In this Book
- The Language of Inquiry
- Book
- 2000
- Published by: University of California Press
summary
Lyn Hejinian is among the most prominent of contemporary American poets. Her autobiographical poem My Life, a best-selling book of innovative American poetry, has garnered accolades and fans inside and outside academia. The Language of Inquiry is a comprehensive and wonderfully readable collection of her essays, and its publication promises to be an important event for American literary culture. Here, Hejinian brings together twenty essays written over a span of almost twenty-five years. Like many of the Language Poets with whom she has been associated since the mid-1970s, Hejinian turns to language as a social space, a site of both philosophical inquiry and political address.
Central to these essays are the themes of time and knowledge, consciousness and perception. Hejinian's interests cover a range of texts and figures. Prominent among them are Sir Francis Bacon and Enlightenment-era explorers; Faust and Sheherazade; Viktor Shklovsky and Russian formalism; William James, Hannah Arendt, and Martin Heidegger. But perhaps the most important literary presence in the essays is Gertrude Stein; the volume includes Hejinian's influential "Two Stein Talks," as well as two more recent essays on Stein's writings.
Central to these essays are the themes of time and knowledge, consciousness and perception. Hejinian's interests cover a range of texts and figures. Prominent among them are Sir Francis Bacon and Enlightenment-era explorers; Faust and Sheherazade; Viktor Shklovsky and Russian formalism; William James, Hannah Arendt, and Martin Heidegger. But perhaps the most important literary presence in the essays is Gertrude Stein; the volume includes Hejinian's influential "Two Stein Talks," as well as two more recent essays on Stein's writings.
Table of Contents
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- Introduction
- pp. 1-6
- If Written Is Writing
- pp. 25-29
- Who Is Speaking?
- pp. 30-39
- The Rejection of Closure
- pp. 40-58
- Language and “Paradise”
- pp. 59-82
- Two Stein Talks
- pp. 83-130
- Strangeness
- pp. 135-160
- Materials (for Dubravka Djuric)
- pp. 161-176
- Comments for Manuel Brito
- pp. 177-198
- The Person and Description
- pp. 199-208
- The Quest for Knowledge in the Western Poem
- pp. 209-231
- La Faustienne
- pp. 232-267
- Three Lives
- pp. 268-295
- Forms in Alterity: On Translation
- pp. 296-317
- A Common Sense
- pp. 355-382
- Works Cited
- pp. 407-420
- Acknowledgment of Permissions
- pp. 421-422
Additional Information
ISBN
9780520922273
Related ISBN(s)
9780520217003
MARC Record
OCLC
49570122
Pages
447
Launched on MUSE
2014-01-01
Language
English
Open Access
No