Imagining Language: An Anthology

Front Cover
Jed Rasula, Steve McCaffery
MIT Press, 2001 - Language Arts & Disciplines - 618 pages

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.

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Contents

Introduction
From A Humument A Treated Victorian
Words in Freedom
Conditions 1913
xvi
69
8
11
Writing for the Second Time through
87
From Gems 1931
93
296
102
From Jubilate Agno 17591763 313
124
413
151
318
151
Biliteral Cipher 1613
151
Character Letter 1958
151

16
97
28
Workshop
Trial in the Court of Vowels c 160
151
The Warrior of the Kingdom
151
453
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About the author (2001)

Jed Rasula is Associate Professor of English at Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario. Steve McCaffery is David Gray Professor of Poetry and Letters at the State University of New York at Buffalo, New York.

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