engleski

Alciphron's Erotic Vocabulary used as evidence of (dis)unity of his work

Alciphron’s letter collection consists of four books, named after its correspondents: ‘Letters of fishermen‘, ‘Letters of farmers‘, ‘Letters of parasites‘ and ‘Letters of courtesans‘. The collection seems like a medley of separate worlds loosely joined into a four-piece collection, while each of the books functions as a miniature letter-collection within. However, even though it seems that the features interconnecting the books are scarce, they are present: courtesans appear throughout the collection, some letters are ‘sent‘ to recipients outside the ‘domicile‘ book, some correspondents dream of ‘escaping‘ from their books by attempting a change of occupation (and they all fail), erotic letters appear in all books, etc. This research attempts to investigate possible similar connections (or the lack of them) between books I - IV. The focus is on Alciphron’s erotic vocabulary: first the lexical origin of his erotic expressions is scrutinized (by introduction of so called ‘fields or origin‘) and later the very usage of those expressions (i.e. the meanings achieved in contexts of their letters). The results of both analyses - prospective concordances or discrepancies discovered throughout books - will be used as tools for resolving the dilemma given in the title of the paper.

Alciphron ; erotica ; Greek fictional epistolography ; erotic vocabulary ; erotic expressions

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