Etceterini

Etceterini (pronounced et-set-er-rhini)

One or all of the sports cars & racing cars produced in small volumes by a number of “boutique” Italian manufacturers during the quarter-century-odd following World War II (1939-1945).

1980s (though not attaining wide currency until publication in 1990): A portmanteau word, the construct being etcetera(a) + ini.  Etcetera was from the early fourteenth century Middle English et cetera (and other things; and so forth), from the Latin et cētera (and the other things; and the rest of the things), the construct being et (and) + cetera (the other things; the rest).  Et was from the Proto-Italic et, from the primitive Indo-European éti or heti and was cognate with the Ancient Greek ἔτι (éti), the Sanskrit अति (ati), the Gothic iþ (and, but, however, yet) and the Old English prefix ed- (re-).  Cētera was the plural of cēterum, accusative neuter singular of cēterus (the other, remainder, rest), from the Proto-Italic ke-eteros, the construct being ke (here) +‎ eteros (other).  The Latin suffix -īnī was an inflection of -īnus (feminine -īna, neuter -īnum), from the Proto-Italic -īnos, from the primitive Indo-European -iHnos and was cognate with the Ancient Greek -ινος (-inos) and the Proto-Germanic -īnaz.  The suffix was added to a noun base (particularly proper nouns) to form an adjective, usually in the sense of “of or pertaining to and could indicate a relationship of position, possession or origin”.  Because the cars referenced tended to be small (sometimes very small), some may assume the –ini element to be an Italian diminutive suffix but in Italian the diminutive suffixes are like -ino, -etto, -ello & -uccio but etceterini works because the Latin suffix conveys the idea of “something Italian”.  It was used substantively or adverbially.  Until the early twentieth century, the most common abbreviation was “&c.” but “etc.” (usually with a surely now superfluous period (full-stop)) has long been the standard form.   Etcetera is a noun; the noun plural is etceteras

The word “etcetera” (or “et cetera”) fully has been assimilated into English and (except when used in a way which makes a historic reference explicit) is for most purposes no longer regarded as “a foreign word” though the common use has long been to use the abbreviation (the standard now: “etc”).  If for whatever reason there’s a need for a “conspicuously foreign” form then the original Latin (et cētera (or even the Anglicized et cetera)) should be used.  There is no definitive date on which the assimilation can be said to have been completed (or at least generally accepted), rather it was a process.  From the 1400s, the Middle English et cetera was used and understood by educated speakers, due to Latin's prominence in law, science, religion and academia with it by the mid-eighteenth century being no longer viewed as a “foreignism” (except of course among the reactionary hold-outs with a fondness for popery and ecclesiastical Latin: for them, in churches and universities, even in English texts, et cētera or et cetera remained preferred).  Scholars of structural linguistics use an interesting test to track the process of assimilation as modern English became (more or less) standardized: italicization.  With “et cetera” & “etcetera”, by the mid-eighteenth century, the once de rigour italics had all but vanished.  That test may no longer be useful because words which remains classified as “foreign” (such as raison d'être or schadenfreude) often now appear without italics.

The so-called “pronunciation spellings” (ekcetera, ekcetra, excetera & exetera) were never common and the abbreviations followed the same assimilative path.  The acceptance of the abbreviated forms in printed English more widespread still during the 1600s because of the advantages it offered printers, typesetters much attracted by the convenience and economy.  By early in the eighteenth century it was an accepted element (usually as “&c” which soon supplanted “et cet”) in “respectable prose”, appearing in Nathan Bailey’s (circa 1690-1742) An Universal Etymological English Dictionary (1721) and gaining the imprimatur of trend-setter Anglo-Irish author & satirist Jonathan Swift (1667–1745).  Dr Johnson (Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)) made much use of “&c” in his A Dictionary of the English Language (1755) and although Bailey’s dictionary was influential in the breadth of its comprehensiveness and remained, over 30 editions, in print until 1802, it’s Dr Johnson who is better remembered because he was became a “celebrity lexicographer” (a breed which today must sound improbable.)

One of the implications of linguistic assimilation is the effect on the convention applied when speaking from a written text.  Although wildly ignored (probably on the basis of being widely unknown), the convention is that foreign words in a text should be spoken in the original language only if that’s necessary for emphasis or meaning (such as Caudillo, Duce or Führer) or emphasis.  Where foreign terms are used in writing as a kind of verbal shorthand (such as inter alia (among other things)) in oral use they should be spoken in English.  However, the convention doesn’t extent to fields where the terms have become part of the technical jargon (which need not influence a path of assimilation), as in law where terms like inter alia and obiter (a clipping of obiter dictum (something said by a judge in passing and not a substantive part of the judgment)) are so entrenched in written and oral use that to translate them potentially might be misleading.

Lindsay Lohan (b 1986, left), Britney Spears (b 1981, centre) & Paris Hilton (b 1981, right), close to dawn, Los Angeles, 29 November 2006; the car was Ms Hilton's Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren (C199 (2003-2009)).  This paparazzo's image was from a cluster which included the one used for the front page on Rupert Murdoch's (b 1931) New York Post with the still infamous headline “BIMBO SUMMIT”.  Even by the standards of the Murdoch tabloids, it was nasty.

So, the text written as: “Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, Britney Spears et al recommend that while a handbag always should contain “touch-up & quick fix-up” items such as lipstick, lip gloss, and lip liner, the more conscientious should pack more including, inter alia, mascara, eyeliner, eyebrow pencil, concealer, a powder compact, a small brush set & comb etc.” would be read aloud as: “Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, Britney Spears and others recommend that while a handbag always should contain “touch-up & quick fix-up” items such as lipstick, lip gloss, and lip liner, the more conscientious should pack more including, among other things, mascara, eyeliner, eyebrow pencil, concealer, a powder compact, a small brush set & comb etcetera.”  Despite the cautions from purists (including just about every grammar text-book and style guide on the planet), the “choice” between “etc” and “et al” does seem to becoming blurred with many using seemingly using the two interchangeably.  The rules are (1) “etc” (and other things) is used of things (and according to the style guides should always appear with a period (full-stop) even though such use is archaic and another of those “needless tributes to tradition”) and (2) “et al” (and others) is used of people (especially in citations and again, always with a period).  So, “et al” can’t be used for things; strictly, it’s for things; it’ll be interesting to see if these rules survive into the next century.  Really, it's a silly rule and because it's hardly difficult to distinguish between a text string of "people" and one of "things", if used interchangeably, the two abbreviations are unlikely to confuse.  Et al was the abbreviation of the Latin et aliī (and others).

A Unix /etc directory.

In computing, Unix-based operating systems (OS) feature a directory (the word “folder” thought effete by the Unix community, most of whom are at their happiest when typing arcane commands at the prompt) called “etc” (along with /root, /boot, dev, /bin, /opt etc) which is used as a repository for system-wide configuration files and shell scripts used to boot and initialize the system.  Although there are many variants of the OS, typically an /etc directory will contain (1) OS configuration files (/etc/passwd; /etc/fstab; /etc/hosts), (2) system startup scripts (/etc/init.d or /etc/systemd/, (3) network configuration, (4) user login & environment configuration files and (5) application configuration files.  Originally (sometime in 1969-1970), the “etc” name was adopted because it was “an et cetera” in the literal sense of “and so on”, a place to store files which were essential but didn’t obviously belong elsewhere, a single “general purpose” directory used to avoid needless proliferation in the structure.  Rapidly Unix grew in complexity and configurability so the once “place for the miscellaneous” became the canonical location for configuration files, the original sense displaced but the name retained.  It is pronounced et-see (definitely not ee-tee-see or et-set-er-uh).  Despite their reputation, the Unix guys do have a joke (and there are unconfirmed rumors of a second).  Because so many of the files in /etc can be modified with any text-editor, in some documents earnestly it’s revealed /etc is the acronym of “Editable Text Configuration” but as well as a bad joke, it's also fake news; ETC is a backronym.

The Etceterini: exquisite creations with names ending in vowels

1954 Stanguellini 750 Sport.

In the tradition of mock-Latin, the word etceterini was a late twentieth century coining created to refer to the ecosystem of the numerous small-volume Italian sports & racing cars built in the early post-war years.  A portmanteau word, the construct being etceter(a) + ini, the idea was a word which summoned the idea of “many, some obscure” with an Italianesque flavor.  Credit for the coining is claimed by both automotive historian John de Boer (who in 1990 published The Italian car registry: Incorporating the registry of Italian oddities: (the etceterini register) and reviewer & commentator Stu Schaller who asserts he’d used it previously.  Whoever first released it into the wild (and it seems to have been in circulation as least as early as the mid-1980s) can be content because it survived in its self-defined niche and the evocative term has become part of the lexicon used by aficionados of post-war Italian sports and racing cars.  Being language (and in this English is not unique), it is of course possible two experts, working in the same field, both coined the term independently, the timing merely a coincidence.  Etceterini seems not to have been acknowledged (even as a non-standard form) by the editors of any mainstream English dictionary and surprisingly, given how long its history of use now is, even jargon-heavy publications like those from the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) haven’t yet added it to their lexicons.  It does though appear in specialist glossaries, car-model registry websites and niche discussion forums, especially those tied to classic Italian car culture (OSCA, Moretti, Stanguellini, Siata, Bandini, Ermini etc).  So, as a word it has sub-cultural & linguistic clarity but no status among the linguistic establishment.

1953 Siata 208S Barchetta.

John De Boer’s comprehensive The Italian car registry: Incorporating the registry of Italian oddities: (the etceterini register) was last updated in 1994 and remains the best-known publication on the many species of the genus etceterini and included in its 350-odd pages not only a wealth of photographs and cross-referenced details of specification but also lists chassis and engine numbers (priceless data for collectors and restoration houses in their quests for the often elusive quality of “originality”).  Nor are the personalities neglected, as well as some notable owners the designers and builders are discussed and there are sections devoted to coach-builders, a once vibrant industry driven almost extinct by regulators and the always intrusive realities of economics.  One thing which especially delights the collectors are the photographs of some of the obscure accessories of the period, some rendered obsolete by technology, some of which became essential standard-equipment and some seriously weird.  Mr De Boer’s book was from the pre-internet age when, except for a pampered handful in a few universities, “publication” meant paper and printing presses but such things are now virtualized and “weightless publication” is available instantly to all and there are small corners of the internet curated for devotees of the etceterini such as Cliff Reuter’s Etceteriniermini, a title which certainly takes some linguistic liberties.  Some trace the breed even to the late 1930s and such machines certainly existed then but as an identifiable cultural and economic phenomenon, they really were a post-war thing and although circumstances conspired to make their survival rare by the mid 1960s, a handful lingered into the next decade.

1957 Bandini 750 Sport Saponetta.

That the ecosystem of the etceterini flourished in Italy in the 1950s was because the country was then a certain place and time and while the memorable scenes depicted in La Dolce Vita (1960) might have been illusory for most, the film did capture something from their dreams.  After the war, there was a sense of renewal, the idea of the “new” Italy as a young country in which “everybody” seemed young and for those who could, sports car and racing cars were compelling.  However, while there was a skilled labor force ready to build them and plenty of places in which they could be built, economics dictated they needed to be small and light-weight because the mechanical components upon which so many relied came from the Fiat parts bin and the most significant commonality among the etceterini were the small (often, by international standards, tiny) engines used otherwise to power the diminutive micro-cars & vans with which Fiat in the post-war years “put Italy on wheels”.  It was no coincidence so many of the small-volume manufacturers established their facilities near to Fiat’s factory in Torino, the closest thing the nation had to a Detroit.  In the early years, it wasn’t unknown for a donkey and cart carrying a few engines to make the short journey from the Fiat foundry to an etceterini’s factory (which was sometime little more than a big garage).  However, just because the things were small didn’t mean they couldn’t be beautiful and, being built by Italians, over the years there were some lovely shapes, some merely elegant but some truly sensuous.  Lovely they may appear but the Italians were not reverential when making comparisons with other objects.  Of the Bandini 750 Sport, Saponetta translates as literally as "little soap", the idea being the resemblance to a bar of soap as the ends wear away with use although of the nine 750 Sports made, some had an abbreviated Kamm tail which offered aerodynamic advantage at high speed but was less soapbaresque in shape.  Despite only nine 750 Sports being made, it was something of a volume model for the marque, for in the 45 years between 1946-1992, only 75 cars emerged from Ilario Bandini's (1911–1992) tiny workshop in Forlì, a municipality in the northern Italian city of Emilia-Romagna.  Bathrooms clearly were a thing in the Italian imagination because they dubbed the OSCA S187 (750S) the tubo di dentifricio (toothpaste tube), illustrating yet again how everything sounds better in Italian.   

1960 Stanguellini Formula Junior.

Among the etceterini, there was a high churn rate but many for years flourished and developed also lucrative “sideline” businesses producing ranges of speed equipment or accessories for majors such as Fiat or Alfa Romeo and, as has happened in other industries, sometimes the success of these overtook the original concern, Nardi soon noticing their return on capital from selling their popular custom steering wheels far exceeded what was being achieved from producing a handful of little sports cars, production of which quickly was abandoned with resources re-allocated to the accessory which had become a trans-Atlantic best-seller.  Whether things would have gone on indefinitely had the laissez-faire spirit of the time been allowed to continue can’t be known but by the 1960s, traffic volumes rapidly were increasing on the growing lengths of autostrade (the trend-setting Italian motorway system begun during the administration of Benito Mussolini (1883-1945; Duce (leader) & Prime-Minister of Italy 1922-1943) with accident rates & the death toll both climbing.  Italy, like many jurisdictions began to impose safety regulations which before long made small-scale production runs unviable but by then rising prosperity meant people were able to purchase their own Fiat or Alfa-Romeo and the etceterini faded into fond memory.  It is of course unthinkable such a thing could again happen because the EU (European Union) is now staffed by divisions of Eurocrats who spend their days in Masonic-like plotting and scheming to devise new reasons to say no, non, nein, nee, nein, não etc.  Had these bloodless bureaucrats existed in the 1940s, not one etceterini would ever have reached the street.

The Auto Sputnik

Italian comrades admiring Auto Sputnik, Rome, Italy, April 1958.

Although it’s the slinky sports and racing cars which are celebrated as the etceterini, from the then vibrant ecosystem of Italian coach-building, a wide range of body types emerged including larger coupés & cabriolets, station wagons, vans, ambulances, hearses and more.  In post-war Italy, if a manufacturer wanted a run of a few dozen or hundred, there was a factory to fulfil the contract and for those who wanted some sort of low-volume model or even a one-off needed for a specific purpose, if need be, there would be a man in a shed who could form the metal.  Again, it was availability of versatile, mass-produced platforms which made the re-purposing possible and a genuine one-off was the Auto Sputnik (Sputnik-car), built for the PCI (Partito Comunista Italiano, the Communist Party of Italy, 1921-1991) as a propaganda vehicle to travel around the land in the run-up to the 1958 general election.  Centre of attention was a model of Sputnik 1, the first artificial Earth satellite, launched by the Soviet Union on 4 October, 1957, an event which had shocked many in the West because it seemed to illustrate how much more advanced was Soviet science compare to that in the West.  What it heightened was the fear the communist "planned economy" was proving more efficient in producing advanced technology while in the West excessive resources were being absorbed by things like annual changed to the styling of washing machines or making the tailfins on cars rise higher.  That feeling rippled around the US Congress, causing great concern although the scientific and military establishment, better acquainted with relative industrial capabilities, were more sanguine.  Politicians however find it often more rewarding to respond to perceptions rather than reality and it was the launch of Sputnik which triggered the “space race”, the first round of which culminated with the US manned landing on the moon in 1969.

Italian and Soviet design sensibilities, circa 1958: Auto Sputnik, colorized (left) and 1958 Soviet UAZ-450 (right).  Mechanically somewhat updated (though stylistically, not by much) , the UAZ is still being made and is believed to be the oldest vehicle design still in series production, the blueprints delivered to the factory in 1957.

Although just by achieving orbit Sputnik 1 was a landmark in space flight, as it circled the Earth every 96 minutes, despite much wild speculation, all the 580 mm (23 inch) wide metal sphere did was transmit “beeps” which could be received by ground-based radios but the PCI’s model on the Auto Sputnik was, in a sense, more ambitious because it included an integrated loudspeaker for broadcasting campaign messages (ie communist propaganda).  Having the Sputniks to use as propaganda tools was certainly a tribute to Soviet design prowess and industrial capacity but it was good that for Auto Sputnik the PCI turned to Italian rather than Soviet coach-builders.  There was at the time something in the souls of Italian designers which stopped them drawing an ugly line so the Auto Sputnik, despite its utilitarian purpose, was a stylish piece of mid-century modernism, characterized by the mix of fuselage-like flanks, topped with a formed in sensuously shaped Perspex.  The eye-catching design may be compared with what can be imagined had a Russian contractor been granted the commission.  What would have been delivered would have been heavy, robust (if not especially well-finished) and “done the job” but it would not have been stylish.  For that, it was best to get an Italian and in the 1960s, the UK industry would do exactly that, Michelotti among several doing good business there.

1957 Fiat 600 Multipla (left) and the prototype 1957 600 Marinella (right) by Giovanni Michelotti (1921–1980), the latter a classic example of the adaptability of the 600 platform, one of a number used by those who created the Etceterini.

In a nice touch, a dog (various real or a stuffed toy) was also carried, a tribute to Laika, the “Soviet space dog” who was the first animal to orbit the planet when Sputnik 2 flew into low orbit on 3 November 1957.  The  Perspex windows on the model of Sputnik certainly weren’t on the original sphere and were installed just so the dog could be seen and even that was an attempt to manipulate voters through “associative cognition”, people trusting dogs in a way they don't trust politicians.  Unfortunately for Laika, the technology of the era precluded a return-flight and some hours into the mission, she died of hyperthermia.  Like the doomed dog, Auto Sputnik did not survive and although there seem to be no details of either the coach-builder or platform used, historians of the etceterini are certain it was based on a Fiat 600 Multipla (1956–1967) and not the 600T because the latter variant was in production only between 1961-1968.  An exercise in pure functionalism, the prime directive of the 600 Multipa (literally “multiple”) was the optimal utilization of interior space.  The object was a vehicle in which the maximum possible payload (people or objects) could be carried within the smallest possible external dimensions, powered by a drive-train which would do it all at the lowest possible cost.  Countless Italians found the Multipla lived up to the name but the PCI’s use must be among the more unusual.

Flag of the Italian Communist Party (hammer & sickle in yellow on red background (left) and the highly regarded “Italian Hot Dogs” sold at Jimmy Buff's.

No color images of the Auto Sputnik seem to exist but one monochrome photograph has been colorized, the software confirming it was finished in red & yellow.  These were the colors of the PCI’s flag so the choice had nothing to do with the ketchup and mustard of the “Italian Hot Dog”, the invention of which is credited to Jimmy “Buff” Racioppi, founder of Jimmy Buff's in Newark, New Jersey where the first “Italian Hot Dog” was sold in 1932.

TELEPHOTO image with explanatory caption, distributed to newspapers by wire services, April 1958.

Routinely in use in the West since the late 1930s, (and known also as “wirephotos”), TELEPHOTOs literally were “photographs transmitted using telegraph wire infrastructure” and although receiving an image could take some minutes, for newspapers it was a revolutionary service because for those in daily production cycles, it was effectively “real-time”.  The TELEPHOTO was one of many steps on the technological ladder to the contemporary world of instantaneous communication.  When in 1865 Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865; POTUS 1861-1865) was assassinated, the news didn’t reach Europe until the fastest clipper had crossed the Atlantic a fortnight later.  By the time of William McKinley's (1843–1901; POTUS 1897-1901) assassination, the news was within minutes transmitted around the world through undersea cables (thus the still sometimes heard use in this context of “cable” and “cabled”).  In 1963, while news of John Kennedy's (JFK, 1917–1963; POTUS 1961-1963) death was close to a global real-time event, those many miles from Dallas had to wait sometimes 24 hours or more to view footage, the physical film stock delivered in canisters by land, sea or air.  By 1981, when an attempt was made on Ronald Reagan’s (1911-2004; POTUS 1981-1989) life, television stations around the planet were, sometimes within seconds, picking up live-feeds from satellites.

The text on the vehicle: "VOTA COMUNISTA", translates as “Vote Communist” and the 1958 election was unexpectedly difficult for the party because there had been schisms and defections after (1) the Red Army's crushing of the 1956 Hungarian uprising (tellingly, the Kremlin made no attempt to augment their forces with troops from other Warsaw Pact signatories) and (2) comrade Nikita Khrushchev’s (1894–1971; Soviet leader 1953-1964) “secret” speech in February that year denouncing the personality cult and excesses of comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953).  Still, the party maintained its support, gaining 22.7% of the vote against the 22.6% received in 1953, the loss of three seats (from 143 to 140) the consequence of electoral redistributions and some changes in the allocation of seats between the various mechanisms.  With that, the PCI remained the country’s second-largest party in Italy although the Democrazia Cristiana (DC, the Christian Democrats) remained dominant and the communists still were excluded from government.  Essentially then, the 1958 election maintained the “status quo” but what had changed since the late 1940s was that agents of the US government (not all of whom were on the payroll of the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency)) no longer wandered cities and the countryside with the suitcases of US dollars thought (correctly) to be the most useful accessory when seeking to influence elections.  When Washington complains about the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) and others using this method or that to try to “influence” elections in the US, they know what they’re talking about; while the tactics of the influencers have changed, the strategy remains the same.

Flute

Flute (pronounced floot)

(1) A woodwind instrument consisting of a tube with a row of finger-holes (or keys) which produce sound through vibrations caused by air blown across the edge of the holes, often tuned by plugging one or more holes with a finger; the Western concert flute, a transverse side-blown flute of European origin (in colloquial use, a recorder, also a woodwind instrument).

(2) An organ stop with wide flue pipes, having a flutelike tone.

(3) In architecture or engineering (particularly the manufacture of firearms), a semi-cylindrical vertical channel, groove or furrow, as on the shaft of a column, in a pillar, in plaited cloth, or in a rifle barrel to cut down the weight.

(4) Any groove or furrow, as in a ruffle of cloth or on a piecrust.

(5) One of the helical grooves of a twist drill.

(6) A slender, footed wineglass with a tall, conical bowl.

(7) A similar stemmed glass, used especially for champagne and often styled as "champagne flute".

(8) In steel fabrication, to kink or break in bending.

(9) In various fields of design, to form longitudinal flutes or furrows.

(10) A long bread roll of French origin; a baguette.

(11) In weaving, tapestry etc, a shuttle.

(12) To play on a flute; to make or utter a flutelike sound. 

(13) To form flutes or channels in (as in a column, a ruffle etc); to cut a semi-cylindrical vertical groove in (as in a pillar etc).

1350-1400; From the Middle English floute, floute & flote, from the Middle French flaüte, flahute & fleüte, from the twelfth century Old French flaute (musical), from the Old Provençal flaüt (thought an alteration of flaujol or flauja) of uncertain origin but may be either (1) a blend of the Provencal flaut or  flaujol (flageolet) + laut (lute) or (2) from the Classical Latin flātus (blowing), from flāre (to blow) although there is support among etymologists for the notion of it being a doublet of flauta & fluyt.  In other languages, the variations include the Irish fliúit and the Welsh ffliwt.  The form in Vulgar Latin has been cited as flabeolum but evidence is scant and all forms are thought imitative of the Classical Latin flāre and other Germanic words (eg flöte) are borrowings from French. 

Portrait of Archduchess Maria Antonia of Austria (later Queen Marie Antoinette of France (1774-1792)), circa 1768, oil on canvas by Martin van Meytens  (1695–1770).

Fluted & fluting both date from the 1610s while the verb (in the sense of "to play upon a flute") seems to bave been in use as early as the late fourteenth century.  The use to describe grooves in metalwork emerged in the 1570s and was applied to the tall, slender wine glass almost a century later although the term "champagne flute" didn't enter popular use until the 1950s.  The champagne flute is preferred by many to the coupé (or saucer) even though it lacks the (since unfortunately debunked) legend the shape of the latter was modelled on Marie Antoinette’s (1754-1793) left breast (historians gleefully recounting the tale all agree it definitely was the left).  Elegant though it is, the advantages of the flute are entirely functional, the design providing for less spillage than a coupé, something which comes to be more valued as lunch progresses to the third uncorking and the slender, tapered shape is claimed better to preserve the integrity of the bubbles, the smaller surface area and thus reduced oxygen-to-wine ratio longer maintaining aroma and taste.

Grand Cru's guide to the shape of champagne glasses.

Among musical instruments, there are a dozen or more distinct types of flute.  Early French flutes differed greatly from modern instruments in having a separate mouthpiece and were called flûte-a-bec (literally "flute with a beak").  The ancient devices were played directly, blown straight through a mouthpiece but held away from the player's mouth, the modern transverse (or "German") flute not appearing until the eighteenth century and the familiar modern design and key system of the concert flute were perfected 1834 by Bavarian court musician & virtuoso flautist Theobald Boehm (1794–1881), the fingering system known to this day as "Boehm system".  The architectural sense of "furrow in a pillar" dates from the mid-seventeenth century and was derived from the vague resemblance to the inside of a flute split down the middle.

Solidarity: Gay men supporting lesbians at the first “Dyke March”, Washington DC, April 1993.  The sign held by the protester at the far left uses the compound word for which the euphemism “playing the skin flute” was coined.

One imaginative linguistic re-purposing was the use in the 1940s (apparently first in the US) of “playing the skin flute” to mean “to perform fellatio” and while still in that sense used in certain LGBTQQIAAOP circles, in general use the meaning has shifted, no describing “a male engaged in the act of masturbation”.  Use shifted to fruit, either by virtue of use at the time being almost exclusively oral rather than written (linguistically, that’s classified as an example of an imperfect echoic) or because "fruit" was then in use as a gay slur.   The nouns flute-player, fluter & flutist can be used of flute players but the preferred term is flautist.  Presumably, someone employed to add flutes to an object could be designated “the fluter” but it’s doubtful such as specialist job-description has ever been written.  Flute is a noun & verb, flutiness, flautist, flutist & fluter are nouns, fluted is a verb & adjective, fluting is a noun, verb & adjective, flutelike is an adjective; the noun plural is flutes.  

Fluted grill on 1972 Series 1, 4.2 Litre Daimler Sovereign.

In British use, one who plays the flute is a flautist (pronounced flaw-tist (U) or flou-tist (non-U)), from the Italian flautista, the construct being flauto (flute) +‎ -ista.  The -ist suffix was from the Middle English -ist & -iste, from the Old French -iste and the Latin -ista, from the Ancient Greek -ιστής (-istḗs), from -ίζω (-ízō) (the -ize & -ise verbal suffix) and -τής (-tḗs) (the agent-noun suffix).  It was added to nouns to denote various senses of association such as (1) a person who studies or practices a particular discipline, (2), one who uses a device of some kind, (3) one who engages in a particular type of activity, (4) one who suffers from a specific condition or syndrome, (5) one who subscribes to a particular theological doctrine or religious denomination, (6) one who has a certain ideology or set of beliefs, (7) one who owns or manages something and (8), a person who holds very particular views (often applied to those thought most offensive).  The alternative forms are the unimaginative (though descriptive) flute-player and the clumsy pair fluter although the odd historian or music critic will use aulete, from the Ancient Greek αὐλητής (aulētḗs), from αὐλέω (auléō) (I play the flute), from αὐλός (aulós) (flute).  The spelling flutist is preferred in the US and it's actually an old form, dating from circa 1600 and probably from the French flûtiste and it replaced the early thirteenth century Middle English flouter (from the Old French flauteor).

Daimler, the flutes and US trademark law

1972 Daimler Double-Six Vanden Plas.

Originally Belgium-based and noted for both the sporty and large bodies built for the chassis of Rolls-Royce, Lagondas, Daimlers, Bentleys and such, the coach-building house Vanden Plas was in 1946 acquired by Austin and through the British industry’s M&As (mergers and acquisitions) in the following decades, by the early 1970s it was British Leyland’s in-house coach-builder, one of its projects being to add still more luxurious appointments to the anyway lavish Daimler Double-Six.  Vanden Plas completed only 342 of the Series 1 (1972-1973) Daimler Double Sixes, the later S2 (1973-1979) & S3 (1979-1992) cars much more numerous and, in deference to the oil crisis which was the prime economic force in the decade, the S2 & S3 were available with the 4.2 litre (258 cubic inch) XK-six as were as the heroically thirsty 5.3 litre (326 cubic inch) V12.  The flutes atop the grill dated from the early twentieth-century and were originally a functional addition to the radiator to enhance heat-dissipation but later became a merely decorative embellishment.  Although some sources claim there were 351 of the Series 1 Double-Six Vanden Plas, the factory insists the total was 342.  British Leyland and its successor companies would continue to use the Vanden Plas name for some of the more highly-specified Daimlers but applied it also to Jaguars because in some markets the trademark to the Daimler name came to be held by Daimler-Benz AG (since 2022 Mercedes-Benz Group AG), a legacy from the earliest days of motor-car manufacturing and despite the English middle class often pronouncing the name as van-dem-plarr, it should said as van-dem-plass.  It's an error with the same origin as that suffered by Moët & Chandon: to English speaking ears, mow-eh sounds "more French" than mow-et. 

1976 Daimler Double-Six Vanden Plas two door.

The rarest Double-Six Vanden Plas was a genuine one-off, a two door built reputedly using one of the early prototypes, a regular production version contemplated but cancelled after the first was built.  Jaguar would once have called such things a FHC (fixed head coupé) but labelled the XJ derivatives as "two door saloons" and always referred to them thus, presumably as a point of differentiation with the XJ-S (later XJS) coupé produced at the same time.  Despite the corporate linguistic nudge, everybody seems always to have called the two-door XJs "coupés".  Why the project was cancelled isn't known but it was for the company a time of industrial and financial turmoil and distractions, however minor, may have been thought unwelcome.  Although fully-finished, apart from the VDP-specific trim, it includes also some detail mechanical differences from the regular production two-door Double-Six but both use the distinctive fluted finish on the grill and trunk (boot) lid trim; the car still exists.  The two-door XJs (1975-1978) rank with the earliest versions (1961-1967) of the E-Type (XKE; 1961-1974) as the finest styling Jaguar ever achieved and were it not for the unfortunate vinyl roof visually, it would be as close to perfect as any machine ever made.

1975 Jaguar XJC: The design perfected.  Even Jaguar's usually uncompromising originality police seem to approve.

The orthodoxy is the gluing-on of the vinyl was a necessity imposed by the inability of the paint of the era to cope with the slight flexing of the roof.  As a two-door hardtop, there was no B-pillar so the expanse of un-supported metal was larger than that of the sedans and thus more subject to higher stress-loads, resulting in the paint being subject to crazing.  Modern chemistry means suitable paints have long been available and many owners have taken the opportunity to fix the cars one visual flaw.  However, not all accept the “flexing roof” theory and claim the vinyl was a deliberate aesthetic choice, noting the 1972 Double-Six Vanden Plas (which appeared in 1972, three years before the two-door XJ went on sale) was fitted as standard with a vinyl roof, despite obviously there been no paint-related imperative.  Possibly it may have been a way of reducing interior noise but some argue it appeared just because the covering was then undeniably fashionable.  The inexcusable lapse in taste had been seen (then using leather) as early as the 1920s but it was in the US in the mid-1960s the motif hit the mass-market to attract those who wanted “a convertible’s rakish vibe” but needed something more practical; things soon got out of hand, the trend spreading to the UK and Australia.  For up-market models, the Australians even emulated the US practice of the “padded vinyl roof” which was a bad idea made worse the closer one got to the tropics, the foam in the “vinyl-metal sandwich” trapping moisture and leading quickly to rust.  The Europeans proved commendably resistant and by the 1980s the moment had passed in the UK and Australia but the Americans doubled-down and, until the mid-1990s, Detroit’s designers devoted much energy to styling elaborate variations on the theme, the marketing department doing its usual bit by labelling them with fanciful names.

Using one of his trademark outdoor settings, Norman Parkinson (1913-1990) photographed model Suzanne Kinnear (b 1935) adorning a Daimler SP250, wearing a Kashmoor coat and Otto Lucas beret with jewels by Cartier.  The image was published on the cover of Vogue's UK edition in November 1959.

Although Daimlers had, in small numbers, been imported into US for decades, after Jaguar purchased the company in 1960, there was renewed interest and the first model used to test the market was the small, fibreglass-bodied roadster, probably the most improbable Daimler ever and one destined to fail, doomed by (1) the quirky styling and (2) the lack of product development.  It was a shame because what made it truly unique was the hemi-head 2.5 litre (155 cubic inch) V8 which was one of the best engines of the era and remembered still for the intoxicating exhaust note.  The SP250 was first shown to the public at the 1959 New York Motor Show and there the problems began.  Aware the small sports car was quite a departure from the luxurious but rather staid line-up Daimler had for years offered, the company had chosen the pleasingly alliterative “Dart” as its name, hoping it would convey the sense of something agile and fast.  Unfortunately, Chrysler’s lawyers were faster still, objecting that they had already registered Dart as the name for a full-sized Dodge so Daimler needed a new name and quickly; the big Dodge would never be confused with the little Daimler but the lawyers insisted.  Imagination apparently exhausted, Daimler’s management reverted to the engineering project name and thus the car became the SP250 which was innocuous enough even for Chrysler's attorneys and it could have been worse.  Dodge had submitted their Dart proposal to Chrysler for approval and while the car found favor, the name did not and the marketing department was told to conduct research and come up with something the public would like.  From this the marketing types gleaned that “Dodge Zipp” would be popular and to be fair, dart and zip(p) do imply much the same thing but ultimately the original was preferred and Darts remained in Dodge’s line-up until 1976, for most of that time one of the corporation's best-selling and most profitable lines.  The name was revived between 2012-2016 for an unsuccessful and unlamented small sedan.

Leaper, growler and flutes on US market 1999 Jaguar Vanden Plas (X308).  The retractable, solid-timber picnic tables in the back of the front seats were much admired.

Decades later, US trademark law would again intrude, this time on Jaguar’s low-volume business of selling Daimlers in the US.  There, the company had after 1967 ceased offering the Daimler because, it being clear the trickle of safety & emission regulations was soon to be a flood, with capital scarce, it was decided resources needed to be devoted to compliance and one form of economy was to re-allocate the funds absorbed by maintaining Daimler as a separate brand, most of which were spent on advertising.  In Stuttgart, the Daimler-Benz lawyers took note and decided to reclaim the name, eventually managing to secure registration of the trademark and Daimlers have not since been available in the US.  However, there was still clearly demand for an up-market Jaguar and so the Sovereign name (used on Daimlers between 1966-1983) was applied to Jaguar XJ sedans which, although mechanically unchanged, were equipped with more elaborate appointments.

Lindsay Lohan with stainless steel Rolex Datejust (Roman numeral dial) with fluted white gold bezel.  Note the blue eyes; it's not known if the effect was achieved with colored contact lens or digital editing.

Sales of the up-market Sovereign were good and the profit margins fatter so the US market also received some even more luxurious Vanden Plas models and during the XJ’s X308 model run (1997-2003), the VDP cars were fitted with the fluted grill and trunk-lid trim as an additional means of product differentiation; it would be the last appearance of the flutes in North America and the only occasion on which the leaper and growler were used in conjunction with them.  Although some might dismiss the interior fittings of the Vanden Plas models as “bling”, there were nice touches.  The ones based on the X308 featured the fold-down picnic-tables once so beloved by English coach-builders (the affection in the 1960s trickling down to the middle-class as they began to appear on blinged-up mass-market vehicles) but, rather than the usual burl walnut veneer, the pieces were of solid timber.  The factory seems never to have discussed the rationale but it may be it was cheaper to do it that way, the veneering process being labor-intensive.

Pim Fortuyn in his chauffeur-driven Daimler Super V8, February 2002 (left), paramedics attending to him at the scene of his assassination (centre) a few paces from the Daimler, 6 May, 2002 (he died at the scene) and the car when on sale, Amsterdam, June 2018 (right).  His assassin, memorably, was described in press reports “deranged vegetarian”; perhaps it was the sight of meneer Fortuyn sprawled across those Connolly Leather hides which was triggering.

Jaguar became aware the allure of the flutes was real when it discovered a small but profitable industry had emerged in the wake of the company ceasing to use the Daimler name in European markets (by the 1990s, it was only in the UK, Japan, Australia & New Zealand they could be bought off the showroom floor).  Entrepreneurial types, armed with nothing more than a list of Jaguar part-numbers, had created kits containing the fluted trim pieces and Daimler-specific badges, these shipped to dealers or private buyers on the continent so Jaguar XJs could become “Daimlers”.  Being factory-supplied parts of no mechanical significance, their use did not affect warranties or insurance rates (though owners were required to inform registration authorities the badgework had changed) so, unlike many after-market modifications, administratively, it was a hassle-free process.  Jaguar took note of this uptick in the Daimler-demand curve and decided to meet it with supply, re-introducing the marque to Europe.  Because the company was, in effect, doing only what was being done by those buying the kits, it proved one of the industry's cheapest and quickest brand resurrections, Germany and the Netherlands especially receptive.  One notable owner of a real LWB (long wheelbase) Daimler Super V8 (X308) was the Dutch academic and politician Pim Fortuyn (1948-2002), assassinated by a left-wing environmentalist and animal rights activist during the 2002 national election campaign.

Narratology

Narratology (pronounced nar-uh-tol-uh-jee)

The study of narrative & narrative structure and the ways these affect human perception (with some mission creep over the years).

1967: The construct was narrate +‎ -ology, an Anglicization of the French narratologie, coined by Bulgarian-French historian, philosopher & structuralist literary critic Tzvetan Todorov (1939–2017), it first appeared in his book Grammaire du Décaméron (1967), a structural analysis of Decameron (The Decameron (1348-1353)) by the Italian writer Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375).  Although once thought an arcane appendage to literature and a mere academic abstraction, structuralism and narratology in the 1970s and 1980s became a very popular (and controversial) field and while postmodernism’s historic movement may have passed, the tools are an important part of the “learning” process used by generative AI (artificial intelligence) to produce meaning from the LLM (large language models.)

Title page from a 1620 printing of Decameron.

Boccaccio’s Decameron (literally “ten days”) was a collection of short stories, structured into a hundred tales of seven young women and three young men who had secluded themselves in a villa outside Florence, seeking to avoid the Black Death pandemic (1346-1353) then sweeping Europe.  Although not too much should be made of this comparison, the work in some aspects is not dissimilar to reality television, being a mash-up of erotic scenes, set-piece jokes, suspense and unrequited love.  Todorov’s Grammaire du Décaméron was a literary analysis of the work but “grammaire” must be understood as meaning “grammar” in the sense of the structural or narratological principles rather than as its used in its “everyday” sense.  Historians and literary scholars have for centuries regarded Decameron as a valuable document because, written in the Florentine vernacular of the era, although fictional, it’s a kind of “snapshot” of life in what was one of Europe’s many troubled times.  It was Boccaccio who dubbed Dante’s (Dante Alighieri (circa 1265–1321)) Divina Commedia (Divine Comedy (circa 1310-1321)) “divine” (in the sense of “very good” rather than “holy”).

Narrate (to relate a story or series of events (historically in speech or writing)) may for years (or even decades) have been in oral use in English before the first known use in print in 1656, etymologists noting that until the nineteenth century it was stigmatized as “Scottish” (long a slur among the more fastidious) although it’s thought it was derived from the “respectable” narration.  Narrative ((1) a story or account of events or (2) the art, process or technique or telling the story) was in use by the 1440s and was from the Middle French noun & adjective narrative, from the Late Latin narrātīvus (narration (noun) & suitable for narration (adjective)), the construct being narrāt(us) (related, told), past participle of narrāre (to relate, tell, say) + -īvus (the adjectival suffix).  Again, like “narrate”, narrative was once used exclusively of speech or writing but in recent decades the terms have been more widely applied and not restricted to describing the efforts of humans.

Since the nineteenth century, “-ologies” have proliferated.

The suffix -ology was formed from -o- (as an interconsonantal vowel) +‎ -logy.  The origin in English of the -logy suffix lies with loanwords from the Ancient Greek, usually via Latin and French, where the suffix (-λογία) is an integral part of the word loaned (eg astrology from astrologia) since the sixteenth century.  French picked up -logie from the Latin -logia, from the Ancient Greek -λογία (-logía).  Within Greek, the suffix is an -ία (-ía) abstract from λόγος (lógos) (account, explanation, narrative), and that a verbal noun from λέγω (légō) (I say, speak, converse, tell a story).  In English the suffix became extraordinarily productive, used notably to form names of sciences or disciplines of study, analogous to the names traditionally borrowed from the Latin (eg astrology from astrologia; geology from geologia) and by the late eighteenth century, the practice (despite the disapproval of the pedants) extended to terms with no connection to Greek or Latin such as those building on French or German bases (eg insectology (1766) after the French insectologie; terminology (1801) after the German Terminologie).  Within a few decades of the intrusion of modern languages, combinations emerged using English terms (eg undergroundology (1820); hatology (1837)).  In this evolution, the development may be though similar to the latter-day proliferation of “-isms” (fascism; feminism et al).

A narrative is a story and it can run to thousands of pages or appear in a few words on a restaurant menu describing their fish & chips: “Ethically sourced, line-caught Atlantic cod, liberated from the frigid depths, encased in a whisper-light, effervescent golden shroud of our signature micro-foamed artisanal lager batter and served with hand-sliced, elongated potato batons fried to a crisp perfection in sustainably produced vegetable oil.”  In the age of every customer being able to post from their phone a rating and review of a restaurant, wisely, some institutions include a footnote along the lines: “These narratives are a guide and because natural products vary greatly, there will be variation.”  That’s an aspect of narratology, a process which is not the reading and interpretation of individual texts but an attempt to study the nature of “story” itself, as a concept and as a cultural practice or construct.

Crooked Hillary Clinton's book tour (2017).

Narratologists know that what to a narrator can be a narrative, a naratee will receive as spin.  In What Happened (2017), a work of a few dozen pages somehow padded out to a two-inch thick wad of over 500 using the “how to write an Amazon best-seller” template, crooked Hillary Clinton (b 1947; US secretary of state 2009-2013) explained who was to blame for her loss in the 2016 US presidential election (spoiler alert: it was everybody except her).

Presumably not comparing what they’re doing with making “fish & chips” sound like something expensive, politicians and their operatives will often describe something they offer as a “narrative” although were mush the same stuff to come from their opponents it might be dismissed as “spin”.  A political narrative functions as a cognitive schema intended to simplify complexity, motivate support and legitimizes particular courses of action.  The concept has a long history but in recent decades the emphasis has been on “simplicity”, something illustrated by comparing a narrative like The Federalist Papers (1878-1788; a collection of several dozen essays advocating the ratification of the Constitution of the United States) with how things are now done (mostly fleshed-out, three-word slogans endlessly repeated).  That descent doesn’t mean both are not narratives in that both are crafted interpretive frame rather than objective descriptions although the extent of the deception obviously had tended to change.  Political spin can also be a narrative and should be thought a parallel stream rather than a tributary; variations on a theme as it were.  Although the purpose may differ (a narrative a storyline intended to set and define and agenda whereas spin is a “damage control” story designed to re-shape perceptions.  Given that, a narrative can be thought of a “macro-management” and spin “micro-management”, both providing fine case-studies for narratologists.

Narratology is a noun; the noun plural is narratologies.  The derived forms are the noun antenarratology (the study of antenarratives and their interplay with narratives and stories), the noun antenarrative (the process by which a retrospective narrative is linked to a living story (the word unrelated to the noun antinarrative (a narrative, as of a play or novel, that deliberately avoids the typical conventions of the narrative, such as a coherent plot and resolution)), the noun  econarratology (an approach to literary criticism combining aspects of ecocriticism (the interdisciplinary study of literature and ecology) and narratology), the noun narratologist (one who (1) studies or (2) practices narratology), the adjective narratological (of or pertaining to narratology) and the adverb narratologically (in terms of narratology).  Remarkably (given the literary theory industry), the adjective narratologistic seems never to have appeared; it can be only a matter of time.

Tzvetan Todorov on the rooftop of Casa Milà (La Pedrera), Barcelona, Spain, November 2014.

Although not a lineal descendent, what Todorov did in Grammaire du Décaméron was in the tradition of Aristotle’s (384-322 BC) work, especially ποιητικῆς (Peri poietikês (De Poetica De Poe in the Latin and traditionally rendered in English as Poetics).  Poetics is notable as the earliest known study of the structure of Greek drama and remains the oldest known text written exclusively in the form of what now would be called literary theory.  To a modern audience the word “poetics” can mislead because the author’s focus was ποιητική (literally “the poetic art”, from ποιητής (poet, author, writer) and his scope encompassed verse drama (comedy, tragedy, and the satyr play), lyric poetry, and the epic.  For centuries, Poetics loomed over the Western understanding of Greek theatre; it was revered by scholars of the late Medieval period and especially the Renaissance and their influence endured.  As far as is known, the Greeks were the first of the tragedians and it’s through the surviving texts of Aristotle that later understandings were filtered but all of his conclusions were based only on the tragedies and such was his historic and intellectual authority that for centuries those theories came to be misapplied and misused, either by mapping them on to all forms of tragedy or using them as exclusionary, dismissing from the canon those works which couldn’t be made to fit his descriptions.  However, as well as being an invaluable historic text explain how Greek theatre handled mimesis (imitation of life, fiction, allegory etc), Poetics genuinely can be read as proto-critical theory and in it lies a framework for structuralism.

Paintings of Claude Lévi-Strauss: Portrait de Claude Lévi-Strauss, 1991 (1991), oil on panel by Bengt Lindström (1925-2008) (left) and Claude Lévi-Strauss (undated), oil on other by Cal Lekie (b 1999).

Narratology as a distinct fork of structuralism does pre-date Todorov’s use of the word in 1967, the seminal work in the parameters of the discipline by Russian folklorist & literary historian of the formalist school Vladimir Propp (1895-1970) who doubtlessly never anticipated “formalism” would come to be weaponized by comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953).  Indeed, by the late 1920s the school of formalism had become unfashionable (something which in the Soviet Union could be dangerous for authors) and their works essentially “disappeared” until being re-discovered by structuralists in the 1950s.  In the West, the idea of narratology as the “theory, discourse or critique of narrative or narration” owes a debt to Belgian-born French anthropologist & ethnologist Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908–2009) who defined the structural analysis by narrative as its now understood.  His landmark text Anthropologie structurale (Structural Anthropology (1958)) suggested myths are variations on basic themes and that in their totality (which runs to thousands) their narratives contain certain constant, basic and universal structures by which any one myth can be explained.  In that way, myths (collectively) exist as a kind “language” which can be deconstructed into units or “mythemes” (by analogy with phonemes (an indivisible unit of sound in a given language)).  Although he didn’t pursue the notion of the comparison with mathematics, others did and that (inherently more segmented) field perhaps better illustrates “structural roles” within language in elements which, although individually standing as minimal contrastive units, can be combined or manipulated according to rules to produce meaningful expressions.  As in formal language theory, in mathematical logic, the smallest units are the primitive symbols of a language which can be quantifiers, variables, logical connectives, relation symbols, function symbols or punctuation.  Broken into the individual parts, these need have no (or only minimal) semantic meaning but gain much meaning when assembled or otherwise handled through syntactic combination governed by a recognized grammar (ie although conceptual primitives rather than “building blocks”, complex meaning can be attained by applying axioms and rules).

Azerbaijani folk art, following Layla and Majnun (1188), a narrative poem by the Persian poet Nizami Ganjavi (circa 1141–1209), printed in Morphology of the Folk Tale (1928) by Vladimir Propp.  In something of a Russian tradition, there are no known photographs of Propp smiling.

Levi-Strauss’s contribution was that myths can be read in relation to each other rather than as reflecting a particular version, thus the his concept of a kind of “grammar” (the set of relations lying beneath the narrative’s surface), thus the general principle of the “collective existence of myths”, independent of individual thought.  That was of course interesting but the startling aspect was the implication myths as related to other myths rather than truth and reality; they are, in a sense, “outside” decentred, and possess their own truth and logic which, when contemplated in a “traditional” way, may be judged neither truthful nor logical.  In that, Levi-Strauss applied something of the method of Propp who, in Morphology of the Folk Tale (1928), “reduced” all folk tales to seven “spheres of action” and 31 fixed elements or “functions” of narrative.  In Propp’s scheme, the function was the basic unit of the narrative “language’ and denoted or referred to the actions which constitute the narrative while the functions tend to follow a logical sequence.  The concept would have been familiar to engineers and shipbuilders but genuinely there was some novelty when applied to literature

Lithuanian semiotician A. J “Julien” Greimas (1917–1992) was among the many academics working in France who found Propp’s reductionism compelling and in Sémantique Structurale Recherche de méthode (Structural Semantics: An Attempt at a Method (1966)) he further atomized things, apparently seeking something like a “universal macro language”, a grammar of narrative which could be derived from a semantic analysis of sentence structure.  That was as ambitious as it sounds and to replace Propp’s “spheres of action” he suggested the “actant” (or role): a structural unit which is neither character or narrative.  To handle the mechanics of this approach he posited three pairs of binary oppositions which included six actants: subject/object; sender/receiver; helper/opponent.  The interactions of these binary oppositions served to account for or describe the three basic patterns which are to be found in narrative: (1) desire, search or aim (subject/object), (2) communication (sender/receiver) and (3) auxiliary support or hindrance (helper/opponent).

An eleven-volume first edition of Marcel Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu (published originally in seven (1913-1927); in the the original French it contained some 1.267 million words.  By comparison, Leo Tolstoy's (1828-1910) War and Peace (1898) ran ran (depending on the edition) to 560-590 thousand.

While Greimas didn’t explicitly claim his model successfully could be mapped on to “any and every” narrative, he does appear to have built his model as a general theory and while not all critics were convinced, it seems generally to have been acknowledged his toolbox would work on a much wider range than that of Propp which did break down as narrative complexity increased.  Another French literary theorist associated with the structural movement was Gérard Genette (1930–2018) and in choosing a case study for his model he described in Discours du récit est un essai de méthode (Narrative Discourse: An essay in method (1972)) he selected Marcel Proust’s (1871-1922) À la recherche du temps perdu (1913–1927) (originally translated in English as “Remembrance of Things Past” and of late as “In Search of Lost Time”) which spans many volumes and narrative streams.  This time the critics seemed more convinced and seem to have concluded Genette’s approach was “more accessible” (these things are relative).  Noting the distinctions made in Russian Formalism between fabula (story) & syuzhet (plot), Genette distinguished between récit (the chronological sequence of a narrative’s events), historie (the sequence in which the event actually occurred and narration (the act of narrating itself); atop that framework, he built a complex discussion.  Being a French structuralist, he of course added to the field some new jargon to delight the academy, concluding there were three basic kinds of narrator: (1) the heterodiegetic' (where the narrator is absent from his own narrative), (2) the homodiegetic (the narrator is inside his narrative, as in a story told in the first person) and the autodiegetic (the narrator is inside the narrative and also the main character).  Genene’s approach was thus relational, envisaging narrative as a product or consequence of the interplay of its different components, meaning all and all aspects of narrative can be seen as dependent units (or, debatably, layers).

Narrator & protagonist: Lindsay Lohan as Cady Heron in Mean Girls (2004).  What in literary theory is known as homodiegetic narration is in film production usually called “subjective narration” or “first-person narration”, realized usually in a “voice-over narration by the protagonist”.

In formulating his three categories Genene nodded to Aristotle and Plato (circa 427-348 BC), the ancient worthies distinguishing three basic kinds of narrator: (1) the speaker or writer using their own voice, (2) (b) one who assumes the voice of another or others and (3) one who uses both their own voice and that of others.  These categories need not be exclusive for a story may begin in the voice of a narrator who may then introduce another narrator who proceeds to tell the story of characters who usually have their own voices and one or more of them may turn to narration.  Structurally (and even logically), there’s no reason why such a progression (or regression) cannot be infinite.  Although it’s obvious the term “narrate” denotes the person to whom a narrative is addressed, just because there is a narrative, it need not be axiomatic a narratee is present or ever existed, T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) in The Three Voices of Poetry (1953-1954) discerning three modes (voices) of poetic expression: (1) the poet speaking to himself, a personal, often obscure meditation, (2) the poet addressing an audience, aiming to teach, persuade, or amuse and (3) the poet creating a dramatic character, as in verse drama, something demanding complex communication between imagined characters.  Eliot argued that “good” poetry often was a blend of these voices and distinguishing them helps in understanding a poem's social and artistic purpose, beyond its mere self-expression.  However, Eliot did note that in “talking to himself”, the writer could also be “talking to nobody”.  He was at pains also to point out that when speaking in the third voice, the poet is saying not what he would say in his own person, but only what he can say within the limits of one imaginary character addressing another imaginary character.  More than many, Eliot knew narrative was not always reliable but the techniques of narratology (and structuralism generally) exist for purposes other than determining truth.

Roland Barthes (2015), oil and acrylic on canvas by Benoit Erwann Boucherot (b 1983).

Layers in narrative structure were identified by the French philosopher & literary theorist Roland Barthes (1915–1980) and his work had great appeal, something of an academic cult once surrounded him and, almost half a century after his death, he retains a following.  In Introduction à l'analyse structurale des récits (Introduction to Structural Analysis of Narrative (1966)), Barthes presumed a hierarchy of levels existed within narrative, suggesting that, up to a point, they can be discussed separately.  Narrative (at least for this purpose), he conceived as a “long sentence”, just as every constative (in linguistics, pertaining to an utterance relaying information and likely to be regarded as true or false) sentence can be the “rough outline” of a short narrative.  Barthes’ model was more building block-like in that he selects basic units of narrative (such as “function” & “index”, functions constituting a chain of acts while indices are a kind of metadata containing information about characters.

François Mitterrand (1984), acrylic on canvas by Bryan Organ (b 1935).

On X (formerly known as Twitter), one tweeter analysed the images on Barthes which exists and the indexed web, finding in 72% he was smoking a cigarette or cigar.  The statistical risks associated with routinely inhaling a known carcinogen have for decades been well-known but Barthes didn’t live long enter the age of “peak statistical risk”.  In February, 1980, having just taken lunch with François Mitterrand (1916–1996; President of France 1981-1995) in a restaurant on Paris’s Rue des Blancs-Manteaux, Barthes was using a zebra crossing on the Rue des Ecoles when knocked down by a laundry van; never recovering from his injuries, he died a month later.  The van’s driver was one Yvan Delahov, of Bulgarian nationality who tested positive for alcohol, but his reading of 0.6 fell below the legal maximum of 0.8; admitting he was late delivering his shirts, he claimed he’d not exceeded 60 km/h (37.3) mph.  At the time, Barthes was carrying no identity documents but was identified his colleague, the philosopher Michel Foucault (1926–1984).

Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism (first edition, 1957).

Finally must be acknowledged the contribution of Canadian literary critic & literary theorist Northrop Frye (1912–1991) whose Anatomy of Criticism (1957) is regarded still as one of the more “remarkable and original” (in the words of the English historian and critic J.A. Cuddon (1928-1966)) works of literary theory in the English-speaking world.  In the narrow technical sense, Frye's theory is not structuralist (something which doubtless burnished its reputation among many) but it certainly contains strands which can be seen as structuralist.  Frye positioned literature as an “autonomous verbal structure”' unrelated to anything beyond itself, a world which contains “life and reality in a system of verbal relationships”.  In this “self-contained literary universe”, there were four radical “mythoi” (plot forms and basic organizing structural principles) which corresponded to the four seasons of the natural order and constitute the four main genres of comedy romance, tragedy and satire.  For those non-postmodernists who still long for l'art pour l'art (art for art's sake), Frye’s mythois are there to be used and he proved their utility in a wide range of texts, including the Bible.