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From Cliche to Archetype
Six years after the publication of his seminal work, Understanding Media, the Extensions of Man, Marshall McLuhan linked his insights into media to his love of literature and produced From Clichà  to Archetype. In the age of electronic retrieval, the entire phenomenal universe is at once junkyard and museum -- clichà  and archetype. Every culture now rides on the back of every other culture.
In these pages, readers learn how to look at stale clichà Âs with fresh eyes, as artists do, and discover that clichà Âs provide the key to understanding Modernism, from the puns of James Joyce to Ionesco's Theater of the Absurd. McLuhan mines the greats of modern literature, such as Yeats, Eliot, and Pound, and points the way to richer understanding of their work. Discussion ranges over conventional topics of literary analysis such as genres, esthetics, rhetoric, paradox, mimesis, and parody, though never in conventional fashion, because McLuhan deliberately stakes his turf in a manner that draws technology and culture together. As a result, the key terms clichà  and archetype are not confined to language but are shown to have counterparts in the non-linguistic world. The present work reprises themes from à  Understanding Media, such as old media becoming the content of new media, and identifies for the first time the typical effect of a new technology retrieving an older form of technology. In this new and redesigned publication of McLuhan's neglected masterpiece, editorà  W. Terrence Gordon provides a richer reading with concise chapter introductions.
In these pages, readers learn how to look at stale clichà Âs with fresh eyes, as artists do, and discover that clichà Âs provide the key to understanding Modernism, from the puns of James Joyce to Ionesco's Theater of the Absurd. McLuhan mines the greats of modern literature, such as Yeats, Eliot, and Pound, and points the way to richer understanding of their work. Discussion ranges over conventional topics of literary analysis such as genres, esthetics, rhetoric, paradox, mimesis, and parody, though never in conventional fashion, because McLuhan deliberately stakes his turf in a manner that draws technology and culture together. As a result, the key terms clichà  and archetype are not confined to language but are shown to have counterparts in the non-linguistic world. The present work reprises themes from à  Understanding Media, such as old media becoming the content of new media, and identifies for the first time the typical effect of a new technology retrieving an older form of technology. In this new and redesigned publication of McLuhan's neglected masterpiece, editorà  W. Terrence Gordon provides a richer reading with concise chapter introductions.
213 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1970
About the author
Marshall McLuhan
137 books981 followersHerbert Marshall McLuhan was a Canadian philosopher whose work is among the cornerstones of the study of media theory. He studied at the University of Manitoba and the University of Cambridge. He began his teaching career as a professor of English at several universities in the United States and Canada before moving to the University of Toronto in 1946, where he remained for the rest of his life. He is known as the "father of media studies".
McLuhan coined the expression "the medium is the message" in the first chapter in his Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man and the term global village. He predicted the World Wide Web almost 30 years before it was invented. He was a fixture in media discourse in the late 1960s, though his influence began to wane in the early 1970s. In the years following his death, he continued to be a controversial figure in academic circles. However, with the arrival of the Internet and the World Wide Web, interest was renewed in his work and perspectives.
McLuhan coined the expression "the medium is the message" in the first chapter in his Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man and the term global village. He predicted the World Wide Web almost 30 years before it was invented. He was a fixture in media discourse in the late 1960s, though his influence began to wane in the early 1970s. In the years following his death, he continued to be a controversial figure in academic circles. However, with the arrival of the Internet and the World Wide Web, interest was renewed in his work and perspectives.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
January 6, 2009
A book of fragments, literary quotes (mostly from the high modernists, James Joyce, William Butler Yeats and T.S. Eliot) linked by McLuhan's gnomic commentaries. However, this is not a book of literary criticism; it is an analysis of media, and still relevant today, forty years after it was written, largely because of the way that McLuhan's ideas supply one with a number of useful tools with which to describe and to understand how media technologies transform the way we think and communicate.
Acquired Dec 31, 2008
City Lights Book Shop, London, Ontario
Acquired Dec 31, 2008
City Lights Book Shop, London, Ontario
July 3, 2017
First of alll, the 1970 hardcover edition has the kind of quality binding and heavy paper that is sadly nearly extinct. It is a physical pleasure to handle this book.
As a McLuhan fanboy, I loved this book. It's not an easy book to read with allusions and references to complex literature such as James Joyce and TS Eliot, but it's not meant to be. It's not straight exposition, rather it's a series of probes into the nature of cliches and archetypes and how they transform into one another. The book also explores how cliches and archetypes hide and contain meaning.
The chapters are arranged alphabetically including the introduction and table of contents. I suggest reading the introduction first even though it is filed under letter 'i'. It is really and introduction to the book.
The book is full of the famous McLuhan aphorism. It help flesh out the meaning of his famous dictum that the medium is the message. It looks at different environments, such as theatre, identity, culture, the public, and how cliches and archetypes, and language itself, are at play in those environments.
Overall, a rewarding read, but difficult to summarize and remarkable prescient.
As a McLuhan fanboy, I loved this book. It's not an easy book to read with allusions and references to complex literature such as James Joyce and TS Eliot, but it's not meant to be. It's not straight exposition, rather it's a series of probes into the nature of cliches and archetypes and how they transform into one another. The book also explores how cliches and archetypes hide and contain meaning.
The chapters are arranged alphabetically including the introduction and table of contents. I suggest reading the introduction first even though it is filed under letter 'i'. It is really and introduction to the book.
The book is full of the famous McLuhan aphorism. It help flesh out the meaning of his famous dictum that the medium is the message. It looks at different environments, such as theatre, identity, culture, the public, and how cliches and archetypes, and language itself, are at play in those environments.
Overall, a rewarding read, but difficult to summarize and remarkable prescient.
September 14, 2023
In this 1970 book, authors Marshall McLuhan and Wilfred Watson comment on a wide variety of (alphabetized) subjects, such as: Absurd, Theater of the; Cliché/Archetype as Systole-Diastole; Consciousness; Identity: the Culture Hero; the One and the Mini; Paradox, etc.
July 7, 2021
Retrieving McLuhan and His Insights on Renewal and Innovation - Gingko Press reissued McLuhan and Watson’s 1970 “From Cliché to Archetype” with the same chapters, a bright yellow cover, clear plastic jacket black print title/sleeve notes, and a slightly revised layout to include an editor’s introduction and brief chapter notes in 2011. This publication came in time for the McLuhan centenary celebration in 2012. Terrence Gordon (author of authorized McLuhan biography and McLuhan: A Guide for the Perplexed (Guides for the Perplexed) ) serves as editor supplying the added explanatory material helping with appreciation of a book often neglected even when first published, yet rich in material for retrieving and delving into the heart of McLuhan’s message. Some have pointed out that the new design does not include the original chapter breaks and thus takes away from the second "plot line" in earlier issue. Despite this short-coming, it is still of benefit to revisit as well as compare and contrast the editions.
As in the original issue, chapters appear in strict alphabetical order -- including the Introduction, under I, and the Table of Contents, under T. More specifically, the pages and 30 chapter headings appear as in the original: 3 Absurd, Theater of the, 11 Anesthesia, 16 Archetype], 22 Author as Cliché (Book as Probe), 25 Casuistry (Art as Lie), 30 Centennial Metaphor, 35 Cliché/Archetype as Systole-Diastole, 39 Cliché as Breakdown, 42 Cliché as Probe, 51 Consciousness, 55 Doubt, 57 Emotion-Sentiment, 61 Environment (as Cliché), 64 Eye, Ear, 67 Genres, 87 Hendiadys: Cliché as Double Probe, 90 Identity – The Culture Hero, 94 Introduction, 108 Jokes, 110 Lovejoy and the Daisy Chain, 112 Matching Sense, 119 Mimesis, or Making Sense, 123 Notes on Sources, 129 The One and the Mini, 134 Paradox, 143 Parody, 146 Public as Cliché, 153 Rag and Bone Shop, 157 Retrieval, 161 Table of Contents, 162 Theater. However, the pagination is a little different in this newer edition, and there are helpful fundamentals and index sections at the end.
Sources such as a Cyberchimp/Understanding Media Course and McLuhan Galaxy (as of this writing) suggest important chapters and an order in which to read them to apprehend the book’s meaning updated here to the reissue: (i) Cliché as Probe (p. 42), (ii) Environment (as Cliché) (p. 61), (iii) Archetype (p. 16), (iv) Introduction, (p. 94), and (v) Retrieval (p. 157). The other chapters also inform these themes with many literary and artistic references.
In the reissue, the editorial additions are especially useful as in clarifying the “cliché->archetype->cliché” process. That is, an oft repeated phrase/feature becomes worn and/or commonplace due to extensive or over utilization. The phrase/feature is returned/retrieved and recognized as a pattern and reused in a new way. Then, through reuse the phrase feature becomes a cliché again. As Joyce is quoted “Love thy label as thyself.” Such explanations also assist in grasping the differences in the verbal (perceptual) and non-verbal (conceptual) instances of this process. The non-verbal occurrences are those typically applied to physical media/technologies. These aspects are beneficial in further understanding the addition of retrieval as one of the aspects of the McLuhan tetrad or laws of media. This sequence also reflects the artistic process as represented in Yeats’ poem ‘The Circus Animals Desertion.’ As Gordon relates, there are 12 mentions of the poem in the text which recalls repeated trips to the “Rag and Bone Shop” in the act of creation. The way the book is organized and physically presented becomes an example of such creativity in examining the cliched form of the book and raising it to archetype status.
When rereading this new edition, I rediscovered how much there is to be mined from this volume. Among a few immediate stand-outs for me were references to Northrop Frye as this book seems to have come in reaction to talks that mention McLuhan assembled in Frye’s The Critical Path: An Essay on the Social context of Literary Criticism (Midland Books: No. 1) and their relationship as dealt with in Bruce Powe’s Marshall McLuhan and Northrop Frye: Apocalypse and Alchemy (see my reviews). In addition, chapters that deal with books as in ‘Author as Cliché (Book as Probe)’ and ‘Public as Cliché’ were also beneficial in re-looking at writers and criticism.
Consider this reissue as an invaluable resource in retrieving McLuhan and his insights on renewal and innovation.
As in the original issue, chapters appear in strict alphabetical order -- including the Introduction, under I, and the Table of Contents, under T. More specifically, the pages and 30 chapter headings appear as in the original: 3 Absurd, Theater of the, 11 Anesthesia, 16 Archetype], 22 Author as Cliché (Book as Probe), 25 Casuistry (Art as Lie), 30 Centennial Metaphor, 35 Cliché/Archetype as Systole-Diastole, 39 Cliché as Breakdown, 42 Cliché as Probe, 51 Consciousness, 55 Doubt, 57 Emotion-Sentiment, 61 Environment (as Cliché), 64 Eye, Ear, 67 Genres, 87 Hendiadys: Cliché as Double Probe, 90 Identity – The Culture Hero, 94 Introduction, 108 Jokes, 110 Lovejoy and the Daisy Chain, 112 Matching Sense, 119 Mimesis, or Making Sense, 123 Notes on Sources, 129 The One and the Mini, 134 Paradox, 143 Parody, 146 Public as Cliché, 153 Rag and Bone Shop, 157 Retrieval, 161 Table of Contents, 162 Theater. However, the pagination is a little different in this newer edition, and there are helpful fundamentals and index sections at the end.
Sources such as a Cyberchimp/Understanding Media Course and McLuhan Galaxy (as of this writing) suggest important chapters and an order in which to read them to apprehend the book’s meaning updated here to the reissue: (i) Cliché as Probe (p. 42), (ii) Environment (as Cliché) (p. 61), (iii) Archetype (p. 16), (iv) Introduction, (p. 94), and (v) Retrieval (p. 157). The other chapters also inform these themes with many literary and artistic references.
In the reissue, the editorial additions are especially useful as in clarifying the “cliché->archetype->cliché” process. That is, an oft repeated phrase/feature becomes worn and/or commonplace due to extensive or over utilization. The phrase/feature is returned/retrieved and recognized as a pattern and reused in a new way. Then, through reuse the phrase feature becomes a cliché again. As Joyce is quoted “Love thy label as thyself.” Such explanations also assist in grasping the differences in the verbal (perceptual) and non-verbal (conceptual) instances of this process. The non-verbal occurrences are those typically applied to physical media/technologies. These aspects are beneficial in further understanding the addition of retrieval as one of the aspects of the McLuhan tetrad or laws of media. This sequence also reflects the artistic process as represented in Yeats’ poem ‘The Circus Animals Desertion.’ As Gordon relates, there are 12 mentions of the poem in the text which recalls repeated trips to the “Rag and Bone Shop” in the act of creation. The way the book is organized and physically presented becomes an example of such creativity in examining the cliched form of the book and raising it to archetype status.
When rereading this new edition, I rediscovered how much there is to be mined from this volume. Among a few immediate stand-outs for me were references to Northrop Frye as this book seems to have come in reaction to talks that mention McLuhan assembled in Frye’s The Critical Path: An Essay on the Social context of Literary Criticism (Midland Books: No. 1) and their relationship as dealt with in Bruce Powe’s Marshall McLuhan and Northrop Frye: Apocalypse and Alchemy (see my reviews). In addition, chapters that deal with books as in ‘Author as Cliché (Book as Probe)’ and ‘Public as Cliché’ were also beneficial in re-looking at writers and criticism.
Consider this reissue as an invaluable resource in retrieving McLuhan and his insights on renewal and innovation.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews