thank you, Bill; your second statement is precise, future-oriented, based
on "wanting" in its two Renaissance senses of "yearning for" and "lacking"
as the cause of desire. See Shakespeare's sonnet 87: "the cause of this
fair gift in me is *wanting*" (my emphasis). The connections between
grammatical futurity and desire are part of the very intricate explorations
of connections between the rhetorical, the erotic, the (orally) sexual in
Shakespeare's 134/135 "Will" sonnets. Your first statement is precise and
future-oriented too, appropriately in the subjeunctive. Related is
Barnfield's exploration of the future-oriented subjunctive/conditional in
*The Affectionate Shepheard*: "O would to God (so I might have my fee) / My
lips were honey, and thy mouth a Bee" (line 100-101). He too, like all of
us, *wants* it now.
For more substantial detail on this particular text, and the connections
between desire and futurity therein, I refer you to Stephen Whitworth's
brilliant article on Barnfield. For more substantial detail on the
connections between theorizations of grammatical futurity and desire, and
why the present tense (of Bee-ing now) could not possibly be the tense of
desire, I refer you to chapters 3 and 4 of my *The Risks of Simile in
Renaissance Rhetoric*.
The links of simile with all these categories being such, I "would" say I
"like" the the rhetorical form of the subject of your post; Renaissance
rhetoricians were not unaware of the conceptual and anagrammatic/oral links
between "erotema" (the questioner, as Puttenham calls it) and the erotic
(and/as the rhetorical).
thanks again,
Shirley Sharon-Zisser
At 15:13 18/10/00 -0400, you wrote:
>
>> future being the tense of desire,
>
>I'd say that present tense is the tense of desire. I want it now, not at
>some unspecified time in the future.
>
>Yours, Bill Godshalk
>
>
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|