec's
"Histoire du lipogramme," translated as "History of the Lipogram" in my
Oulipo: A Primer of Potential Literature (Lincoln: University of Nebraska
Press, 1986), 97-108.
Would you pass that information along to the lipoaficionados?
(4) --------------------------------------------------------------33----
Date: 29 Jun 91 11:19:00 EDT
From: "Mary Dee Harris" <mdharris@guvax.georgetown.edu>
Subject: Lipograms
Quoting from O.B. Hardison's book _Disappearing Through the Skylight_:
"The lipogram--a composition that elects to omit one or more letters--
is another literary game. A famous ancient example cited by Georges Perec
in his "History of the lipogram" is the translation of the _Iliad_ by Nestor
of Laranda with "A" omitted from Book I, "B" from Book II, "C" from Book III,
and so on. Perec cites English lipograms that banish all vowels but one:
Iding I sit in this mild twilight dim
Whilst birds, in wild swift vigils, circling skim.
and
Lucullus snuffs up musk, Mundungus shuns." (p. 198)
According to Hardison, two novels that never use the letter "e" are: Ernest
V. Wright's _Gadsby: A Story of Over 50,000 Words Without Using the Letter E_
(1939) and Georges Perec's _La Disparition_ (The Disappearance, 1969, reissued
1981). Hardison has several paragraphs describing some of the effects of
leaving out the letter "e" in La Disparition.