notes to self:

article: andrew ford examining lexical evidence in pre-socratic papyrus and tracing the change of technical terms for allegory, showing that what in plutarch's day wasknown as allegoria, which plutarch says was formerly huponoia (under-meaning), was earlier ainittesthai. (ainigmatos, ainigmatodas and other cognates of ainos appeared frequently but no cognates of huponoia found).

same paper: "the rise of epic allegoresis may be reinterpreted as the assimilation of the homeric poems to the ainos....they transferred epic to a special and well established form of speech norm." ainos = "important mode of riddling discourse in the archaic and early classical period. the ainos waas a polymorphous but quite distinctive and important mode of speech, and one that interacted in significant ways with nearly all the major forms of greek literature."

the uses of ainos: to create distinctive audience - i.e. if you can understand the hidden meanings you're part of the in-group. quotes nagy in saying the ainos was a "marked speech act made by and for a marked social group." i.e. ainos is decoded by those who are sophoi or philoi: they're thought capable of decoding not through linguistic expertise but by innate gift presumed to mark the truly noble. therefore riddling in greek context socially not linguistically constructed.

conclusion: allegory has to be related to social practices and institions, and that theories that identify allegory with workings of language itself are problematic becos "if one defines allegoria etymologically as "saying one thing and meaning something other" allegory may appear not simply as one mode of speech among others but as the figure of speech that most directly exemplifies the fundamental arbitrariness of language, its lack of any firm bond between signifier and signified. allegory may then be said to attend any and every type of speech: all texts may be called allegorical. and all interpretation insofar as they state the meaning of a text in other terms than those of the text."

should quibble with last bit, but haven't thought it out yet.