Modern Poetry and the Idea of Language: A Critical and Historical Study

Here Gerald L. Bruns does something remarkable: he makes accessible the theoretical issues involved in the discussion of language as discourse versus that used in art. On one side, we have the language of Orpheus that seeks to unite poetry and man's experience in the world; and on the other -- what Bruns calls the "hermetic tradition" -- we have language used purely for literary and artistic ends, as exemplified in the works of Rabelais, Flaubert (his grand ambition was to write a novel about nothing), Joyce, and Beckett. In the process of examining these two contrasting traditions, Bruns manages to provide an illuminating exposition of Russian Formalist theory. In its clarity and scope, Modern Poetry and the Idea of Language is one of the major works of twentieth-century critical thought.