Peculiar Language

Derek Attridge

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• ISBN:
  9781134297467
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

First published in 1988, Peculiar Language is now established as one of the most important discussions of the language of literature. This thought-provoking book challenges traditional notions of literary criticism, arguing that all attempts by writers, critics and literary theorists to define the language of literature have involved self-contradiction. Through examination of key moments in literary history, Derek Attridge demonstrates that such contradictions in accounts of literary language are embedded in our cultural concept of 'literature' and asserts that in order to appreciate the forces that determine the limits of literary language, we must look beyond the realm of the 'literary' and embrace the wider political and social sphere. Re-issued as a result of sustained critical interest in the book, this edition includes a new preface by the author.

INDEX

Aarsleff, Hans, 65, 99, 101-2, 120

Abel, Karl, 106

Abrams, M. H., 48, 73, 79, 223

Addison, Joseph, 47, 57

Aitchison, Jean, 113

Alfoxden House, 85

allusion, 108

Althusser, Louis, 97

Altieri, Charles, 81

ambiguity, 124, 174, 186, 189-92, 197. See also polysemy, pun

Anttila, Raimo, 110

Aquinas, Thomas, 122

arbitrariness, 11, 65, 107, 114, 186

and bodily organs, 185

and history, 97, 100

and poetic language, 59, 72, 132-33, 139, 192, 201

Aristotle, 2–4, 14, 20, 27, 32, 229

Arnold, Matthew, 62

art:

as expression, 57, 67, 71, 87

and nature, 8, 11, 17–89, 115, 157, 189, 198, 232

as rule-governed, 24, 36, 47

as spontaneous, 26, 42, 50, 62, 69–70

See also artifice

artifice, 24–28, 43, 48–49, 54, 130, 156, 198

Ashbery, John, 192

associationism, 82. See also Hartley, David

Atkins, J. W. H., 21–22

Attridge, Derek, 92, 233

“Closing Statement,” 44,...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• References
• Preface to the 2004 Edition
• Introduction: The Peculiar Language of Literature
• 2 Nature, Art, and the Supplement in Renaissance Literary Theory: Puttenham’s Poetics of Decorum
• 3 Romanticism and the Language of Nature: The Project of Wordsworth’s Preface
• 4 Language as History/History as Language: Saussure and the Romance of Etymology
• 5 Literature as Imitation: Jakobson, Joyce, and the Art of Onomatopoeia
• 6 Literature as Deviation: Syntax, Style, and the Body in Ulysses
• 7 Unpacking the Portmanteau; or, Who’s Afraid of Finnegans Wake?
• 8 Deconstructing Digression: The Backbone of Finnegans Wake and the Margins of Culture
• Works Cited
• Index