Harvey Wallbangers and Tam O'Shanters. Martin Hannan
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on modern popular music who is alive today.
Dylan’s extraordinary achievements as a musician are based largely on the sheer poetry of his lyrics, and his love of word play, figurative allusions and constant creation of verbal imagery have been much copied and sometimes parodied down the decades.
The word ‘Dylanesque’ describes songs and poems in which the use of words has been inspired by the master himself. Bryan Ferry, former lead singer of Roxy Music, ensured the word had permanence in plastic when he titled his 2007 album of Dylan covers Dylanesque. It’s well worth a listen, but to really appreciate what is Dylanesque, you have to read and hear some of Bob Dylan’s many classic lyrics.
DYONISIAN
Describes an excess of pleasure, usually used in association with drinking sessions and orgies. It derives from the Greek God Dyonisus, who must have had a whale of a time as he is the god of ecstasy, drinking, winemaking and general madness. His Roman equivalent is Bacchus, from whom we get the word ‘Bacchanalian’. It should be noted that, before it became a byword for drunken excess, Bacchanalia was the Latin term for a specific religious festival imported to the city of Rome before 200BC and which, at first, involved only women. Men eventually became involved, however, and by the year 186BC the festivals had become an excuse for mass licentiousness and the Senate banned them.
EDWARDIAN
For a man whose mother’s longevity meant he only had a short reign as King of Great Britain and Emperor of India, Edward VII certainly made an impact on the culture – and women – of several nations.
He personally did much to secure the Entente Cordiale between Britain and France, and cemented relations between the two powers in his own charming way.
The ‘Edwardian era’ conjures up visions of style and fun in the years before the Great War, and King Edward’s personal approach to life was entirely typical of the age to which he gave his name.
ELIZABETHAN
This eponym usually relates to the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, the 16th-century Virgin Queen who reigned from 1558 to 1603. It was a vital time in British history, coming just after the Reformation and ending in the union of the crowns when James VI of Scotland succeeded the childless Queen. Elizabeth consolidated the Protestant faith in England, saw off the Spanish Armada and rebellious nobles, encouraged theatre and global exploration, and generally ran England in a firm style which saw the country prosper greatly. In many people’s opinion, ‘Elizabethan’ and ‘Golden’ are interchangeable.
It is yet to be truly appreciated that our own dear Queen Elizabeth has made these last 60 years a second Elizabethan age. She has become a symbol of Christian dutifulness at a time when that concept has been constantly eroded. She has also shown all the Elizabethan qualities – loyalty, courage and vast political nous – to remain the unimpeachable head of state at a time when the world has been utterly transformed.
Perhaps, in time, historians will look back and christen this era, too, as Elizabethan.
FABIAN
Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus, the delaying general, has given his name to a military strategy using attritional tactics, as well as a philosophical approach which could best be described as ‘softly, softly, catchee monkey’.
A member of a prominent Roman family, when the Carthaginians under Hannibal attacked down through Italy in the Second Punic War, Fabius made it his raison de guerre that it was better to retreat slowly and deny the enemy resources rather than risk everything in a single battle.
When the Roman Army was defeated at Lake Trasimene in June 217BC, Fabius was made ‘dictator’ which, in ancient Rome, was an honourable office that gave one man power to run the city during a crisis.
He refused to confront Hannibal, and his Fabian strategy was not popular, so that the dictator was given the nickname ‘cunctator’ which is the Latin for ‘delayer’. But by law, Fabius could not remain dictator permanently and the following year new generals led the Roman Army to an even greater defeat at Cannae in August 216BC. Fabius duly came back into power and this time the Romans listened to him, so that Hannibal was frustrated at every turn, but never in all-out battle, as he tried to take over the whole Italian peninsula. It took ten years, but the Carthaginians eventually went home.
Fabius was acclaimed as the ‘Shield of Rome’ by the time of his death at the age of 76 or 77 in 203BC, and the following year Scipio led the Romans over to Carthage in North Africa and defeated them at the Battle of Zama, ending the war decisively in Rome’s favour.
Fabius also lends his name to the Fabian Society, the British organisation which promotes the advance of democratic socialism through gradual reform. That an Italian ‘dictator’ gave his name to a modern, left-wing movement in Britain shows you how wide-ranging eponyms can be.
FAUSTIAN
In German legend, the alchemist and scholar Faust made a deal with the devil in which he accepted eternal damnation after death in return for a life of pleasure based on magical powers. We still call this deal a ‘Faustian pact’, the story of Faust having remained pretty much constant through more than five centuries of adaptation, starting with Christopher Marlowe’s play The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus (1604), Goethe’s drama Faust, several operas, many prose and poetry works, the musical Damn Yankees (1955) and numerous films.
It’s a powerful story, almost mythical, but it may well have been based on a real man – Johann Georg Faust who lived from around 1480 to 1540, and was an astrologer and alchemist. Since he wrote horoscopes and generally performed magic tricks around southern Germany in a God-fearing age, he gained a reputation as a man with a dark side. Indeed, he was accused of everything from fraud to sodomy by his enemies, who included the all-powerful Catholic Church. The fact that he supposedly joined the Protestant cause as soon as it sprang up may well have occasioned the Church’s disdain, and he was condemned as being in league with the devil. This Dr Faustus also died in an explosion allegedly caused by his own experiments, thus getting the legend off to a suitably gruesome start.
FREUDIAN SLIP
Admit it – you don’t know what a parapraxis is. Call it a Freudian slip, however, and everyone knows what you are talking about. A slip of the tongue or pen caused by an unconscious thought takes its name from Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), the Austrian whose psychoanalysis theories defined our minds.
GARGANTUAN
Gargantua was the gigantic creation of François Rabelais (see Rabelaisian below) in his series of books called Gargantua and Pantagruel. The former was father of the latter and both were giants, but it is ‘gargantuan’ we use – ‘pantagruellan’ being somewhat clumsy.
GEORGIAN
When used in historical or architectural terms, this word refers to the period of King George and items produced at that time, and not the country of Georgia or the State of the USA. It is possibly a unique eponym in that it derives from not one man’s name, but four. Kings George I, II, III and IV ruled Britain from 1714 to 1830, and the first 90-odd years were very much influenced by their Hanoverian antecedents. The Georges liked order and control, as shown by their abhorrence of social reform at home and the French and American Revolutions. Yet they also encouraged the arts and their chief achievement was the consolidation of the United Kingdom once the Jacobites (see below) had been defeated, with the start of the British Empire’s expansion also taking place during their reigns. The Regency period ran from 1811 to 20, when the later King George IV was briefly let off the leash, while his father, George III, after being mentally incapacitated, ended the Georgian era, leaving visible signs of its existence in various cities such as Bath and