Old Email Archive

digest 1997-02-04 #001


11:28 PM 2/3/97 -0800
From: "Society for Literature & Science" 

Daily SLS Email Digest
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Date: 3 Feb 1997 05:28:19 -0800
From: Marc Damashek 
Subject: 'tangl' in Descent of Man
A few days ago, as this juggernaut was just beginning to roll, Bob Young
wrote:
"I can find no reference to 'entangled' in the last paragraphs of
_The Descent of Man_, but I have only looked at the last three
ones."
As a followup to my post about the abundance of tangles in Voyage of
the
Beagle, I searched my e-text version of Descent, and found but two
instances of 'tangl'.
The first occurs in Chapter XIII, Secondary Characteristics of Birds:
>>> The males of many gallinaceous birds, especially of the
polygamous
kinds, are furnished with special weapons for fighting with their
rivals, namely spurs, which can be used with fearful effect. It has
been recorded by a trustworthy writer that in Derbyshire a kite
struck at a game-hen accompanied by her chickens, when the cock rushed
to the rescue, and drove his spur right through the eye and skull of
the aggressor. The spur was with difficulty drawn from the skull,
and as the kite, though dead, retained his grasp, the two birds were
firmly locked together; but the cock when disentangled was very little
injured.
The second does indeed occur in the next-to-last paragraph of the book:
>>> ...The astonishment which I felt on
first seeing a party of Fuegians on a wild and broken shore will never
be forgotten by me, for the reflection at once rushed into my mind-
such were our ancestors. These men were absolutely naked and
bedaubed with paint, their long hair was tangled, their mouths frothed
with excitement, and their expression was wild, startled, and
distrustful...
As with the majority of such occurrences in Voyage, the context in both
passages is far from neutral.
In contrast, there are 10 much tamer occurrences in the e-text of Dr.
Moreau (http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/modeng/modeng0.browse.html, THE
ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU
H. G. WELLS
The SUN DIAL Library
GARDEN CITY PUBLISHING COMPANY, INC.
GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK
COPYRIGHT, 1896, BY
STONE AND KIMBALL):
1) p. 9
He came down out of the tangle of ropes under the stays of
the smashed bowsprit...
2) p. 62
MONTGOMERY interrupted my tangle of mystification and suspicion about
one
o'clock...
3) pp. 68-69
On the farther side I saw through a bluish haze a
tangle of trees and creepers...
4) pp. 75-76
The head and upper part of the body were
hidden by a tangle of creeper...
5) pp. 76-77
I pushed through a tangle of tall white-flowered bushes...
6) p. 78
Then there was a desolate space covered with a
white sand, and then another expanse of tangled bushes...
7) p. 96
I scrambled out at last on the westward bank, and with my
heart beating loudly in my ears, crept into a tangle
of ferns to await the issue.
8) p. 165
...and, beyond, the reedy lines of a canebrake in one direction, a
dense
tangle of palm-trees on the other...
9) p. 172
"Steady!" cried Moreau, "steady!" as the ends of the
line crept round the
tangle of undergrowth and hemmed the brute in.
10) p. 242
One unclean rag was about me, my hair a black tangle:
no doubt my discoverers thought me a madman.
Marc Damashek
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Date: 3 Feb 1997 10:55:08 -0800
From: "barta-smith, nancy" 
Subject: Re: tangled webs -- a gold mine
Regarding my own preoccupation with the distinction between perceptual
and
causal paradigms--it is interesting to see only the alternatives of
subject/or object--complex causal order or entrapment in the examples
of
entanglement in Darwin. I am thinking of Merleau-Ponty's descriptions of
our
immersion and being "caught" in things as a way to think
embodiment and
embeddedness. Any passages in Darwin reflecting this more happy
entrapment
come to mind? NBS
Nancy A. Barta-Smith
Department of English--314 Spotts World Culture
Slippery Rock University
Slippery Rock PA 16057
nancy.barta-smith@sru.edu
"A Wild Patience Has Taken Me This Far"--Adrienne Rich