Decomposing Figures: Rhetorical Readings in the Romantic TraditionOriginally published in 1986. The ghastly fate of a drowned man brought to a lake's surface in Wordsworth's "Prelude" typifies a fundamental pattern in Romantic writing, argues Cynthia Chase. Disfiguration involves not only a departure from representation but a disruption of the logic of figure or form, a decomposition of the figures composing the text. Ultimately it manifests the conflict between a work's meaning and its mode of performance. By means of an intense engagement with texts in the romantic tradition, Decomposing Figures rearticulates and recasts crucial concepts in recent literary theory, including the notion of the self-referential or self-reflexive nature of the literary work. Chase's readings show that, far from implying a privileged status, the work's self-reflexive structure entails its opacity, its inability to read itself, and the necessity of its decomposition. |
From inside the book
Results 1-3 of 11
... vers et les roses ” —objects of different appeal but of the same order , related by contiguity , or me- tonymy . In fact , in Baudelaire's verses , these designated items are linked to one another by neither resemblance nor proximity ...
... vers depuis longtemps rêvés . " But it may be said to materialize most insistently with the recurrence of the word vers in the second stanza . Vers there functions not only as a noun but as a preposition ; it belongs to both prominent ...
... vers le ciel " ) by a word for designation , inscription , and memorization ( vers ) may be accompanied by an abandonment of pro- gressive ideals . Baudelaire throws out the ideal of progress in an irrever- ent note to his publisher ...
Contents
The Accidents of Disfiguration | 13 |
The Ring of Gyges and the Coat of Darkness | 32 |
Viewless Wings | 65 |
Copyright | |
7 other sections not shown
Other editions - View all
Decomposing Figures: Rhetorical Readings in the Romantic Tradition Cynthia Chase Limited preview - 2019 |
Decomposing Figures: Rhetorical Readings in the Romantic Tradition Cynthia Chase No preview available - 2019 |