Seminars of Philosophy of Perception, Mind, and Language

Dipartimento di Filosofia “Piero Martinetti” — Università degli Studi di Milano

Marcello Frixione (University of Genova)

  • Print

April 27 Mon — 11.00-13.00

Aula Seminari — Aula Direzione di Dipartimento (Via Festa del Perdono 7, Milano)

Poetry and "Implicatures"

Abstract. Ernie Lepore (2009) tries to reconcile the so-called Heresy of Paraphrase (according to which poetry cannot be paraphrased or translated) and the Principle of  Semantic Innocence – according to which an (unambiguous) word has the same meaning across every context in which it can occur. Lepore’s solutions consists in assuming that poems are in some sense analogous to quotations. It is an interesting proposal, which allows to account for many important aspects of poetry. However, in my opinion, it probably leaves aside many constitutive features of poetic texts. I shall argue that many characteristic traits of poetry (which are relevant for the problem of paraphrase) are more likely to be pragmatic in nature, and are in some sense analogous to conversational implicatures, according to the analysis by Paul Grice.