Stevie Smith and the aphorism : hard language /
Explores the literature of Stevie Smith with particular emphasis on the importance of the aphorism: a short, witty saying which expresses a general truth. It argues that the aphorism offers Smith a means of managing emotional statements in her work, enabling her to make, and make light of, sincere o...
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| Format: | eBook |
| Language: | English |
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Oxford ; New York, NY :
Oxford University Press,
[2022]
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| Series: | Oxford English monographs.
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Connect to the full text of this electronic book |
| Summary: | Explores the literature of Stevie Smith with particular emphasis on the importance of the aphorism: a short, witty saying which expresses a general truth. It argues that the aphorism offers Smith a means of managing emotional statements in her work, enabling her to make, and make light of, sincere or dramatic communications. This monograph draws up a new theory of the aphorism, a form which has received limited critical treatment in literary and philosophical studies. It uses this model of aphorism to frame an original approach to the enigmatic poetry and novels of Stevie Smith (1902-1971). The monograph suggests that aphorism represents a tool for the social management of emotion. Rhetorically corralled into a slick, collectable shape, the aphorism promises arresting and instantaneous epiphany. However, the accomplished elegance which positions the aphorism's message as self-evidently true in fact works to repel further enquiry, and ultimately ensures that it will be forgotten or bypassed in favour of another aphorism: no less eagerly embraced for the earlier disappointment. Aphorism, therefore, is a form in which dangerous ideas and emotions can be safely displayed and, simultaneously, effaced. Because aphorism's style defuses the imperative to act on what is clearly known, writers like Stevie Smith can use the form to stage a withdrawal from the burden of making an impact on the world. The book finds that Smith's use of aphorism and its related forms (proverb, epitaph, caption, and fragment) offers a route into her texts. Drawing on hitherto unpublished archival material, this project argues that Smith's texts resist analysis because, like the aphorisms embedded throughout them, they offer and exemplify a mode of clearly-declared revelation which, at the same time, makes itself unusable. |
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| Physical Description: | 1 online resource (xi, 191 pages) : illustrations. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| ISBN: | 9780192649249 0192649248 9780191916397 0191916390 9780192649232 019264923X |