The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #24710   Message #284825
Posted By: Anglo
25-Aug-00 - 02:41 AM
Thread Name: Help: How's It Done?
Subject: RE: Help: How's It Done?
Pardon the pedantry, but let's not add to the far-too-rampant verbifying of the language. "Exegesis" is a noun. So is "exegete," a person who practices the above. You don't exegete a text any more than you genete something (trying a parallel back-formation from genesis).

And as far as songs are concerned, you can try to analyse what the text is about on any number of different levels. So when someone says of, say, "I am stretched on your grave" as ugh, necrophilia, I say let's remember this is poetry, and think of the notion of metaphor. You can't read everything literally.

(Dismounts from bandwagon and goes to the kitchen for a beer, exit stage left).