Okay David
>
>I'm pondering matters here: as a profoundly stupid person myself I have
>problems with literary theory. It is not that I am hostile to theory, in a
>sub-Romantic sense, but that almost all I ever encounter as 'theory' doesn't
>seem to contain any (theories that is). My thick skull understands theory in
>the scientific sense, as being propoundings of demonstrable and falsifiable
>hypotheses, and I don't seem to see any such in what pours out of academe.
>All I see seem to be language games, played out in pursuit of career points.
It's true, a lot of theory seems to be way up there in Cloud Cuckoo Land,
ie, it's philosophy in one of its many guizes.
But I'm not sure how many ways there are to get at, to, through, with
'experiential reality.' However, I am damn sure that for poets it involves
language, & that probably means what are often derided as 'language games,'
certainly involves play with language, & for me, involves an attitude
toward language of cooperation, collusion, collaboration, as assumption
that language will lead me on to meanings I might never have found if all i
did was 'report' on what I already thought was my experience (how little we
'know').
And some theory is aware of this, or maybe iot's just some poetics is...
Doug
Douglas Barbour
Department of English
University of Alberta
Edmonton Alberta Canada T6G 2E5
(h) [780] 436 3320 (b) [780] 492 0521
http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/dbhome.htm
Beauty
is to lay hold of Love
is the leave
to
Charles Olson
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