Philosophical Psychologists Present Problems!

Having spent comfortably over half a century studying and teaching English Literature, I was startled about two weeks ago to discover a new kind of text: a tautogram. I was reading Tutto Italiano [learning Italian being one of several ways in which I try to stave off encroaching decrepitude] and found an article about Walter Lazzarin, a street writer.

He travels around Italy with an Olivetti typewriter [a machine which has all but disappeared from contemporary culture], settles himself down on a pavement or in a piazza, and starts to write. It attracts the attention of passers-by, particularly children and people over the age of 60, who become intrigued and involved in the writing of tautograms.

Perhaps you have already heard of them but, just in case, I have presented a tautogram as the title of today's blog. It is a text in which all of the words start with the same letter but not necessarily with the same sound, making it a visual phenomenon rather than an auditory one.

If you take a brief look at Wikipedia, I think you will find the Russian examples particularly intriguing.

The value of tautograms? I'm not sure. I don't find them interesting in a literary way but attempting to construct one does demand a little exercise in the linguistic brain gym.

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