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Imagining Language: An Anthology
When works such as Finnegans Wake and 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 result is more laboratory than inventory. The anthology, which spans three millennia, generally bypasses chronology in order to illuminate unexpected congruities between seemingly discordant materials. Thus the juxtaposition of Marcel Duchamp and Jonathan Swift, of Victor Hugo and Easter Island "rongo rongo."
Of the book's five parts, the first, "Revolution of the Word," anchors the anthology to international modernism and to the journal transition in particular. Part Two, "Oralities, Rituals, and Colloquies," extends sound poetry into a broader field of orality ranging from community idiolects to mystical glossolalia. Part Three, "Lost and Found in Translation," addresses linguistic boundaries, including those between translation theory and practice, speech and writing, and sanity and psychosis. Part Four, "Letters to Words," charts language's constitutive elements in the form of script and scripture—especially the threshold at which signification reverts to noise and vice versa. Part Five, "Matter and Atom," corroborates a tradition attentive to linguistic microparticles that originates in Lucretius's analogy of letter to atom. Linguistic and terrestrial materialism converge in the anthology's culminating vision. Together, the five parts celebrate the scope and prodigality of linguistic speculation in the West going back to the pre-Socratics.
Of the book's five parts, the first, "Revolution of the Word," anchors the anthology to international modernism and to the journal transition in particular. Part Two, "Oralities, Rituals, and Colloquies," extends sound poetry into a broader field of orality ranging from community idiolects to mystical glossolalia. Part Three, "Lost and Found in Translation," addresses linguistic boundaries, including those between translation theory and practice, speech and writing, and sanity and psychosis. Part Four, "Letters to Words," charts language's constitutive elements in the form of script and scripture—especially the threshold at which signification reverts to noise and vice versa. Part Five, "Matter and Atom," corroborates a tradition attentive to linguistic microparticles that originates in Lucretius's analogy of letter to atom. Linguistic and terrestrial materialism converge in the anthology's culminating vision. Together, the five parts celebrate the scope and prodigality of linguistic speculation in the West going back to the pre-Socratics.
618 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1998
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
July 30, 2024
Indispensable going forward - every citation a new rabbit hole to fall down!
January 22, 2008
This is a reference book for me. I'll pick it up and randomly read a chapter/entry. This is the study of language in art/literature/things experimental/world history. I use this often in relation to my art.
August 27, 2007
another book i am frequently pulling off my shelves. a very engaging, truly unique (and beautiful) anthology of experimental literature.
November 17, 2009
really really worth it for the rare copies of poems, plus it made me feel super smart just to be reading it -- always a plus!
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews