MODERN POETRY & IDEA OF LANG PA

by BRUNS,GERALD L.

• ISBN13: 9781564782694
• ISBN10: 1564782697
• Edition: 00
• Format: Trade Paper
• Copyright: 2001-04-17
• Publisher: JOHN MUIR

Summary

-- Gerald Bruns's ground-breaking analysis compares two contrasting functions of language: the hermetic, where language is self-contained and self-referencing, and the Orphic, which originates from a belief in the mythical unity of word and being. Bruns lucidly depicts the distinctions and convergences between these two lines of thought by examining the works of Mallarme, Flaubert, Joyce, Beckett, and others.

Table of Contents

Preface to new edition	vii
Introduction. Toward a Dialectic of Hermetic and Orphic Poetries	1	(10)
Part One. The Idea of Language from a Literary Point of View
Rhetoric, Grammar, and the Conception of Language as a Substantial Medium	11	(31)
Energeia: The Development of the Romantic Idea of Language	42	(29)
Part Two. Literature as a Problematics of Language
From Intransitive Speech to the Universe of Discourse: The Formalist Theory of Literary Language	71	(30)
Mallarme: The Transcendence of Language and the Aesthetics of the Book	101	(37)
Flaubert, Joyce, and the Displacement of Fiction	138	(26)
The Storyteller and the Problem of Language in Samuel Beckett's Fiction	164	(25)
Part Three. The Language of Poetry and the Being of the World
Negative Discourse and the Moment before Speech: A Metaphysics of Literary Language	189	(19)
Poetry as Reality: The Orpheus Myth and Its Modern Counterparts	208	(24)
Conclusion. The Orphic and Hermetic Dimensions of Meaning	232	(31)
Notes	263	(30)
Index	293