Breaking Up the Language: The Struggle With(in) Modernity in J.H. Prynne’s Biting the Air

• Authors: Pietrzak Wit
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The essays focuses on J. H. Prynne’s Biting the Air. Taking as a departure point Adorno’s idea of the role of art in society, it is argued here that Prynne’s sequence of poems thematises a conflict between the supremacy of the science- and market-oriented narratives of suppression of society and the attempts to subvert that narrative through a reinvention of the signifying process of language. Prynne resorts to radical parataxis in order to undermine the ostensibly natural hegemony of accepted idioms of science and market economy, offering a dense network of meanings that cannot be reduced to a flat formula.

Keywords

EN

poetry; J. H. Prynne; Theodor Adorno; Martin Heidegger; modernity; reification of language; reconstitution of self

• Publisher: Institute of English Studies, University of Warsaw
• Journal: Anglica. An International Journal of English Studies
• Year: 2014
• Issue: 23/1
• Pages: 5-18

Contributors

author

Pietrzak Wit

• University of Łódź

References

• Adorno, Theodor W. 2006. The Adorno Reader. Ed. Brian O’Connor. London: Routledge.
• Auden. W. H. 1991. Collected Poems. Ed. Edward Mendelson. New York: Vintage.
• Blanton, C. D. 2000. ‘‘Nominal Devolutions: Poetic Substance and the Critique of Political Economy.” The Yale Journal of Criticism 13 (2000): 134–154.
• Colebrook, Claire. 2009. Irony. London: Routledge.
• Thomson, Iain D. 2011. Heidegger, Art, and Postmodernity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Jarvis, Simon. 1998. Adorno: A Critical Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Lemm, Vanessa. 2009. Nietzsche’s Animal Philosophy: Culture, Politics, and the Animality of the Human Being. New York: Fordham University Press.
• Mellors, Anthony. 1990. ‘‘Literal Myth in Olson and Prynne.” fragmente 4: 36–47.
• Mellors, Anthony. 1996. ‘‘The Spirit of Poetry: Heidegger, Trakl, Derrida and Prynne.” Parataxis 8: 175–189.
• Mengham, Rod. 2009. ‘‘A Free Hand to Refuse Everything:’ Politics and Intricacy in the Work of J. H. Prynne.” A Manner of Utterance. The Poetry of J. H. Prynne. Ed. Ian Brinton. Exeter: Shearsman, 69–82.
• Mengham, Rod. 1983–84. ‘‘A Lifelong Transfusion. The Oval Window of J. H. Prynne.” The Grosseteste Review 15: 205–209.
• Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1997. A Nietzsche Reader. Trans. R. J. Hollingdale. London: Penguin.
• Pound, Ezra. 1960. ABC of Reading. New York: New Directions.
• Prynne, J. H. 2005. Poems. Tarset: Bloodaxe.
• Prynne, J. H. 2008. ‘‘Huts.” Textual Practice 22: 613–633.
• Purves, Robin. 1999 ‘‘Apprehension: or, J. H. Prynne, His Critics, and the Rhetoric of Art.” The Gig 2: 45–60.
• Royle, Nicholas. 2011. Veering. A Theory of Literature. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
• Shelley, Percy Bysshe. 2002. Shelley’s Poetry and Prose. Eds. Donald R. Reiman and Neil Fraistat. New York: Norton.
• Thomson, Iain D. 2011. Heidegger, Art, and Postmodernity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.