Awards

• Winner of Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Comparative Literary Studies 2017
• Winner of Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Comparative Literary Studies 2017 (United States)

Overview

Winner of the Modern Language Association's Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Comparative Literary Studies 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.

Full Product Details

Author:   Haun Saussy ,  Olga Solovieva (Committee on Social Thought, University of Chicago)
Publisher:   Fordham University Press
Imprint:   Fordham University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 2.30cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.499kg
ISBN:  

9780823270460

ISBN 10:   0823270467
Pages:   274
Publication Date:   01 March 2016
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

"Preface Introduction: Weighing Hearsay 1. Poetry Without Poems or Poets ""Two or Three Hundred Rhythmic Formulae Festivals of Rhythm The Oral Style Formula as System Langue, Parole, and Constraint 2. Writing as One Form of Notation The Epic Cyborg ""Word for Word"" Stitches in Time 3. Autography The Inscribing Ear ""Speech is a Movement"" The Patois of Parnassus A Difference of Fifteen Cycles 4. The Human Gramophone ""Errores Modernistarum"" The Gospel of Movement A Bone Gallery ""Four Obscure Jews"" Gallo-Galilean Civilization 5. Embodiment and Inscription Materials Science Techniques of the Body Notes Bibliography Index"

Reviews

Only Haun Saussy--with his historical range, theoretical breadth, and fine close-reading--could have pulled off this brilliant comparative history of 'the perturbation caused by the idea of oral literature.' The disciplinary range of this dazzling scholarly performance takes us from linguistics and philology to ethnography and religious studies, from physiology and psychiatry to the history of graphic and sound technologies. Be prepared to marvel--and learn. --Linda Hutcheon, University Professor Emeritus of English and Comparative Literature, University of Toronto

Author Information

Haun Saussy is University Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Chicago.

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