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specifically, then, to the corpus of Greek and Latin love poetry from Archilochus to Ovid, I would say that a genre is a kind of utterance, and that each kind of utterance makes a move. Though some literary theorists might equate the move with the speech-act,9 we shall have to see how well Austin's concept bears up under the stress of Plautine dialogue. |
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A poem may represent several kinds of utterance, each with its own move. Cairns (1972) seems to assume that if there are two genres in a poem, one will be dominant (the other, in his terms, will be included), but this solution sidesteps the problem by ignoring the evidence.10 Such poems must be analyzed individually, to determine the relationship between moves.11 |
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The offer of reconciliation, for instance, may be found alone. Likewise, the response to such an offer can appear by itself, though in such cases the offer will be lurking in some form, whether narrated, cited, mentioned, referred to, anticipated or merely presupposed. Elsewhere, however, offer and response are represented together (Horace Odes 3.9 is a perfect example, but cf. also Propertius 3.6 and 4.8). |
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Conversation analysts call such phenomena adjacency pairs, ''the kind of paired utterances of which question-answer, greeting-greeting, offer-acceptance, apology-minimization, etc., are prototypical".12 If we accept this term, and consider the adjacency pair offer/response or request/response (as they function in erotic peace-negotiations) a genre, we would then be left with half a genre for the cases where one appears alone. |
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If we agree that every classical love poem represents at least one move, any reading of a poem that sees none or allegedly detects a move not |
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(footnote continued from previous page) |
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Saussure.) Move has entered the lexicon of pragmatics, sometimes as a synonym for speech-act, sometimes as an "interactional move" a "functional unit" in a conversation. Goffman (1976), taking his cue from Wittgenstein, introduced the term (in a biting critique of speech-acts and adjacency pairs). Cf. Levinson (1983) 288290, 303, 310311 and the references there. |
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9 Levinson (1983) 278283 turns back to Wittgenstein, after a thorough critique of speech-acts, but the concept is accepted without hesitation by many literary theorists. Cf. Petrey (1990) and references there. |
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10 In some complicated cases we may find an interweaving of moves and so of genres. An excellent example of this is the First Cologne Epode of Archilochus, where a seduction is woven into a dialogue consisting of an offer of reconciliation, delivered by a girl on behalf of her sister, and a response to that offer. See Bing and Cohen (1991) 4649 for an analysis of this controversial fragment. See also Slings in Bremer e.a. (1987). |
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11 Theocritus 1 is a prime example of a poem with many moves, see Bing and Cohen (1991) 144, note 6. |
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12 Levinson (1983) 303. |
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