Pataphysics: The Poetics of an Imaginary Science (Avant-Garde & Modernism Studies) - Softcover

Bok, Christian

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0810118777 ISBN 13: 9780810118775

Verlag: Northwestern University Press, 2001

Inhaltsangabe

A critical look at the historical and cultural implications of Alfred Jarry's pseudoscience, pataphysics 'Pataphysics, what Alfred Jarry calls ""the science of imaginary solutions,"" has until now gone largely ignored by literary scholars, due in part to its academic frivolity and hermetic perversity. Nevertheless, this capricious philosophy has inspired nearly one hundred years of avant-garde experimentation. Christian Bok redresses this critical omission by tracing the tangled history of pataphysics, discussing the tension between science and poetics, in order to demonstrate that pataphysics constitutes an intrinsic, but neglected, cornerstone of postmodernity itself. Bok examines the work of Jarry, arguing that it represents a humorous addendum to the philosophy of Nietzsche, while also considering the influence of 'pataphysics upon the poetic legacy of the twentieth century, particularly the work of Italian Futurists, French Oulipians, and Canadian Jarryites. Bok resorts to the radical poetics of such contemporary philosophers as Delauze, Derrida, Baudrillard, and Serres in order to explicate the 'pataphysical relationship between rationalism and its discontents. Bok draws on a wide range of reading in poetry and theory to establish a firm historical ground for understanding the influence of 'pataphysics - all the while making a variety of seemingly difficult or obscure material accessible in a surprisingly charming and poetic manner. A long overdue critical look at a significant strain of the twentieth-century avant-garde, his book raises important historical, cultural, and theoretical issues germane to the production and reception of poetry, how we think about it, how we write it, how we read it, and what sorts of claims it makes upon our understanding.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Christian Bök is a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Fellow affiliated with the Poetics Program at SUNY-Buffalo. Bök is the author of Crystallography: Book I of Information Theory, a nominee for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award given for best poetic debut. He has published numerous articles on Canadian avant-garde poetry in Open Letter, Canadian Literature, and Studies in Canadian Literature, and his own experimental poetry has been frequently anthologized, appearing most recently in Imagining Language.

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'Pataphysics, the pseudoscience imagined by Alfred Jarry, has so far, because of its academic frivolity and hermetic perversity, attracted very little scholarly or critical inquiry, and yet it has inspired a century of experimentation. Tracing the place of 'pataphysics in the tangled history of the relationship between science and poetry, Christian Bök demonstrates that 'pataphysics is fundamental to the nature of the postmodern.
Bök considers the work of Jarry, 'pataphysician, both by itself and as it influenced work by later generations. Discussing 'pataphysics in general and Jarry's work in particular as a ludic counterpart of Nietzschean philosophy, Bök examines the relationship of rule and chance, of science and poetry, of the rational and the surrational. His work draws on a wide range of reading in poetry and theory to establish a firm historical ground for understanding the influence of 'pataphysics, making a variety of seemingly difficult or obscure material accessible in a charming, poetic manner. A long overdue critical look at a significant strain of the twentieth-century avant-garde, 'Pataphysics: The Poetics of an Imaginary Science raises important historical, cultural, and theoretical issues germane to the production and reception of poetry, the ways we think about, write, and read it, and the sorts of claims it makes upon our understanding.

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Northwestern University Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0810118777
• ISBN 13: 9780810118775
• Einband: Tapa blanda
• Sprache: Englisch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 152
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar