The first editor of the OED, Sir James Murray, circa 1880 in his "Scriptorium"
"5. Erroneous, spurious, or ghost words
Occasionally ‘ghost’ words find their way into print and into dictionaries. Typically these are the result of misreadings of manuscripts or of typographical errors by printers. The Dictionary includes a number of these, labeled as ‘spurious’ entries, when the words have been used incorrectly in former editions of texts or have otherwise achieved some spurious existence."
Niiice! I'll have to think about this one more after I sleep, there is some potential to the notion of a ghost word. Tomorrow I am presenting on the chapter "Myth, Melopeia, and Mimesis: Black Orpheus, Orfeu, and Internationalization in Brazilian Pop Music" from this book. As the chapter title indicates, it examines the central role that the music from Vinicius de Moraes's Orpheus play and the subsequent film adaptations had in globalization Brazilian pop music. So I thought it was rather serendipitous that one of the quotations in the OED that demonstrates the usage of the word "anthropophagy" reads, "1753 CHAMBERS Cycl. Supp. s.v., The Greek writers represent Anthropophagy as universal before Orpheus." How cool is that?! It seems as if there is some strange intertextual play between the the word, anthropophagy, the many incarnations of the Orpheus myth in 20th century Brazil, and Oswalde de Andrade's 1928 "Manifeste Anthropophage." Or maybe I'm just tired and it's much more random than it appears, probably the latter.
7 comments:
I can think of someone who uses ghost words to define anthropophagy.
You're right, I did like it. So I looked up anthropophagy in Wikipedia to see what it had. It gave 5 subheadings, the last being the Eucharist. Still creeps me out.
And the reason why I'm sharing this? My excuse is that Brazil's supposedly the largest Catholic country in the world.
I loved the idea of a ghost word. It sounds like a lot more fun than a simple spurious words. How mundane.
If you get to read Jean de Lery's account (History of a Voyage to the Land of Brazil, Also Called America) of Brazil and its people from 1578 he talks of their anthropophagy and defends the native's practive of it by not only comparing it to the Eucharist (he was protestant and at war with Catholic nations) but also contextualizing the cultural differences between Europeans and Natives in Brazil. His account has been called one of the first anthropological 'field work' accounts and is a really fascinating case of conquest and colonization pseudo-nonfiction (as I call it).
Jared: more more more!
Vanessa: Interesting, Eucharist-Anthropophagy. I remember reading about that somewhere, I think in a book about gnosticism or early Christianity.
MAc: Thanks for tip. I bet his book wasn't too popular for having said that. Also, after a rough quarter in a colonial literature course, I like your term, "pseudo-nonfiction."
Hey dude,
first, way to go on the new background. way cool. anthropophagy. it's a great word isn't it? it's all over studies of the colonial era since cannibalism was such a hot topic during the conquest, gracias a los aztecas and bernal diaz. i also recommend jean de lery's book. it was probably very popular among the protestants... i read it for a history course back at byu and it's really interesting; it's actually a page turner, at least the translation that i used. currently i'm actually doing a paper on colonial pseudo-nonfiction and there're a couple of books on it, specifically tied to carlos de siguenza y gongora since he wrote so many pseudo-nonfictional historical books. it's pseudo-ness is tied partly to the fact that the writers used rhetorical and literary models so they would be more readable, as well as to the desire/need/tendency to look for exemplary behavior in history as models for proper human behavior and praise monarchs, great deeds, etc. there are a lot more details to that, but those are the basic tenets of renaissance and baroque "histories". interesting stuff.
So, this isn't directly related to the word anthropophagy, but it is directly related to the OED.
One of the best nonfiction books I've ever read is The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester about Murray and his main contributor to the OED, who was a permanent resident in an insane asylum (unbeknownst to Murray). Fascinating stuff. I highly recommend it. No ghosts, but definitely some hallucinations and delusions.
Not quite as good, but almost as interesting is Winchester's other book on the OED, The Meaning of Everything. It's about the process by which the dictionary was created. It's also an engaging read. Just FYI, really.
Rantipoler, I remember hearing a piece on NPR about one of those booksa few years back. Thanks for the suggestions, I'll have to check them out. When I finish school I want to get a copy of the concise OED (the one that comes with the magnifying glass) and one of those cool rotating dictionary stands for my office, if I get a job, that is.
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