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

Lanham, Richard A. A.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0226468852 ISBN 13: 9780226468853

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 1995

Synopsis

The personal computer has revolutionized communication, and digitized text has introduced a radically new medium of expression. Interactive, volatile, mixing word and image, the electronic word challenges our assumptions about the shape of culture itself.

This highly acclaimed collection of Richard Lanham's witty, provocative, and engaging essays surveys the effects of electronic text on the arts and letters. Lanham explores how electronic text fulfills the expressive agenda of twentieth-century visual art and music, revolutionizes the curriculum, democratizes the instruments of art, and poses anew the cultural accountability of humanism itself.

Persuading us with uncommon grace and power that the move from book to screen gives cause for optimism, not despair, Lanham proclaims that "electronic expression has come not to destroy the Western arts but to fulfill them."

The Electronic Word is also available as a Chicago Expanded Book for your Macintosh®. This hypertext edition allows readers to move freely through the text, marking "pages," annotating passages, searching words and phrases, and immediately accessing annotations, which have been enhanced for this edition. In a special prefatory essay, Lanham introduces the features of this electronic edition and gives a vividly applied critique of this dynamic new edition.

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: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0226468852
• ISBN 13: 9780226468853
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 301