Imagining Language – An Anthology - Softcover

Rasula, Jed

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0262681315 ISBN 13: 9780262681315

Publisher: MIT Press, 2001

Synopsis

When works such as Joyce's Finnegans Wake and Stein's Tender Buttons were first introduced, they went so far beyond prevailing linguistic standards that they were widely considered "unreadable," if not scandalous. Jed Rasula and Steve McCaffery take these and other examples of twentieth-century avant-garde writing as the starting point for a collection of writings that demonstrates a continuum of creative conjecture on language from antiquity to the present. The anthology, which spans three millennia, generally bypasses chronology in order to illuminate unexpected congruities between seemingly discordant materials. Together, the writings celebrate the scope and prodigality of linguistic speculation in the West going back to the pre-Socratics.

About this title

About the Authors

Steve McCaffery is David Gray Professor of Poetry and Letters at the State University of New York at Buffalo, New York.

Jed Rasula is Associate Professor of English at Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario.

Edition details

• Publisher: MIT Press
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0262681315
• ISBN 13: 9780262681315
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 638