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The Philosophy of Literary Form

4.1/5 ( ratings)

From the ForewordThese pieces are selections from work done in the Thirties, a decade so changeable that I at first thought of assembling them under the title, "While Everything Flows." Their primary interest is in speculation on the nature of linguistic, or symbolic, or literary action--and in a search for more precise ways of locating or defining such action. Words are aspects of a much wider communicative context, most of which is not verbal at all. Yet words also have a nature peculiarly their own. And when discussing them as modes of action, we must consider both this nature as words in themselves and the nature they get from the non-verbal scenes that support their acts. I shall be happy if the reader can say of this book that, while always considering words as acts upon a scene, it avoids the excess of environmentalist schools which are usually so eager to trace the relationships between act and scene that they neglect to trace the structure of the act itself.

Language: English

Pages: 463

Format: Paperback

Publisher: University of California Press

Release: August 27, 1974

ISBN: 0520024834

ISBN 13: 9780520024830

The Philosophy of Literary Form

4.1/5 ( ratings)

From the ForewordThese pieces are selections from work done in the Thirties, a decade so changeable that I at first thought of assembling them under the title, "While Everything Flows." Their primary interest is in speculation on the nature of linguistic, or symbolic, or literary action--and in a search for more precise ways of locating or defining such action. Words are aspects of a much wider communicative context, most of which is not verbal at all. Yet words also have a nature peculiarly their own. And when discussing them as modes of action, we must consider both this nature as words in themselves and the nature they get from the non-verbal scenes that support their acts. I shall be happy if the reader can say of this book that, while always considering words as acts upon a scene, it avoids the excess of environmentalist schools which are usually so eager to trace the relationships between act and scene that they neglect to trace the structure of the act itself.

Language: English

Pages: 463

Format: Paperback

Publisher: University of California Press

Release: August 27, 1974

ISBN: 0520024834

ISBN 13: 9780520024830

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