Sunday 18 November 2007

Ye, eye

The Chaucerian word for eye, 'ye', has a much more attractive look to it than our word 'eye'; and it is indeed strange to consider how the '[e]ye' homophone has shifted from you to I, given that the ye is instrinsically about looking at others, not about contemplating I-selfhood. Or are we to consider the possibility that this shift has coincidentally mirrored a change of emphasis from ocular objectivity to self-reflexive subjectivity? But that would be too large a coincidence.

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