ENGLISH

The Poethical Wager

By Joan Retallack

Book information

Publisher
University of California Press
Year
2003
ISBN
0520218396, 9780520218390
Open Library ID
OL7710655M
Language
english
Format
PDF
Filesize
2 MB (1963692 bytes)
Edition
1
Pages
304\293
Scanned
yes
Time added
2011-04-18 11:31:18

Description

In these highly inventive essays, Joan Retallack, acclaimed poet and essayist, conveys her unique post-utopian vision as she explores the relationship between art and life in today's chaotic world. In the tradition of the essay as complex humanist exploration, she engages ideas from across history: Aristotle's definition of happiness, Epicurus's swerve into unpredictable possibility, Montaigne's essays as an instrument of self-invention, John Cage's redefinition of Silence. Within her unifying rubric of poethics, Retallack gives the reader plenty of surprises with a wonderful range of examples, situations, and texts through which she conducts her exploration. A computer glitch, a passage from Gertrude Stein's favorite detective novelist, the idea of the experimental feminine, a John Cage performance--all serve as occasions for inquiry and speculation on the way to her poethics of a "complex realism."

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