Random Thoughts Thread

[Montmorency]

I just realized --- all those old-timey allusions from the Bible, poetry, literature, or the Classics, that people tended to pepper into their speech and writing up to the early 20th century are pretty much the equivalent of contemporary Internet memes.

You know the sort I mean, 'And here am I as Laocoön before the very Hesperides on the night the poet saw Jericho' or some such

Those allusions, often recurring as stock phrases, had a specific evocative content that is categorically similar to memes.