To reference all the posts on this site that deal in humor,
would be impossible -- or rather, dead easy:
=> passim <=
(Devotees of Kolmogorov-Chaitin Complexity Theory will
appreciate that one.)
But one subset
we shall single out for especial mention: soties. (That which we call -- which we are
pleased to call -- which we are pleased as Punch to call: soties.)
The word is very old, and French. The particular spin we put on it springs from André Gide's Les
Caves du Vatican (1914), which he so labels, on the frontispiece where
rather the reader might expect to see roman.
 |
| Round and /round and /round we go... |
As used here (and the application is so particular, that it
is virtually a re-coinage, like our use of aturdido,
which we use to refer to a sort of sotie-in-nuce),
the term denotes -- or rather (denoting being difficult, vide Russell), dances around the connotational penumbra of
-- a certain (oder vielmehr,
uncertain) genre of erudite
trifling, of learnèd nugae, of brain-born fancies of la gaya scienza -- le gai savoir. You can consult the complete roster of such offerings here.
(Paradoxical Trigger Warning: The unsophisticated reader might be startled to see -- or to
seem to see -- this very post leading the list, and might imagine
that he hasn’t moved anywhere; but
he has. For, as Jeeves once
well observed, “You cannot step into the same river twice without spoiling your trousers”: the post as you are reading it now, is
in its specific haecceity; yet then, sub specie sotietas. For indeed, the Book of All Indexes does list itself in itself; Russell and Borges took care of that
matter long ago.
Selected soties:
(A) Suitable
for children
(B) Suitable
for simpletons
(C) These require a philosophy Ph.D.
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