Sound and the Ancient Senses by Butler Shane Nooter Sarah

Author:Butler, Shane,Nooter, Sarah
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)
Published: 2017-03-22T00:00:00+00:00

Part III

Philology and sound

9

Gods and vowels

Joshua T. Katz

Oh my – gods and vowels! What do they have in common? Are gods supposed to have vowels, use vowels, perhaps even be vowels? What would this even mean? From the narrow perspective of English, the idea is on the face of it absurd: the very word god is, after all, a not especially resonant monosyllable consisting of three sounds and three letters, only one of them a vowel. When one moves into Romance territory, however, things start to look a bit more promising: two or three of the letters in Spanish dios and French dieu are vowels. Why the relative sonority of these words would be of interest is not immediately clear. But if it is normal for classicists to channel Aratus and proclaim, Ἐκ Διὸϛ ἀρχώμεσθα (“From Zeus let us begin”), it is also the case that to dios I shall return.

My aim in this chapter is to suggest some ways in which it makes sense to pay more heed than we usually do to the literal sound structure of the divine universe – and, indeed, to its literal literal sound structure, for I wish to think about letters as they appear on the page as well as about sounds as they fly through the air. My investigations will take us across the globe and from banal observations to claims that may well seem outlandish. But I believe that the overall picture is interesting and, for that matter, representative of a certain kind of reality.1

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