Date: Mon, 5 Jun 1995 22:35:01 EDT From: hagiographer? Subject: FILLER: Practice Makes Prolific Comments: To: The ArcheTypes! [agon, an allegory of alliteration and allusion exemplifying the amphigory of this humble list...watch out, he's been at the thesaurus again!] The bibliognost (knowing all about books) and the bibliophile (for the sake of their pristine love of books and literature) must often deal with the bouquiniste, that trader in used lives, worn and cracked by the hands of others, uncovered, trespassed upon again and again, and yet still quite readable, for all the times that others' eyes have walked across their words... yes, the bouquiniste by any other name is a used book seller. Upstairs or downstairs, it's always the seller. ahem. But no mere amanuensis, copywriter, scribe, or secretary are we--unless it pays the rent and keeps a roof over our head and credit cards at charge!--No! No, I say. We are more than that, we are... [deeeep breath!] Author, bard, belletrist (but of course! amusing, sophisticated works just drip from our pen!), biographer, bluestocking (oh. well, a woman with bookish or learned tendencies in the 18th century might well have ink on her stockings, I suppose? nowadays, they're just likely to have blue genes, eh?), Boswell, dramatist, editor, essayist, fabulist, farceur (mais oui! les farce most broad and satiric, that is me!), fictioneer, ghost writer, goliard (a wandering scholar-poet known for satiric Latin verse in the 12th-13th century? who kept them alive? who was their audience?), hack, hagiographer (the life and times of the saints? biographies of the blessed--or the blasted?), journalist, literati, man of letters, metaphrast (prose into poem and poem into prose, that's the way the little words grows:-), novelist, playwright, poet, poetaster (one man's inferior is another man's trash?), poet laureate (no ivy on their brow, I'm afraid), screenwriter, scrivener, skald (ancient Scandinavian poet--before teak?), speechwriter, storyteller, troubadour (and troubalee?), wordsmith, or just plain old writer. And for that melee, we mix and muddle... antagonist, antihero (cynical to the bitter end), archetype (basic, universal human qualities may make the stereotype or the archetype, depending on the architext?), character, chorus, confidant or confidante, deuteragonist (second to the protoganist, ready to die for a heavenly cause--or two bits, at least?), hero, heroine, persona (non gratis, but ready for action!), protagonist, stock character (complete with cardboard and other filling), and whoever else may turn up in the dramatis personae. We may take refuge in our nom de guerre, nom de plume, pen name, pseudonym, or even our anonymous mask when needed, for in that dark, stinking swamp where the words play, there lives the evil... critic. And paraenesis (such delightful written advice!), bathos (plumbing the depths of ridiculousness), or even the pathetic fallacy (ascribing human traits and feelings to those inanimate stiffs) to the contrary, the mimesis (imitation style or language!) of the critic cannot compete with true poetic licentiousness...(wherein we break the rule, the facts, or even the conventions for EFFECT!!) and the denouement (resolution, outcome, ending)? the end. *cackle* tink [brought to you by Better Dictionaries Everywhere-- remember, fustian writing is just another hamartia!]