The ethnography of rhythm : orality and its technologies / Haun Saussy.

Author/creator Saussy, Haun, 1960- author.
Format Book
EditionFirst edition.
PublicationNew York : Fordham University Press, 2016.
Descriptionxv, 251 pages ; 24 cm.
Subjects

SeriesVerbal arts: studies in poetics
Verbal arts--studies in poetics. ^A1256985
Contents Introduction: Weighing Hearsay -- 1. Poetry Without Poems or Poets -- 2. Writing as (One Form of) Notation -- 3. Autography -- 4. The Human Gramophone -- 5. Embodiment and Inscription.
Abstract "Who speaks? The author as producer, the contingency of the text, intertextuality, the "device"--Core ideas of modern literary theory-were all pioneered in the shadow of oral literature. Authorless, loosely dated, and variable, oral texts have always posed a challenge to critical interpretation. When it began to be thought that culturally significant texts-starting with Homer and the Bible-had emerged from an oral tradition, assumptions on how to read these texts were greatly perturbed. Through readings that range from ancient Greece, Rome, and China to the Cold War imaginary, The Ethnography of Rhythm situates the study of oral traditions in the contentious space of nineteenth- and twentieth-century thinking about language, mind, and culture. It also demonstrates the role of technologies in framing this category of poetic creation. By making possible a new understanding of Maussian "techniques of the body" as belonging to the domain of Derridean "arche-writing," Haun Saussy shows how oral tradition is a means of inscription in its own right, rather than an antecedent made obsolete by the written word or other media and data-storage devices"-- Provided by publisher.
Abstract "A history of the concept of orality (that is, the creation and transmission of literary works without the use of writing), this book shows awareness of this medium emerging from the encounter of many literary and scientific developments (romanticism, post-symbolism, structuralism; physiology, psychology, the study of expression, anthropology; phonography, cinema)"-- Provided by publisher.
Bibliography noteIncludes bibliographical references and index.
Genre/formCriticism, interpretation, etc.
LCCN 2015036361
ISBN9780823270460 (hardback)
ISBN0823270467 (hardback)
ISBN9780823270477 (paper)
ISBN0823270475 (paper)

Availability

Library Location Call Number Status Item Actions
Joyner General Stacks GR72 .S28 2016 ✔ Available Place Hold