End of ADS-L Digest - 27 Mar 1994 to 28 Mar 1994

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There are 9 messages totalling 148 lines in this issue.



Topics of the day:



 1. Clinton's speech

 2. Wisconsin accent (6)

 3. reporter

 4. SWINE



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Date:  Tue, 29 Mar 1994 08:32:21 EST

From:  Wayne Glowka <wglowka[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]MAIL.GAC.PEACHNET.EDU>

Subject: Re: Clinton's speech



THE DEVIL'S IN THE DETAILS



Tell this to your reporter:



Clinton's aphoristic description of the trouble involved in working out the

details of a massive public policy is a clever allusion to medieval

rewordings of ancient Germanic sayings about Loki and his other Teutonic

analogues. In the account of the Ragnarokr in the *Voluspa*, a wolf comes

to eat the moon, a wolf that appears when Loki, the monsters, and the

giants come to destroy Asgard. According to Jacob Grimm (*Teutonic

Mythology*, trans. J. S. Stallybrass [London: W. Swan Sonnenschein & Allen,

1980], 244-46), Loki's name was replaced with that of the devil in sayings

about the chaos at the end of the world, with the result that

nineteenth-century Germans still said "the devil is broken loose" as the

medieval Norse said "Loki er or bo"ndum" or as Detmar said in his chronik

1, 298 "do was de duvel los geworden." Although the Aesir fall to the

monsters in the Ragnarokr, the *Voluspa* does predict a new world of grace

and harmony. Clinton, playing perhaps too heavily on his world-class

education, is cleverly implying that despite the fall of the world

order--or present policy--as we know it, a new world--a new policy--will

arise from which the devil (Loki, Saturn, Rush Limbaugh) has been removed

or at least returned to his chains.



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Wayne Glowka

Professor of English

Georgia College

Milledgeville, GA 31061

912-453-4222

wglowka[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]mail.gac.peachnet.edu