Chic

Chic (pronounced sheek)

(1) Attractive and fashionable; style and elegance, especially in dress (particularly when applied to women).

(2) Modishness, a casual and understated style, as in dress or décor, that expresses a specified trendy lifestyle or activity.

(3) As a noun, when used with an attributive noun or adjectival modifier, a descriptor for just about any defined style (shabby chic, boho chic etc).

1856: Adopted in English with the general sense of “style in fine art, artistic skill, faculty of producing excellence rapidly and easily”, from the French chic (stylishness; elegant (the original sixteenth century meaning was "subtlety")), of unknown origin but probably from the German Schick (elegant appearance; tasteful presentation) & Geschick (tact, skill, aptness), from Middle Low German schikken (arrange appropriately), from the Middle High German schicken (to outfit oneself, fit in, arrange appropriately), causative of the Middle High German geschehen & geschēn (to happen, rush), from the Old High German giskehan (to happen), from the Proto-West Germanic skehan, from the Proto-Germanic skehaną (to run, move quickly), from the primitive Indo-European skek- (to run, jump, spring).  The Germanic forms were akin to the Dutch schielijk (hasty) & schikken (to arrange) and the Old English scēon (to happen).  The alternative etymology is a link to the French chicane, from chicanerie (trickery) which in the 1610s English picked up as chicanery (legal quibbling, sophistry, mean or petty tricks).

The meaning "Parisian elegance and stylishness combined with originality" emerged in English by 1882, used to convey the sense of a style which was tied specifically to the most identifiably elegant street wear of the ladies of Paris, the influencers of the day noting chic was "an untranslatable word, denoting an indispensable quality"; something of the je ne sais quoi then.  The use as an adjective to describe the appearance of individuals dates from 1879 in English but interestingly, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) pointed out the use of chic was nowhere near as frequent among French speakers in France although Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880) in Madame Bovary (1857) used chicard (one who is chic), the then current Parisian slang for "classy" before waspishly adding that it was “bourgeoisie”, one indication of why it's as rewarding (and less time-consuming) to read Flaubert as it is Proust (Marcel Proust (1871–1922; author of the multi-volume À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time (1913-1927))).

Felicia Montealegre Bernstein (1922-1978, left), her husband the composer & conductor Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990, seated) and Black Panther Field Marshal DC (Donald Lee Cox, 1936–2011) in Bernstein’s apartment, Park Avenue, New York, January 1970.  This photograph appeared in the New York magazine article in which Tom Wolfe (1930-2018) introduced the term “radical chic”.

The phrase “radical chic” was coined in 1970 by Tom Wolfe, a writer associated with the so-called “New Journalism” (a movement that incorporated techniques and devices from various strains of literature; it was (and remains) influential but has always attracted criticism).  Wolfe’s inspiration was a benefit event given by Leonard Bernstein for the Black Panther Party (1966-1982 and the best-known of the “black power” organizations which emerged during the civil rights era; it was interesting in that as well as being concerned with the civil rights of African-Americans, it was very much in the Marxist–Leninist tradition of the US far-left but also contained a distinctive feminist element).  The term caught on and was used to describe what would later come to be called “virtue-signalling”: the rich adopting the symbols of radical political causes while maintaining a distance from the people and the conditions they purported to support.  Examples live on in upper middle-class suburbs in which BLM (black lives matter) signs might be displayed although no black families live anywhere close.  Wolfe likened radical chic to a trendy romanticizing of “primitive souls” (such as Native Americans (then called American Indians) or Chicano grapeworkers) and compared it to the nineteenth century French phenomenon denoted by the phrase nostalgie de la boue, (literally hankering after mud), coined in 1855 by the dramatist Émile Augier (1820-1899).  What Augier described was prosperous people who were somehow unhappy and, feeling “alienated” from a “natural existence”, sought to “rediscover their essence” although this was usually “temporarily experiential”, few apparently inclined to exchange financial stability for the struggles of the working class.  Wolfe’s experience at Bernstein’s Park Avenue party in 1970 was a case study Augier would have understood: “It was at this party that a Black Panther field marshal rose up beside the north piano—there was also a south piano—in Leonard Bernstein’s living room and outlined the Panthers’ ten-point program to a roomful of socialites and celebrities, who, giddy with nostalgie de la boue, entertained a vision of the future in which, after the revolution, there would no longer be any such thing as a two-story, thirteen-room apartment on Park Avenue, with twin grand pianos in the living room, for one family.”

One adjectival variation was chi-chi (extremely chic, sophisticated) which by 1908 was recorded also as a noun meaning “pretentious fussiness", from the French chichi (airs, fuss).  Etymologists think this, like frou-frou (showy or frilly ornamentation but in its original sense "the rustling of a woman's skirt as it swishes around the legs"), likely imitative.  Chic is either used invariably, in which case the spelling of the plural is chic, or has the plural chics for both the masculine and the feminine forms.  While the spelling chic is correct for the uninflected adjective, all inflected forms are nonstandard (to be correct, inflected forms must be derived from the preferred spelling schick).  The accepted homophones are sheik & sheikh, the pronunciation “chik” is non-standard except when used facetiously.

Lindsay Lohan in zettai ryouiki mode, Jingle Ball, New York City, 2013.

Chic fills a most narrowly specific niche and is thus without no exact synonym.  Words like exclusive, mod, modern, current, sharp, smart, dap, dapper, dashing, faddish, modish, natty, with it, elegant, stylish, dapper, fashionable, natty, trendy, voguish, fancy, posh or swank tend in the direction and in many cases run at least in parallel but none quite capture the sense of chic.  Nor are the likely antonyms (inelegant, unfashionable or unstylish helpful; there is unchic but is so rare as to be probably obscure and it’s unnecessary: someone or something is either chic or not.  Chic is a verb & noun, chicly an adverb, chicness a noun and chicer & chicest are adjectives.  The noun chic is very often used with an attributive noun or adjective modifier, indicating the kind of style, such as boho-chic, heroin-chic, shabby-chic, eco-chic, geek-chic, radical-chic, porno-chic, communist-chic, terrorist-chic, Ayatollah-chic, scruffy-chic, super-chic, uber-chic, goth-chic, ultra-chic, industrial-chic etc.  There were also forms designed deliberately to insult such as chav-chic (also in the form council house-chic), gypsy-chic & hillbilly-chic.  Chiconomics was a clever coining which deconstructed the ways of looking chic on a budget and très chic (very stylish) was a way to emphasize the French connection.

Heroin chic

Anjelica Huston (b 1951) photographed by Bob Richardson (1928-2005), 1971.

Heroin chic, an aesthetic characterized by a painfully thin (preferably tall) build, pale skin, dark circles under the eyes, disheveled hair and a vacuous, haunted expression, was first noted in the late 1980s before the following decade becoming prominent in the modeling industry, an allusion not only to (a not actually typical) the look of an addict but also the alleged popularity of the drug in the business.  The motif however wasn’t new, examples existing from the early twentieth century and Bob Richardson photographed Anjelica Huston very much in the mode as early as 1971.  For those who wish to perfect the look, on the internet there are tutorials detailing how to apply makeup in the appropriate way although, to avoid the thought police, the word "heroin" tends not to appear in the tags or titles; it's just not TikToker-friendly. 

When first coined, heroin chic was intended as a criticism but, in the democratic way English works, it was quickly embraced by popular culture and soon, even in the early days of the internet and long before even embryonic social media platforms, guides were soon circulating, detailing how to achieve the look which, proved so popular they were reprinted in mainstream magazines.  Had it been just a fashionable look it might not have attracted the disapprobation but, for all sorts of reasons (in part related to the symbiotic economics of drug production, distribution and enforcement regimes), the look happened at a time when heroin use in the West spiked, along with a sudden increase in overdoses and drug-related deaths.

Echoes of an earlier chic:  Models at the BCBGMAXAZIRA show, New York Fashion Week, 2012.  BCBGMAXAZIRA (bon chic, bon genre max azira) was created as a Max Azira sub-brand.  Bon chic, bon genre (literally "good style, good attitude") in this context translates as something like the philosophical statement  “dress stylishly and you'll feel self-assured and project confidence".  This slender pair may be happier than they appear.

Itself a reaction to the more voluptuous models in the 1980s, heroin chic departed the catwalks rather abruptly, 1997 noted as the end-point, induced by what was a classic moral panic, ostensibly in reaction to a general concern about heroin use and overdoses but really triggered by the drug-related deaths of a number of white pop-culture celebrities.  Although seemingly oblivious to the the death-rate among ethnic minorities and the poor, the toll of the high-profile caught the attention of the White House staff and in May 1997, Bill Clinton (b 1946; US president 1993-2001) became involved, his speech on the subject a carefully choreographed interruption to a prayer breakfast (readers should pause to imagine what goes through Bill Clinton's mind when he's at prayer) in which he condemned heroin chic, saying “You do not need to glamorize addiction to sell clothes, the glorification of heroin is not creative, it’s destructive. It’s not beautiful; it’s ugly. And this is not about art; it’s about life and death. And glorifying death is not good for any society.”

The allure: controversial but undeniable.

Still, the thought police can only suppress but not kill an idea.  Given the political pressure, the industry remains too timid to reprise the look on covers or cat-walks but there remains a counter-culture which finds irresistibly alluring the sight of a slender models walking as if in a drug-induced stupor and although it never entirely went away, impressionistically, it does appear heroin-chic is enjoying, on-line and on the street, a post-pandemic renaissance.  The pro-ana community, always supportive of forks of fashion which build on their framework, will sometimes include style-guides but does caution it’s an aesthetic which works only on the thin (you need not be statuesque; any height can work but not any weight).  So, the first goal is to be thin and pro-ana is there to help with any number of guides available and all work but only if rigidly they’re followed.  Techniques can vary but an indicative approach to the mechanics of the heroin-chic look is:

(1) Get thin.  This is the essential pre-condition.

(2) Begin the process formerly when able successfully to shop in the (US) size zero to one section.  Clothes need to be loose and baggy (if they’re not, return to step (1)).

(3) Never buy anything clingy or with a bare back.  Structurally, the core elements you’re trying to achieve are emaciation and androgyny.

(4) Never buy anything with giant polka dots or made with fabrics of bright colors.  It sounds an unimportant point but is essential; heroin-chic simply doesn’t work with vibrant colors or certain designs.  The preferred colors are black, white, grey, the darker purples and navy blue.

(5) Buy layered items or those made with fluffy fabrics.

(6) Avoid vertical lines unless the stripes are really wide and the color contrasts distinct.

(7) Wear boots wherever possible.

(8) Prime the eyelids, then use a medium to dark brown eye shadow, packing it on to the eyelids.  Unlike the conventional approach to eye-styling, using the fingers is best because it creates an inherently messy finish and the result will inevitably be asymmetric which is good.  When content, add some eye shadow under the eyes and again, strive to achieve coverage but not neatness.

(9) Wait a few minutes (which isn’t a necessity with all eye shadows but there are variations even within the ranges of the one manufacturer.  When ready, run jet-black eye shadow along the top and bottom lash-lines.  This is best done with a small eye shadow brush and, once applied, smudge as desired using the fingers.  Experienced users claim Nyx Cosmetics eyebrow cake is the best product available and for touch-ups or quick corrections, recommend Urban Decay’s 24/7 pencils.

(10) The look is convincing only with clumpy eyelashes.  Take a mascara and use the tip to stick the lashes together, forming something which looks vaguely what you imagine spider legs so treated might resemble.  What you’re after is a variation of what eyelash stylists call “the spiky” except instead of being neatly separated, the lashes are in irregular clumps.

(11) The rest of the make-up should tend to the neutral.  The aim remember is pale skin (avoid exposure to sunlight) so use just a BB cream rather than foundation, accentuated only with just a bronzer to emphasize the shape of the cheekbones.  Illamasqua’s cream pigment is highly regarded.

(12) Perhaps counter-intuitively, the hair needs to be washed and conditioned according to the normal routine (heroin-chic is a curated look, not a consequence of neglect).  The idea is to achieve a stringy, un-kept look but, again counter-intuitively, that can really be constructed only if the hair is clean and well kept and with most hair-types, it’s not difficult using nothing more exotic than inexpensive product such as spray, wax or fudge.  In most cases the styling technique is a variation of what hair-dressers call the JBF but because hair types vary, you may need to experiment.  However it’s done, heroin-chic works best with straight hair so, if you’re after the optimal look, straighten first.

(13) There’s no consensus about which color should be used on the lips or even if it should be glossy or matt.  However, unlike the eyes, lipstick should be applied with precision; it’s just a convention of use.

(14) Juxtaposition.  As a look, heroin-chic works only if, at a second glance, it's apparent everything is expensive (think of it as a sub-set of shabby chic); it's not something done with cheap clothing and needs a pair of diamond studs and a good watch to complete the effect but jewelry should be chosen with some restraint, too much and it detracts from what is a very specific construction and silver will always work better than gold.

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.

Vorticism

Vorticism (pronounced vawr-tuh-siz-uhm)

A short-lived movement in the British avant-garde, nurtured by Wyndham Lewis, which climaxed in a London exhibition in 1915 before being absorbed.

1914: The construct was vortic + -ism.  The Latin vortic was the stem of vortex, (genitive vorticis), an archaic from of vertex (an eddy of water, wind, or flame; whirlpool; whirlwind whirl, top, crown, peak, summit), from vertō (to turn around, turn about) from vertere (to turn), from the primitive Indo-European wer (to turn; bend).  The –ism suffix is from the Ancient Greek ισμός (ismós) & -isma noun suffixes, often directly, sometimes through the Latin –ismus & isma (from where English picked up ize) and sometimes through the French –isme or the German –ismus, all ultimately from the Ancient Greek (where it tended more specifically to express a finished act or thing done).  It appeared in loanwords from Greek, where it was used to form abstract nouns of action, state, condition or doctrine from verbs and on this model, was used as a productive suffix in the formation of nouns denoting action or practice, state or condition, principles, doctrines, a usage or characteristic, devotion or adherence (criticism; barbarism; Darwinism; despotism; plagiarism; realism; witticism etc).  Vorticism is a noun, vorticist is a noun & adjective and vorticistic is an adjective; the noun plural was vorticists,  The forms vorticistically & vortical seem never to have come into use.

Hieratic head of Ezra Pound (1914), by Henri Gaudier-Brzeska (1891-1915).

The name Vorticism was said to have been coined in 1914 by the poet Ezra Pound (1885–1972) years before fascism and madness possessed his soul.  Pound had already used the word "vortex" to describe the effect modernist poetry was having on intellectual thought in Europe and he used the word not in the somewhat vague sense it often assumed when used figuratively to suggest swirling turbulence but rather as a mathematician or meteorologist might: an energy which gathers from the surrounding chaos what’s around, imparts to it a geometrical form which, intensifying as it goes, arrives at a single point.  Pound’s coining of the name is generally accepted but some historians claim the name was chosen by the Italian futurist Umberto Boccioni (1882-1916) who claimed all creative art could emanate only from a vortex of emotions.

Blast Magazine, July 1915.

Vorticism flourished only briefly between 1912-1915 as an overly aggressive reaction to what was held to be an excessive attachment to and veneration for delicacy and beauty in art and literature, preferring to celebrate the tools of modernity, the violence and energy of machines.  In painting and sculpture the angles were sharp and the lines bold, colors displayed in juxtaposition to emphasize the starkness of their difference and there was a reverence for geometric form and repetition.  The movement in 1914 published its own magazine: Blast: the Review of the Great English Vortex which was more manifesto than critique, a London-based attempt to gather together the artists and writers of the avant‐garde in one coherent movement.  It wanted the shock of the new.

Composition (1913), by Wyndham Lewis (1882-1957).

The idea was an art which reflected the strains of the vortices of a modern life in what was increasingly a machine age.  Thus, although it remains a footnote in the history of modern art, the label Vorticism refers to a political and sociological point rather than a distinct style such as contemporaries like Cubism or Futurism.  The timing was of course unfortunate and the outbreak of World War I (1914-1918) robbed Vorticism of much of its initial energy; the exhibition eventually staged in London’s Doré Gallery in 1915 remained a one-off and, like much of the pre-1914 world, Vorticism didn’t survive the World War.

Dance Hall Scene (circa 1913), by CRW Nevinson (1889-1946).

Being unappreciated at the time, most of the paintings of the vorticists were lost but retrospectives have been assembled from what remains and the still extant photographic record and there’s now a better understanding of the legacy and the influence on art deco, dada, surrealism, pop art, indeed, just about any abstract form.  Graphic art too benefited from the techniques, the sense of line and color identifiable in agitprop, twentieth century advertising and, most practically, the “dazzle” camouflage used by admiralties in both world wars as a form of disguise for ships.

Juan Garrido, a graphic designer based in Caracas, Venezuela, created the display typeface Vorticism in 2013.  Reflecting the cultural and linguistic influences, while there are a number of typefaces called futurism (or some variation) and some based on the word "vortex", Mr Garrido's "Vorticism" is uniquely named.

Lindsay Lohan in the Vorticism typeface.

Ezra Pound (1919), by Wyndham Lewis.

Even in 1912, Vorticism’s use of bold, abstract, and geometric forms (often depicting movement and mechanical apparatuses) wasn’t new but the movement had an energy which attracted those wanting to create imagery which marked a dramatic break from the representational forms which then were still dominant early in the ear which would come to be known as the dawn of modernity.  In that sense, Vorticism is understood as one of a number of movements embracing a new aesthetic reflecting the dynamism and energy of the modern world.  That as a distinct entity Vorticism didn’t endure was in a way an indication of success rather than failure because its motifs and techniques were co-opted to serve as foundational aspects of many movements in modern art, the abstract and geometric forms underpinning Futurism and Constructivism as well as becoming a staple of commercial graphic art and advertising.  Perhaps the most obvious influence was the artistic legitimization of the integration of text into images, a practice borrowed from commerce and a notable signature of Dada and Surrealism.  The use of text as a visual element challenged traditional boundaries between different art forms, a tension which enabled Pop art to create was in some ways a novel ecosystem.  However, those same motifs have been used also as something illustrative of the destructive tendencies of the speed and spread of mechanical and industrial reality which the vorticists championed and Precisionism & Bauhaus celebrated, at least in a sanitized and idealized way which hid the essential ugliness below.

Mile

Mile (pronounced mahyl)

(1) A unit of a unit of distance on land, derived from the 1593 English statute mile (equal to 8 furlongs) and still in use in some English-speaking countries.  In 1959, in a treaty established by a number of Anglophone nations (and subsequently ratified by most), it was defined as distance equal to 5,280 feet (1,760 yards; 1.609.344 metres).

(2) Any of many customary units of length derived from the Roman mile (mille passus) of 8 stades (5,000 Roman feet).

(3) Any of a variety of other units of distance or length, used at different times in different countries.

(4) In athletics and horse racing (as “the mile”), a race run over that distance.

(5) In idiomatic use (in both the singular and plural), a notable distance or margin.

(6) As “air miles”, a unit in an airline’s frequent flyer program.

Pre 1000: From the Middle English myle & mile, from the Old English mīl, from the Proto-West Germanic mīliju, from the Latin mīlia & mīllia (plural of mīle & mīlle (mile)) which translates literally as “thousand” but was a commonly used short-form of mīlle passus (a thousand paces), thus the derived mīlia passuum (thousands of steps), duo milia passuum (two thousand paces (ie “two miles’) etc).  The origin of the Latin word is unknown and was the source also of the French mille, the Italian miglio and the Spanish milla whereas the Scandinavian forms (the Old Norse mila etc) came from English.  The West Germanic word was the source also of the Middle Dutch mile, the Dutch mijl, the Old High German mila and the German Meile.  The spelling of the German forms came about because the Latin milia (a neuter plural) was mistakenly thought a feminine singular.  Mile & mileage are nouns and miles is an adverb; the noun plural is miles.

Fuel economy for the 2017 Dodge Viper GTC, estimated according the the method mandated by the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency).  The 14 mpg (miles per gallon) was calculated using a weighted formula on the basis of 12 city; 19 highway and isn't as thirsty as it may sound because a US gallon (3.785412 litres) is smaller than an imperial gallon (4.546092 litres).  The inclusion of a “gallons per 100 miles” number is unique to the US.  How many Viper owners achieved this level of economy isn't known and if one is at the controls of an 8.4 litre (513 cubic inch) V10 generating 645 horsepower (HP), the temptation exists to drive in a manner Greta Thunberg (b 2003 and not a Viper owner) would condemn; the Viper GTC was fitted with a speedometer graduated to 220 mph (355 km/h).  With the governor disabled (a simple and popular task), the top speed of a 2017 Viper GTC was 196 mph (315 km/h) but for use in competition (or on the street by the lunatic fringe), modified versions could be made to exceed 220 mph ("wind the needle off the dial" in the accepted slang).  In the matter of fuel economy, at all times it's a matter of YMMV (your mileage many vary) but once a Viper was travelling much beyond 100 mph, the EPA's 14 mpg average was a distant memory.  

YMMV: 2014 SRT Viper TA 1.0 in TA Orange over TA Black leather and cloth.

The noun mileage (which appeared also as milage and although the “mute e” rule would suggest this was correct it never caught on) was in use by at least 1754 in the sense of “allowance or compensation for travel or conveyance reckoned by the mile” and that was so politicians in the North American colonies could calculate how much they could claim for travel undertaken in the course of their word.  To this day, “travel allowances” remain the “entitlements” most valued by politicians looking to “rort the system”.  From the mid 1830s, the idea of mileage as “a fixed rate per mile” came into use in railroad system charging.  The meaning “a total number of miles” (of a way made, used, or traversed) was from the 1860s while the figurative use (usefulness, derived benefit) emerged at much the same time.  The long familiar mpg (miles per gallon) was a measure of fuel economy (miles driven per gallon of fuel consumed) and came into use between 1910-1912.  When the metric system was introduced to jurisdictions previously using imperial measurement, instead of replacing mpg with kpl (kilometres per litre), the measure used was L/100 km (litres per 100 km).  According to engineers, L/100 km was preferable because it emphasised consumption and thus aligned with other measures expressed to consumers (such as electricity or emissions), the argument being the psychology of “the lower the number the better” would be standardized.  So, whereas the higher the MPG the lower was the fuel consumption whereas with L/100, greater efficiency was implied by a lower number.  In a practical sense, because Continental Europe adopted L/100 km long before widespread metrication in English-speaking countries, a convention had been established so it would not have been logical to create another expression; thus except in the US & UK, consumption follows the industry’s preferred “input per output” method.

The phrase “she's got a few miles on the clock” referred either to (1) a machine which was old or had been much used or (2) a woman either (2a) older than she represented herself to be or (2b) with a past including many sexual partners.  The “few” in this phrase is used ironically whereas if a dealer in second-hard hand cars claims a vehicle “has done only a few miles”, the clear implication is “low mileage” and the “few” must be read literally.  A car’s mileage is recorded on its odometer which historically was a mechanical device unscrupulous second-hand car salesmen (an often tautological text-string) were notorious for “tampering with” so a vehicle could be represented as “less used” and thus sold for a higher price.  Odometers are now electronic so while the tampering methods have changed, the motivations have not.  A classic example of the legal principles involved in such matters is Dick Bentley Productions Ltd v Harold Smith (Motors) Ltd [1965] EWCA Civ 2, an English contract law case concerning the purchase by the Australian-born comedian Charles Walter "Dick" Bentley (1907–1995) of a used Bentley motor car.

1939 Bentley 4¼-Litre Sedanca Coupé in the style of French coachbuilder Henri Chapron (1886-1978).

This is not the car involved in the Dick Bentley v Harold Smith case which was a 1939 Bentley 4¼-Litre DHC (Drophead Coupé) by Park Ward which had anyway been re-bodied by the time of the sale which became a matter of dispute.  At any time a 1939 Bentley DHC would have been a genuine rarity.  The pre-war production records which remain extant are fragmentary and don't detail the builds down to body-type by year but marque specialists believe Park Ward in 1939 may have built as few as four DHCs (the then usual English term for as Cabriolet) and it's known two survive. 

Dick Bentley Productions had informed Harold Smith (Motors) Ltd (a dealer in “prestige” used cars) the company wished to buy a “well vetted” Bentley and the dealer offered one they represented as “having done only 20,000 miles [32,000 km]” since a replacement engine had been fitted.  However, after purchase, it was discovered the Bentley had “done some 100,000 miles [160,000 km]” since the engine and gearbox had been replaced.  Dick Bentley sued Harold Smith for a breach of warranty and succeeded on the basis of the difference between “a representation” and “an essential term of a contract”.  Because the dealer was trading on the basis of possessing expertise in the matter of such cars, representations made by the dealer about critical matters (such as mileage) constitute “a warranty” and a bona fide consumer purchasing the product for fair value is entitled to rely on the word of such a dealer.  Dick Bentley succeeded at first instance and the case went on appeal where the dealer was found to be liable because (1) given they were in the business of trading in such vehicles and represented themselves as “experts”, either (1) they knew the mileage claim was false, (2) should have determined the claim was false or (3) were anyway in a better position than the consumer to make that determination.  The dealer thus either possessed or should have possessed “superior knowledge” compared to any non-expert consumer.  What this means is a dealer would likely always be held to have offered “a warranty” if making such a claim but the proverbial “little old lady” knowing nothing of engines and gearboxes making the same claim on the basis of what she’d been told would not be held to the same standard.  Her statement would, prima facie, be “an innocent misrepresentation”.

The terms milepost and milestone were from the mid eighteenth century and described respectively (1) a post permanently set in the ground next to a roadway to mark the distance to or from a locality and (2) a stone permanently set in the ground and engraved for the same purpose.  The now obsolete adjective milliary (of or relating to a mile, or to distance by miles; denoting a mile or miles) dates from the 1640s and was from the Latin milliarius, from mille.  The blended noun kilomile (on the model of kilometre) was a unit of length equal to 1,000 miles and seems to have existed because it could be done; it has no known use.  In physics, the light-mile is the time taken for light to travel one mile (approximately five microseconds).  The light mile has never been part of the standard set of measures in physics and probably it also was calculated by someone because it could be done; it is of no known practical use although it may have some utility in comparative tables.

Gatefold cover of Miles of Aisles.

Miles of Aisles was the first live concert album released by Canadian-American singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell (b 1943).  Released in 1974 on the Asylum label, it was a double album in the usual gatefold sleeve, the recordings from a number of concerts which were part of her tour promoting the recently released Court and Spark (1974) album.  The performances on Miles of Aisles came variously from three venues in Los Angeles: the Universal Amphitheatre, the Los Angeles Music Center and the Berkeley Community Theater.  The album’s cover art was a photograph of the Pine Knob Music Theater in Clarkston, Michigan.  While Miles of Aisles was a thoughtful title for a live concert album, the most famous Miles in music was the jazz trumpeter Miles Davis (1926–1991); his output was prolific but his albums Kind of Blue (1959) and Sketches of Spain (1960) were his finest and two seminal moments in the evolution of jazz.

The “Chinese mile” was the li, a traditional Chinese unit of distance equal to 1500 Chinese feet or 150 zhangs; sensibly, under the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), the li was standardized as a half-kilometre (500 metres).  The “Scandinavian mile” began in 1649 as the “Swedish mile” and was set at a distance of 10,688.54 metres before in 1889 being defined as 10 kilometres.  The “Irish mile” was equal to 2240 yards (2048.256 metres; 1.272727 miles).  The “Italian Mile” (sometimes left untranslated as miglio (miglia the plural)) was a calque of the Italian miglio (mile), with the qualifier appended to distinguish it from other miles.  Although the best remembered from the peninsular (assisted by an appearance in the diaries of Galileo Galilei (1564–1642)), the miglio was one of many such regionalisms including the Genovese and Roman miles.  Italy’s shift from traditional “Italian miles” to the metric system happened gradually and unevenly over the nineteenth century, the process beginning in the period 1806-1814 as a consequence of the Kingdom of Italy being a client state of Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821; leader of the French Republic 1799-1804 & Emperor of the French from 1804-1814 & 1815)).  That however proved abortive because after Napoleon’s fall in 1814, many Italian states reverted to their traditional local units (miles, braccia, libbre etc) and not until after Italian unification in 1861 was the metric system officially adopted throughout the kingdom, becoming the legally mandated system of weights and measures.  In a act of administrative efficiency which might astonish observers of the modern Italian state, a definitive law of enforcement was passed in 1862 and, by the 1870s, successfully metrics had become the standard for administration, trade, and education.

However, this was Italy and among parts of the population, the “Italian mile” remained in informal use well into the twentieth century and although the miglio generally was around 1.85 km (1.15 miles), there were many regional variants including (1) the Florentine (Tuscany) Miglio Fiorentino (1.74 km (1.08 miles)) used in Galileo’s era, (2) the Venetian Miglio Veneto (almost identical to the Florentine, (3) the Roman Miglio Romano (1.48 km (.92 miles) which was essentially the old “Roman mile”, (4) the Neapolitan Miglio Napoletano (1.852 km (1.15 miles) which was the Mediterranean state’s contribution to the development of the nautical mile and (5) the Milanese Miglio Milanese which, at 1.85 km (1.495 miles) was close to the English nautical mile.  What also remained was the nostalgic, romantic attraction of the old words and although in 1927 when the Mille Miglia (Thousand Miles) road race was established, Italy had for decades fully “been metric”, the name was used to evoke the idea of a long tradition of endurance.  The memorable phrase “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” is the opening line in the novel The Go-Between (1953) by the English writer L. P. Hartley (1895–1972) and to illustrate his point there is the old Mille Miglia, still in living memory.

The Mille Miglia was a round trip from Rome to Brescia and back and by the mid 1950s the cars had become very fast (speeds of 180 mph (290 km/h) were recorded and the 1955 race was won by a Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR (W196S) with an average speed close to 100 mph (160 km/h)).  At the time, that was dangerous enough even on a purpose-built circuit but the Mille Miglia was an event run on public roads which, while closed for the occasion, were poorly supervised and crowd control was in many places non-existent, people forming along the roadside to ensure the best view, literally inches from cars travelling at high speed.  Over thirty years, the race had claimed the lives of 30 souls but the eleven in 1957 would be the last because within days, the Italian government banned all motor racing on Italian public roads although since 1977 an event of the same name over much the same course has been run for historic vehicles which competed in the event in period (or were accepted and registered).  Now very much a social occasion for the rich, it's not a high-speed event.  The original event had been one of the classic events on the calendar in an era in which top-line drivers counted on attending a couple of funerals a year (possibly their own) and it’s the 1955 race to which a particular aura still lingers.

300 SLR (Moss & Jenkinson), Mille Migla, 1955.

Won by Stirling Moss (1929-2020) and Denis Jenkinson (1920-1996), their Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR technically complied with the sports car regulations but it was really the factory's formula one machine (W196R) with a bigger engine and a streamlined body with seats for two.  It wasn't exactly a "grand prix car with headlights" as some claimed but wasn't that far off; officially the W196S (Sports) in the factory register, for marketing purposes it was dubbed (and badged) as the 300 SLR to add lustre to the 300SL Gullwing coupé then on sale.  The race was completed in 10 hours, 7 minutes and 48 seconds, a average speed of 157.650 km/h (97.96 mph) (the course was never exactly 1000 miles and that year was 1,597 km (992 miles) and at times, the 300 SLR touched almost 180 mph which enabled Moss to cover the last 340 km (211 miles) at an average speed of 265.7 km/h (165.1) mph.  The record set in 1955 will stand for all time because such a race will never happen again, the Italy which then existed now truly a “foreign country” in which things were done differently

Falstaff (Campanadas a medianoche (Chimes at Midnight, 1966) in the original Spanish) was a film written and directed by Orson Welles (1915–1985) who starred as the eponymous character.  Falstaff is a classic “miles gloriosus” and Welles considered him Shakespeare's finest creation; scholars will debate that but of all of the all, there was probably no role more suited to Welles the larger.

In literary use, the term “miles gloriosus” originated in a comedy by Plaurus (254-184 BC).  The miles gloriosus was a braggart soldier who, although a coward on the battlefield, boasts of heroic deeds in combat; he was the prototype of a stock character comic drama, the one whose true character is either notorious or discovered and is thus in the cast to be made a fool of by other players.  In English drama he first appeared eponymously in the five act play Ralph Roister Doister (circa 1552 although not published until 1567) by the English cleric & schoolmaster Nicholas Udall (1504-1556).  The play was something of a landmark in literature because it was one of the first works written in English which could be classed as a “comedy” in the accepted meaning of the word.  As a text it was of interest to the proto-structuralists because it blended the conventions of Greek & Roman comedies with the traditions of the English mediaeval theatre but the great innovation was the appearance of recognizably “middle class” characters as protagonists rather than the “supporting cast role” of doctors & lawyers who had played “second fiddle” to the mostly royal or aristocratic players.  That the “growth market” in theatre audiences came from this newly burgeoning class may at least in part accounted for the literary novelty and its development clearly is identifiable in some of the works of William Shakespeare (1564–1616).  Bobadill in Ben Jonson's (circa 1572-1637) Every Man in His Humour (1598) and Captain Brazen in George Farquhar's (1677-1707) The Recruiting Officer (1706) were exemplars of the playwrights’ depictions of a braggart but just in case people didn’t get it, in his epic-length fantastical allegory The Faerie Queene (1590), the English poet Edmund Spenser (circa 1552-1599) called his creation Braggadochio.  The epitome of the breed was Shakespeare's Falstaff.  Sir John Falstaff was useful to Shakespeare who had him appear in Henry IV, Part 1 (circa 1596), Henry IV, Part 2 (circa 1598) and The Merry Wives of Windsor (1602).  He was also granted a posthumous reference in Henry V (circa 1599), in which it's reported he has died off-stage.

The “last mile” is a concept in urban planning, transport logistics and telecommunications.  In urban planning, it refers to the final leg of an individual’s journey (traditionally Monday-Friday) from their residence to their place of word in a city’s CBD (central business district).  In modern cities, it’s a matter of great significance because while it is possible for a great number of people to park their cars at train stations or other transport interchanges a mile or more from the CBD, it would be impossible to accommodate all these vehicles in the CBD.  In transport logistics, it describes the final stage of delivery of goods, etc, from a distribution centre to the consumer, often involving greater effort or expense.  In telecommunications, it’s a conceptual term assigned to those components of the infrastructure carrying communication signals from the main system to the end user's business or home, often involving greater expense to install and maintain, and lower transmission speeds.  The terms “final mile”, “last kilometre” etc are synonymous.  The companion term “first mile” is from transport logistics and refers to the initial stage of delivery of goods etc, from the seller or producer to a distribution centre, often involving greater effort or expense.  A “middle mile” is a piece of jargon from the IT industry and refers to the segment of a telecommunications network linking an operator's core network to the local network plant.  Real nerds like to explain it as something like the “middleware layer” between software and hardware but the analogy is weak.

A “nautical mile” is a unit of length corresponding approximately to one minute of arc of latitude along any meridian.  By international agreement it is exactly 1,852 metres (approximately 6,076 feet or 1.151 of a statute mile; the abbreviations variously used are NM, M, nmi & nm (the latter conflicting with nanometre symbol although confusion is unlikely).  The term “sea mile” is now rarely used but in its odd appearance it’s either (1) a synonym for “nautical mile” or (2) (usually as “sea miles”) a reference to the age of a ship or experience of a sailor.  The original “sea mile” was a now obsolete Scandinavian unit of distance (about 4 nautical miles), a calque of the Danish sømil, the Norwegian Bokmål sjømil and the Swedish sjömil, the construct being the Danish sø (sea, nautical, maritime) + mil (the Danish mile or league).  The geographical mile (a unit of length corresponding to exactly one minute of arc (1/60 of a degree) along the Earth's equator (about 1855.4 meters, 2029.1 yards, or roughly 8/7 international miles) was also used as (an inexact) synonym of “nautical mile”.

Eight Miles High, the Byrds (CBS EP (Extended Play).

Many critics list Eight Miles High (1966) by The Byrds as the first true psychedelic rock song and the band's claim it had nothing to do with drug use was about as creditable as the Beatles asserting their song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds (1967) was not a thinly veiled reference to LSD (the hallucinogenic drug lysergic acid diethylamide, better known as “acid”).  The lyrics from Eight Miles High genuinely were inspired by the band's flight to London in 1965 but “eight” was chosen because it best suited the music, even though commercial airliners didn't fly at quite that altitude.  At the time, the typical flight paths for the New York-London route involved a ceiling somewhat lower: Boeing 707, 33,000-37,000 feet (6.25-7.00 miles); Douglas DC-8, 32,000-39,000 feet (6.06-7.39 miles); Vickers VC10, 33,000-40,000 feet (6.25-7.58 miles).  In the context of artistic licence, eight was “close enough for rock 'n' roll”.  The song by the Byrds was not an allusion to the “mile-high club”, an institution one (informally) becomes a member of by having sex while aboard an aircraft in flight.  Although now most associated with those who contrive to do the act(s) on a commercial flight, “membership” has been claimed by those who managed the feat in both private and military aviation and the first known reference to the concept dates from 1785, early in the age of the hot-air balloon although the threshold then was set to a more modest 1,000 feet (0.1893939 of a mile).

The “international mile” is the same as the “land mile” & “modern mile” (ie the internationally agreed definition of 1.609344 kilometres) and the rarely used terms were coined simply to remove ambiguity in legal or other documents because over the centuries “mile” had in different places described distances greatly differing in length.  The mysterious “US survey mile” (1609.347 metres) is slightly longer than the now almost universal “international mile” and that’s a product of it being 5,280 US “survey feet” (0.30480061 metres) in length, the latter also slightly longer than the familiar 12 inch (304.8 mm) “international foot”).  To make things really murky, in the US, in formal use, a “statute mile” refers to a “survey mile” despite the lengths being slightly different.  Because the variation is less than ⅛ inch (3.2 mm), for most purposes this is something of no significance but over very long distances, it can matter if things like boundaries or target vectors are being documented, thus the need for precision in certain aspects of mapping.  Being a federal system with a long tradition of “states rights”, even when in 1983 the revised North American Datum (NAD83) was compiled and published by the NGS (National Geodetic Survey, a part of the NOAA (National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration under the Department of Commerce)), the states retained the right to determine which (if any) definitions of distance they would use.  So, despite all State Plane Coordinate Systems being expressed in metric measurements, eight of the 50 states opted out of the metre-based system, seven using “US survey feet” and one “international feet”.

A “sporting” pursuit which merges the traditions of athletic track & field competition with the drunken antics of university students, the “Beer Mile” is conducted usually on a standard 400 m (¼ mile) track as a 1 mile (1.6 km) contest of both running & drinking speed.  Each of the four laps begins with the competitor drinking one can (12 fl oz (US) (355 ml)) of beer, followed by a full lap, the process repeated three times.  The rules have been defined by the governing body which also publishes the results, including the aggregates of miles covered and beers drunk.  Now a sporting institution, it has encouraged imitators and there are a number of variations, each with its own rules.  The holder of this most prestigious world record is Canadian Corey Bellemore (b 1994), a five-time champion, who, at the Beer Mile World Classic in Portugal in July 2025, broke his own world record, re-setting setting the mark to 4:27.1.  That may be compared with the absolute world record for the mile, held by Morocco’s Hicham El Guerrouj (b 1974) who in 1999 ran the distance in 3:43.13, his additional pace made possible by not being delayed by having to down four beers.

The respectable face of the University of Otago's Medical School, Dunedin, New Zealand.

Some variations of the beer mile simply increase the volume or strength of the beer consumed but in Australia & New Zealand, some were dubbed “Chunder Mile” (chunder being circa 1950s antipodean slang for vomiting and of disputed origin) on the not unreasonable basis that vomiting becomes increasingly more likely and frequent the more alcohol is consumed.  For some however, even this wasn’t sufficiently debauched and there were events which demanded a (cold) meat pie be enjoyed with a jug of (un-chilled) beer (a jug typically 1140 ml (38.5 fl oz (US)) at the start of each of the four laps.  Predictably, these events were most associated with orientation weeks at universities, a number still conducted as late as the 1970s and the best documented seems to have been those at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand.  Even by the standards of a country producing abundant supplies of strong beer and weed, the students at Otago were notorious for retreating from civilized ways although, it was at the time the site of the country’s medical school, thereby providing students with practical experience of both symptoms and treatments for the inevitable consequences.  Whether the event was invented in Dunedin isn’t known but, given the nature of males aged 17-25 probably hasn’t much changed over the millennia, it wouldn’t be surprising to learn similar competitions, localized to suit culinary tastes, have been contested by the drunken youth of many places in centuries past.  As it was, even in Dunedin, times were changing and in 1972, the Chunder Mile was banned “…because of the dangers of asphyxiation and ruptured esophaguses.”  Undetred, the students found other amusements.

In idiomatic use, to say “a mile wide and an inch deep” suggests someone or something covering a wide array of topics but on only a very shallow level (thus analogous with “jack of all trades and master of none”.  Despite the negative connotations, the “mile wide, inch deep” model can in many fields be useful.  In informal use, a “neg mile” is a unit of “saved travel” (ie an expression of a distance not having to be travelled).  A “mile-a-minute” means literally “60 mph” but was an expression used generally to mean “fast”, dating on a time where such a pace really was fast and although the World’s LSR (land speed record) was in 1899 set at 65.79 mph (105.88 km/h) and cars capable of the speed were in volume production by the 1920s, until the development of freeway systems (which, at scale, really began only in the 1950s), a sustained 60 mph wasn’t an everyday reality for most.  Indeed, in 1957 the admittedly hardly state-of-the-art British railway system was described as offering “mile-a-minute” journeys and then, in most cases, point-to-point, it would have been the quickest method.

Lindsay Lohan and Herbie: promotional poster for Herbie: Fully Loaded (2005).  In the film, Herbie went faster than a “mile-a-minute”.

Although Herr Professor Ferdinand Porsche (1875–1951) wouldn’t have used the expression “mile-a-minute” when explaining to Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) the dynamics of his KdF-Wagen, one of his claims was its ability to cruise “all day at 100 km/h” (ie a mile-a-minute) and that was true, the car unusual in being able to cruise at what was about its maximum speed.  That wouldn’t much have mattered were it not for the existence of the vast network of Autobahns Hitler was having constructed for a variety of reasons (job creation, military logistics, propaganda etc) but all those long roads and the KdF-Wagen were a perfect match.  The KdF-wagen (Kdf car) was notionally the product of the Gemeinschaft Kraft durch Freude (KdF, “Strength Through Joy”), the state-controlled organization which was under the auspices of the Deutsche Arbeitsfront (German Labor Front) which replaced the independent labor unions.  The car was soon renamed the Volkswagen Type 1 (people’s car) and it became better known in the post-war years as the “Beetle”, 21,529,464 of which left assembly lines between 1938-2003.  In the spirit of the KdF, in 1938 a scheme was announced whereby Germans could buy a Type 1 for 990 RM (Reichsmark) on the basis of depositing 5 RM per week.  The 990 RM was a number unrelated to economic reality and just an example of the regime’s propaganda but as things turned out, during the Third Reich (1933-1945) not one Type 1 was delivered to a civilian customer with the factory’s entire output allocated to the military or the Nazi Party.  It wasn’t until the early 1960s there were settlements in the last of the cases brought by those Germans who dutifully had for years continued to make their 5 RM deposits.

Since the 1580s the word had been used generically to mean “a great distance” and it’s used also as an intensifier, sometimes rather loosely and an expression like “the new beer tastes miles better than the old” is along the lines of a well understood phrase like “heaps of water”.  Although in idiomatic use, “mile” tends to imply something large, if an actual distance is being referenced, context matters because something said to have “missed by a mile” might literally have “missed by an inch”.  Related to that is the expression “a miss is a good as a mile” which means if one misses the target, often it matters not whether one missed by a fraction of an inch or a thousand miles..  If it’s said “give them an inch and they’ll take a mile” that means if someone is granted some slight right or concession, they will exploit that to take more.  In Middle English the word also was a unit of time, reckoned usually to mean “about 20 minutes”, reflecting how long it would take the typical, fit male to walk the distance.  The term "country mile" is an allusion to those those living in rural areas being allegedly prone to understating distances: when an inhabitant of somewhere remote referred to a place being "a few miles away", that could mean it was close by their standards of travel but it may well be twenty or more miles distant.  Phrases like "a couple of miles" or "a mile or two" were more encouraging but unlikely to suggest the "two miles" use in a city would imply.  Thus, "missed by a country mile" suggests being even more off target than "missed by a mile.   

A Chrysler Hemi-powered front-engined rail on California's Carlsbad Raceway's quarter-mile drag strip, 1964.  Operating between 1964-2004, the track was located six miles (10 km) inland from the Pacific Ocean in Carlsbad, on Palomar Airport Road at what is now Melrose Avenue.

The “quarter-mile” is literally one quarter of a statute mile (440 yards; 1,320 feet; 402.336 metres).  The emergence in the post-war United States of the sport of drag racing was a product of (1) dotted around the country there were a large number of tarmac airstrips which had become surplus with the end of World War II (1939-1945), (2) a large number of young men returned from service in the armed forces with sufficient disposable income to race cars and (3) a stocks of cars suitable to be “hotted-up” for use in acceleration tests.  The quarter-mile became the sport’s “standard distance” because of a mixture of cultural precedent and technical determinism (of the machines and the surfaces).  In the 1930s, even before “hot rodding” became a thing in the post-war years, young men were “street racing”, competing against each either from “light-to-light” or on semi-rural roads straight enough to be (1) suitable for purpose and (2) offering enough visibility to allow competitors to escape upon sighting a police car.  Many were informally measured (“tree-to-tree” for example) but some were better organized (air-strips even then used) and the quarter-mile was ideal because in the era a typical “well-set up” car could attain speed high enough to demonstrate its power and acceleration yet still be within the limits of safety imposed by most straight sections of road.  When the NHRA (National Hot Rod Association) was founded in 1951 to provide an organizational structure to street racing (and “get it off the streets” where it was becoming controversial), there was no debate about the default distance: a ¼ mile it was because that’s what just about everybody had been doing.

AC Shelby American Cobra 289 CSX2357 with parachute deployed at the end of test ¼ mile (400 m) run.  In drag racing circles, this is called “dumping the laundry”.

The object in drag racing was, from a standing start, to beat one’s competitor (classically drag races were conducted on two parallel lanes) by reaching the end of the quarter mile is less time and the winner was the one with the lowest ET (elapsed time); it didn’t matter if one’s opponent was travelling faster when crossing the line; it was all decided by the ET.  The TS (terminal speed) was of interest and sometimes an indication gearing was too high (ie a differential ratio numerically too low) meaning initial acceleration was suffering.  The sport produced sometimes shockingly single-purpose machines which did little very well except the quarter mile sprint, the ability to turn corners something of an abstraction and while good brakes were required, the fastest cars needed to be fitted with parachutes because if relying on conventional brakes, there was often not enough space to slow down before encountering a fence, tree or other solid object; even runways were only so long.  So drag racing was a balancing act between performance and safety and as it evolved into a multi-classification sport with categories ranging from genuine, stock-standard road cars to purpose built “rails” which looked like no car which had ever before existed.  Speeds began to rise and while in the 1930s 100 mph (160 km/h) at the end of the quarter mile was rarely attained, within decades, going beyond 300 mph (480 km/h) became common so for the fastest classes in top-flight competition the distance was reduced to 1000 feet (304.8 metres, 0.19 miles) and ⅛ mile (201 metres, 660 feet) racing has also formed a niche.