The Electronic Word: Democracy, Technology and the Arts - Hardcover

Lanham

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0226468836 ISBN 13: 9780226468839

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 1993

Synopsis

The personal computer has revolutionized the structure of communication, concealing beneath its versatility and consumer appeal a bold transition to electronic, postmodern culture. Unchecked by the inherent limitations of conventional print, digitized text has introduced a radically new medium of expression. Interactive, volatile, mixing word and image, the electronic word challenges all our assumptions about artistic, educational and political discourse. "The Electronic Word", Richard Lanham's collection of witty, provocative and engaging essays, explores this challenge. With hope and enthusiasm, Lanham surveys the effects of electronic text on the arts and letters and how they might be taught in a newly democratized society. To those who view electronic text as a cultural catastrophe, he counters that "electronic expression has come not to destroy the Western arts but to fulfil them." Throughout, Lanham argues that the dichotomy between a fixed, authoritative printed text and the dynamic, negotiable electronic word re-enacts a much older opposition, the ancient debate between the philosophers and the rhetoricians. The computer, an "intrinsically rhetorical device," enfranchises the free play and experimentation that pervade postmodern arts and letters. It embodies the new kind of seriousness that is now replacing 19th-century cultural solemnity. Whether discussing how electronic text fulfils the expressive agenda of 20th-century visual art and music, how it will revolutionize the university curriculum, how it democratizes the expressive instruments of art, or how it poses anew the cultural accountability of humanism itself, Lanham insists that the move from book to screen gives cause for optimism, not apocalyptic despair.

About this title

From the Back Cover

This highly acclaimed collection of witty, provocative, and engaging essays surveys the effects of electronic text on the arts and letters. Insisting that the move from book to screen gives cause for optimism, not apocalyptic despair, the author proclaims that 'electronic expression has come not to destroy the Western arts but to fulfill them.'

About the Author

Richard A. Lanham is professor emeritus of English at UCLA and President of Rhetorica, Inc. He has written ten books, including "A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms" and "Literacy and the Survival of Humanism."

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0226468836
• ISBN 13: 9780226468839
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 302