Peter, I think all that the OED means is that in using ‘say’ about writing
the user isn’t being consciously metaphorical even though its strictly
non-metahporic use, if there were such a thing, would apply only to acts
of speaking.

I have not the least contempt for attempts at being literal. I would like
to think that I use up a lot of time and energy on them. I don’t think
they are easy or clear-cut, though; much easier to adopt the prevailing
metaphors. I suppose that I am saying that serious attempts at literalism
are in no way safe from the charge of complexity. I am intrigued by your
mention of Kelvin Corcoran in this context. He’s a poet I admire hugely
but haven’t up till now thought of his work as literal.

Is there no ideological baggage in your literalist undercarriage? Is
literalism - and I have already admitted to speaking as a colluder here -
not itself likely to be an ideological position? Or rather I should say,
isn’t there more than one literalism, each having its own conceptual
motivation.

John

On 15/01/2015 20:18, "Peter Riley" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>John--  hmmm.
>
>Oh all right then, have it your own way.  It's more complicated than
>that.
>
>Though really I don't find that such complexity helps me very much,
>reading or writing. I can understand things better, frequently, within
>a simple  concept of different possibilities, not necessary dual. And
>to me things like Robert's Heideggerian sentence are acts of
>mystification, perhaps deliberate. Even the OED seems academic here (I
>don't believe that anyone speaking the sentence "He said 'Hi.'" is
>normally conscious of being either metaphorical or literal.) Whether
>these complexities and occultisms are true or not doesn't matter to
>me, I get by without them, or I see a future more clearly without them.
>
>They're interesting in themselves, they're a valid study, they're what
>the academy should be getting up to, as non-applied science. I read a
>lot of this stuff at one time, starting with Merleau-Ponty in the
>1980s and I can't say say it has helped, and some of it has tended to
>pull me towards obscurity.
>
>I've become interested in the word "literal" (for which do I detect a
>contempt in your remarks?) to describe some far from simplistic
>poetical textures, such as Kelvin Corcoran's. Literal meaning a poetry
>which does not carry ideological baggage in its undercarriage.
>
>Peter
>
>
>
>
>On 15 Jan 2015, at 17:07, Hall, John wrote:
>
>Ah well that¹s that then. Everything assigned to its literal or
>metaphoric
>groove. In the light of this pronouncement (a modality of saying, of
>course) I find the OED¹s note apposite:
>
>"As the word designates not the action of speaking itself, but its
>relation to the object, its use with reference to written expression
>does
>not ordinarily, like the similar use of speak, involve any consciousness
>of metaphor.²
>
>
>I like the Œ*consciousness* of metaphor', implying also a willed
>*consciousness* of literalness, a tendency that I am all too familiar
>with
>myself.
>
>John
>
>
>
>On 15/01/2015 15:29, "Peter Riley" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> The saying that I mean is strictly transitive and negotiable,
>> therefore literal. All other uses of "say" are metaphorical.
>>
>> I suspect Robert Sheppard's sentence of being a central European
>> version of the old tag which says that if you understand something
>> it's something you already know, which I don't believe.
>>
>> pR
>>