Poetry Performed: The Problem of Public Reading - Softcover

Baetens, Jan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1946160784 ISBN 13: 9781946160782

Publisher: Univ of Louisiana at Lafayette, 2021

Synopsis

Today, public readings have become a vital part of any form of literary life. Orality is the keyword of contemporary writing. Yet do we know what actually happens when a poetic text is read out loud? How are signs on a page transformed into a stage performance? What does it mean to move from a text meant for the eye alone to sounds and images presented in front of a living and actively participating audience?

Poetry Performed: The Problem of Public Reading answers these questions, but not in abstract or general terms. Instead, author Jan Baetens examines how authors themselves live this experience of reading out loud and how they write about it in their works. Taking its departure from Balzac, this book revisits a wide range of masterpieces of nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature, including works by Marcel Proust and James Joyce, and contains a series of close readings of contemporary artists (poets, performers, directors, comics authors) who try to invent new forms of public reading.

Edition details

• Publisher: Univ of Louisiana at Lafayette
• Publication date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1946160784
• ISBN 13: 9781946160782
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 154