Playing by Ear and the Tip of the Tongue

Precategorial information in poetry
Erscheinungsjahr 2012
ISBN: 978-90-272-3349-3
Verlag: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Buch, Englisch, Band 14, 310 Seiten, Gewicht: 735 g

Reihe: Linguistic Approaches to Literature

In our everyday life we are flooded by a pandemonium of information which consciousness organizes into more easily manageable phonetic and semantic categories. In poetry reading, however, the total effect of a poem is not only obtained by some of these categories but also by precategorial information, for which there is a growing body of empirical evidence of its psychological reality. In the Tip of the Tongue phenomenon, a great amount of diffuse precategorial information is present but fails to “grow together” into a compact word, generating a feeling of some dense, undifferentiated mass. Poetic language typically exploits such precategorial information for its effects. By way of theoretical considerations and close readings, this book explores the semantic and phonetic strategies by which a text may increase or decrease the impact of such information. It investigates the conditions that boost or inhibit overtone fusion in rhyme and alliteration. By seeking empirical evidence for the claims he makes in different fields such as music, art, literature, linguistics, experiments in the speech laboratory, the author provides ample and sound examples (ambiguity intended) in an almost conversational tone, which makes us really anticipate reading each new chapter.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Tsur, Reuven

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturtheorie: Poetik und Literaturästhetik
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturpsychologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Rezeption, literarische Einflüsse und Beziehungen
• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Phonetik, Phonologie, Prosodie
• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Semantik & Pragmatik

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Preface

Chapter 1. Introduction

Chapter 2. The poetic mode of speech perception revisited: What our ear tells our mind

Chapter 3. The tot phenomenon: A psycholinguistic model of poetry

Chapter 4. “Oceanic” dedifferentiation and poetic metaphor

Chapter 5. Deixis and abstractions: Adventures in space and time

Chapter 6. Three case studies – Keats, Spenser, Baudelaire

Chapter 7. Linguistic devices and ecstatic poetry: “The Windhover” – tongue-twisters and cognitive processes

Chapter 8. Defamiliarization revisited

Chapter 9. Aesthetic qualities as structural resemblance: Divergence and perceptual forces in poetry

Chapter 10. Metaphor and figure–ground relationship: Comparisons from poetry, music, and the visual arts

Chapter 11. Size–sound symbolism revisited

Chapter 12. Issues in literary synaesthesia: A brief glance

Chapter 13. The place of nonconceptual information in university education

Chapter 14. Points and counterpoints

References