5.0746 Rs: Revival; Golems; Odyssey; Concording; Mis- (5/91)

Elaine Brennan & Allen Renear (EDITORS@BROWNVM.BITNET)
Wed, 4 Mar 1992 23:12:38 EST

Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 5, No. 0746. Wednesday, 4 Mar 1992.


(1) Date: Tue, 3 Mar 92 9:15 GMT (23 lines)
From: Don Fowler <DPF@vax.oxford.ac.uk>
Subject: RE: 5.0734 Qs: Revival Story

(2) Date: Tue, 3 Mar 92 23:49:51 EST (37 lines)
From: Sarah L. Higley <slhi@uhura.cc.rochester.edu>
Subject: Golems and Science Fiction

(3) Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1992 21:35 EDT (11 lines)
From: John Lavagnino <LAV@BRANDEIS.BITNET>
Subject: Samuel Butler on the Odyssey

(4) Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1992 21:30 EDT (14 lines)
From: John Lavagnino <LAV@BRANDEIS.BITNET>
Subject: Concordancing

(5) Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1992 12:51 CST (6 lines)
From: GORGO@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re: 5.0743 Rs: Mis-whatever

(1) --------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 3 Mar 92 9:15 GMT
From: Don Fowler <DPF@vax.oxford.ac.uk>
Subject: RE: 5.0734 Qs: Misc. E-Queries; Proust; Revival Story (6/103)

There are doubtless many stories of revivals after hanging, but two
are mentioned in Plot's _Natural History of Oxfordshire_ as happening to
women in the 17th century in Oxford. We have a copy in our college library,
but it is not to hand, so this is from memory. Both relate to infanticide,
and may relate to new laws on this in England. In the first, a woman has a
miscarriage, and the baby is found in the privy. She is hanged for
infanticide: she is seen to be still breathing, and is struck by a soldier
with a musket etc as "acts of charity". But when taken to be dissected by
the university doctors, she is found still to be alive: is bled, put into
bed with another girl to warm her up, and revives. The city authorities want
to have another go, but are prevented by the university: eventually she is
pardoned, and lives a number of years later. Plot relates her "near death"
experiences of the other world.
He then relates another case, where a girl accused of infanticide
revives when taken down. But she had no friends to appear for her, and so
was dragged from the house where she was reviving and hanged again at
Gloucester Green (where the Oxford Bus Station now is). I've often thought
she deserves a plaque.
Don Fowler, Jesus College Oxford.
(2) --------------------------------------------------------------50----
Date: Tue, 3 Mar 92 23:49:51 EST
From: Sarah L. Higley <slhi@uhura.cc.rochester.edu>
Subject: Golems and Science Fiction


Regarding Mark Bregman's recent query about genre, I'd say that the golem
legend certainly contributes to the countless sf stories about androids,
robots, cyborgs and other unhappy creatures of human making-- and it may
even have directly contributed to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein-- but it is
not science fiction, or even an "early manifestation" of it except in the
most general sense. The learned man calls upon the mystic power of God
to breathe life into the golem-- in turn calling upon the countless COUNTLESS
stories about the _statue animee_ which have been with us since the first
creation myths. Moving statues, clay forms that come to life, even animated
tripods and metal servants certainly are precursors to the robot but they
are usually moved by a demon or a spirit or some divine agency, or called
into being by a priest. You get "science fiction" (that broad term) when
the agency is specifically seen as NOT divine, but capable of human production.
In this sense, which might be a narrow one but one I insist upon in my classes,
_The Kingdom of Roma_ in the _Lokapannati_ is a science fiction story because
it calls the makers of the spirited moving statues "technicians" and their
technology is transmissible, even jealously guarded. In fact, the whole
story is about technology. Why does Rome have it and Burma not? How can
Burma get it? What are the consequences? Death. Very science fictiony.

To come at my point from another angle, I think that science fiction is the
post-cursor to tales of magic and wonder, the story of the android but an
extension of the story of the golem-- only with the pseudoscience injected.
After all, what is Edison in Villier L'Isle-Adam's _L'Eve Future_ but a
late nineteenth-century necromancer? instead of the wand and the cloak with
stars and the pointy hat and all the traditional hermetic paraphanalia, he
has electricity and the phonograph and the slide projector.

Science fiction with all its "techno-babble" (a term used by the writers of
Star Trek for what Geordi says) is the new scientific "hermeticism."

Sarah Higley The University of Rochester NY
(3) --------------------------------------------------------------20----
Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1992 21:35 EDT
From: John Lavagnino <LAV@BRANDEIS.BITNET>
Subject: Samuel Butler on the Odyssey

After Butler published *The Authoress of the Odyssey*, Anne Thackeray
Ritchie, the novelist, said to him that she'd come up with a new theory:
that Shakespeare's sonnets were really written by Anne Hathaway. Butler
managed not to see the joke; he went around telling people about this
incident and commenting on what a silly thing it was to say.

John Lavagnino, Brandeis
(4) --------------------------------------------------------------23----
Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1992 21:30 EDT
From: John Lavagnino <LAV@BRANDEIS.BITNET>
Subject: Concordancing

I recommend taking a look at the standard work on the subject: T. H.
Howard-Hill, *Literary Concordances* (Oxford: Pergamon, 1979). It goes
into most of the questions that you can imagine having about
concordances. Perhaps the only one that's left out is the question of
whether you should still bother with this when an electronic text does
all a concordance does and more. It does remain true, though, that if
you create a good electronic text the preparation of a concordance
derived from it is no great task.

John Lavagnino, Brandeis University
(5) --------------------------------------------------------------17----
Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1992 12:51 CST
From: GORGO@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re: 5.0743 Rs: Mis-whatever

Mr. Haupt has unintentionally I hope inserted a new word into this discussion,
"mysandrist," which must be taken to mean "mouse-man."