The Language of Inquiry
Author | : Lyn Hejinian |
Publisher | : Univ of California Press |
Total Pages | : 449 |
Release | : 2000-12-27 |
ISBN-10 | : 9780520922273 |
ISBN-13 | : 0520922271 |
Rating | : 4/5 (271 Downloads) |
Download or read book The Language of Inquiry written by Lyn Hejinian and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2000-12-27 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.