THE FOUNDATION OF LETTERS •/ • • / : * Edited by JONATHAN CULLER On Puns The Foundation of Letters edited by Jonathan Culler Copyright 2005 by Jonathan Culler All rights reserved Previously published by Basil Blackwell Inc. 432 Park Avenue South, Suite 1503 New York, NY 10016, USA ISBN o-631-15893-6 ISBN o-631-15894-4 Pbk Published by The Internet-First University Press This manuscript is among the initial offerings being published as part of a new approach to scholarly publishing. This manuscript is freely available from the DSpace repository at Cornell University http://dspace.library.cornell.edu/index.jsp The online version of this work is available on an open access basis, without fees or restrictions on personal use. Hardcopy is obtainable on demand for a fee from Cornell Business Services via email: [email protected] All mass reproduction, even for educational or not-for-profit use, requires permission and licensing. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Ithaca, NY June 2005 On Puns The Foundation of Letters Edited by Jonathan Culler Basil Blackwell Copyright © Basil Blackwell 1988 First published 1988 Basil Blackwell Ltd 108 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 iJF, UK Basil Blackwell Inc. 432 Park Avenue South, Suite 1503 New York, NY 10016, USA All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data On puns: the foundation of letters. 1. Puns and punning - History and criticism I. Culler, Jonathan 809.7 PN6149.P85 ISBN0-631-15893-6 ISBNo-63i-i5894-4Pbk Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data On puns: the foundation of letters/edited by Jonathan Culler. p. cm. Based on a conference sponsored by the Society for the Humanities, Cornell University, in September 1985. Includes index. ISBN0-631-15893-6 ISBN 0-631-15894-4^.) 1. Puns and punning - History and criticism. I. Culler, Jonathan D. II. Society for the Humanities. PN6149.P8505 1988 809 - dc 19 Typeset in 10 on i2pt Ehrhardt by Joshua Associates Limited, Oxford Printed in Great Britain by Page Bros Ltd., Norwich Contents Acknowledgements vi Contributors vii 1 The Call of the Phoneme: Introduction i Jonathan Culler 2 Ars Est Caelare Artem (Art in Puns and Anagrams Engraved) 17 FrederickAhl 3 The Play of Puns in Late Middle English Poetry: Concerning Juxtology 44 R.A.Shoaf 4 The Jest Disgested: Perspectives on History in Henry V 62 Krystian Czerniecki 5 Rhyme Puns 83 Debra Fried 6 'The Pasde Calais': Freud, the Transference and the Sense of Woman's Humor 100 jfoelFineman 7 LeSujetSuppositaire: Freud and Rat Man 115 AvitalRonell 8 Unpacking the Portmanteau, or Who's Afraid of Finnegans Wake} 140 DerekAttridge 9 Eat Your Dasein: Lacan's Self-Consuming Puns 156 Frangoise Meltzer 10 The Puncept in Grammatology 164 Gregory Ulmer Index 191 Acknowledgements This volume began as a conference, 'The Call of the Phoneme: Puns and the Foundation of Letters', sponsored by the Society for the Humanities, Cornell University (*Honi Soit Qui Mai Y Puns'), in September 1985. Substantial revisions and five additional papers - by Attridge, Czerniecki, Fineman, Meltzer and Shoaf - have since accreted to the original presentations. I am grateful to Frederick Ahl, who helped to conceive and organize the conference, and to other friends and colleagues who variously assisted with the conference or the volume: Mary Ahl, Cynthia Chase and William Levitan. A longer version of Derek Attridge's essay appears in his Peculiar Language: Literature as Difference from the Renaissance to James Joyce, © Derek Attridge (London: Routledge, and Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988). It appears here by permission of Cornell University Press and Routledge. Some material in Frederick Ahl's essay is adapted from his book Metaformations: Soundplay and Wordplay in Ovid and Other Classical Poets (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985). Jonathan Culler Ithaca, New York Contributors Frederick Ahl, Professor of Classics at Cornell, has written Metaformations: Soundpky and Wordplay in Ovid and Other Classical Poets (Cornell) and translated Seneca's Phaedra, Medea and Trojan Women for the Cornell 'Masters of Latin Literature*. Derek Attridge, Professor of English at the University of Strathclyde and Visiting Professor at Rutgers, is the author of The Rhythms of English Poetry (Longman) and PeculiarLanguage:Literature as Difference from theRenaissanceto James Joyce (Cornell and Routledge). Jonathan Culler, Director of the Society for the Humanities at Cornell, has written several works of literary theory, including OnDeconstruction (Cornell and Routledge) and Framing the Sign (Blackwell and Oklahoma). Krystian Czerniecki, a graduate student in English at Cornell, is writing a dissertation on Shakespeare. Joel Fineman's Shakespeare's Perjur'd Eye (California) won the James Russell Lowell Prize for 1985. He teaches English at the University of California, Berkeley. Debra Fried, Assistant Professor of English at Cornell, is at work on a book on poetic form, to which her essay in this volume belongs. Fran^oise Meltzer, who teaches Comparative Literature at the University of Chicago, has published Salome and the Dance of Writing: Portraits of Mimesis in Literature (Chicago). Avital Ronell, Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at Berkeley, is the author of Dictations: On Haunted Writing (Indiana), an essay on Freud and Goethe, and The Telephone Book (Nebraska). Vlll CONTRIBUTORS R. A. Shoaf, Professor of English at the University of Florida, has published Dante, Chaucer, and the Currency of the Word (Pilgrim) and Milton: Poet of Duality (Yale). Gregory Ulmer, Professor of English at the University of Florida, is the author of Applied Grammatology (Hopkins) and co-author of Glossary (Nebraska), the companion to Derrida's Glas. 1 The Call of the Phoneme: Introduction Jonathan Culler The Word Pun appears to be of Greek Origin all. Some derive it from IJvvda^, which signifies either Fundum, a Bottom, or Maniebrium gladij', the handle of a Sword. From the former, because this kind of Wit is thought to lye deeper than any other Secondly, from the Handle of a Sword: Because whoever wields it will shew something Bright and sharp at the End: Another and more probable Opinion is that the word Pun comes from IIwOdvo/iaL; because without Knoledge (sic), hearing, and Enquiry, this Gift is not to be obtained. There is a more modern Etymology which I cannot altogether approve, tho' it be highly ingenious: For, the Cantabrigians derive the Word from PonHculus Quasi, Pun tickle us, which signifies a little Bridge, as ours over the Cam, where this Art is in highest Perfection. Again; others derive it from Pungo; because whoever lets a Pungo will be sure to make his Adversary smart. And to include this Head, I shall not conceal one Originall of this Word assigned by our Adversaryes, from the French word Punaise, which signifies a little stinking Insect that gets into the Skin, provokes continual Itching and is with great Difficulty removed. Jonathan Swift1 Pun, my word here, is not a very old word. It appears, the OED tells us, soon after 1660, and is 'of undetermined origin*. 'It has been suggested,' the learned work continues, 'that pun might originally have been an abbrevia- tion of Italian punttglw, "small or fine point" ... This appears not impossible, but nothing has been found in the early history of pun, or in the English uses of punctilio, to confirm the conjecture.'2 A finer tale links our word to pun meaning 'to compact or pound', as in Troilusand Cressida: 'He would pun thee into shivers with his fist.' To pun, writes Skeat, 'is to pound 1 Jonathan Swift, 'A Modest Defence of Punning', Prose Works, ed. Herbert Davis (Oxford, ^S?)* vol. 4, pp. 205-6. 2 The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology (Oxford, 1962), deems pun 'probably one of a group of clipped words which became fashionable in Restoration times,... apparently short for pundigrion\ itself conjecturally *a fanciful alteration of the Italian puntiglio\ The layers of conjecture emphasize the difficulty of distinguishing punning from etymologizing. 2 JONATHAN CULLER words, to beat them into new senses, to hammer at forced similies'.3 Partridge reports, however, 'At one time, I entertained the idea that pun might afford an early example of blend: puzzlt + conundrum, with con- pronounced cun-.H The scholar of origins does not explain what displaced this entertaining suspicion. It seems entirely appropriate that pun should be of uncertain origin and provoke etymological speculation, since this is the diachronic version of punning. The tradition of ancient etymologizing, in Plato's Cratylusy in Varro, in Isadore of Seville, was one of motivating the meaning of words through punning derivations.5 Modern etymology has grown more historic- ally circumspect, but in both etymologies and puns, Derek Attridge writes, 'two similar sounding but distinct signifiers are brought together, and the surface relationship between them invested with meaning through the inventiveness and rhetorical skill of the writer.'6 In etymologies, a supposedly historical continuity between forms may stand in for the greater phonemic similarity of puns, but both use related forms to connect disaparate meanings, and, as in punning, the interest of etymologies lies in the surprising coupling of different meanings: Stuart, the Royal House, may come from styward, keeper of the pig sty.