Article

Name: “The New Sentence” and Its Meaning: The Syntactical Poetics of Language Poetry

Authors: Vladimir V. Feshchenko

Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russian Federation

Abstract:

The article is devoted to connections between the general theory of sentence and the poetic discourse. In the 1970s, a literary movement called Language poetry (or Language writing) emerged in the United States, which focused on linguistic categories: “speech”, “language”, “syntax”, “text”, “context”, “reference”, "frame", etc. Poetry turned to linguistic models to test them in a literary experiment. One of the ideas of "language poets" was an attempt to make the sentence a unit of poetic text, competing with the line (the verse). The study focuses on the poetic theory called The New Sentence, put forward by Ron Silliman and implemented in hybrid formats on the border of prose and verse, artistic theory and language experiment, by such authors as Ch. Bernstein, L. Hejinian and R. Silliman himself. The role of sentence as proposition in the creation of a "treatise verse" is paramount. The propositional structure of sentences (subject-predicate logic) in such texts performs the function usually assigned to the formal means of verse. The very elements of language and discourse act as referents in “language writing”, due to which the poetic function interacts with the metalingual one.

Keywords: syntax, sentence, proposition, Language poetry, experiment

Bibliography:

Arutyunova N. D. Predlozhenie i ego smysl. Logiko-semanticheskie problem [The sentence and its meaning. Logical-semantic problems]. Moscow, Nauka, 1976, 383 p.

Bernstein Ch. A Poetics. Cambridge, Mass; London, England: Harvard Uni. Press, 1992, 240 p.

Bernstein Ch. My Way: Speeches & Poems. Chicago: Uni. of Chicago Press, 1999, 329 p.

Bernstein Ch. Ispytanie znaka: Izbrannye stikhotvoreniya i stat'i [Sign under Test: Selected Poems and Articles (trans. from Eng. by I. Probstein). Moscow, Russkiy Gulliver; Tsentr sovremennoy literatury, 2020, 422 p. (in Russ.)

Coolidge Cl. ING. New York, Angel Hair, 1968. (no pagination)

Fateeva N. A. Poeziya kak filologicheskiy diskurs [Poetry as a philological discourse]. Moscow, YaSK, 2017, 359 p. (in Russ.)

Feshchenko V. V. Continuous Reframing: G. Lakoff, Cognitive Linguistics, and ‘Language Poetry’. Critique and Semiotics, 2022, no. 2, pp. 9–17. (in Russ.) DOI 10.25205/2307-1737-2022-2-9-17

Feshchenko V. V. Sintaksicheskiy eksperiment v poezii i v lingvistike [Syntactical experiment in poetry and linguistics]. Inostrannye yazyki v vysshey shkole, 2022, no. 3, pp. 37–45. (in Russ.)

Grigorev V. P. Poetika slova [Poetics of the word]. Moscow, Nauka, 1979, 343 p. (in Russ.)

Hejinian L. Iz “Kompozitsii kletki” [From “The Composition of the Cell] (trans. from Eng. by A. Dragomoshhenko). In: Ot “Chernoy gory” do “Yazykovogo pis'ma”: Antologiya noveyshey poezii SShA. Ed. and comp. by.

I. Probstein, V. Feshchenko. Moscow, Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2022, pp. 471–476. (in Russ.)

Hejinian L. The Language of Inquiry. Berkeley, Uni. of California Press, 2000, 447 p.

Hejinian L. Varvarstvo [Barbarism] (trans. from Eng. by A. Dragomoshchenko). Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2012, no. 113, pp. 253–263. (in Russ.)

Jakobson R. O. Lingvistika i pojetika [Linguistics and Poetics]. In: Strukturalizm: “za” i “protiv”: Sb. statey. Moscow, 1975. (in Russ.) URL: http://www.philology.ru/linguistics1/jakobson-75.htm.

Lakoff G. On Whose Authority? Poetry Flash, 1985, June, no. 147, pp. 5–7.

Perelman B. Parataxis and Narrative: The New Sentence in Theory and Practice. American Literature, 1993, no. 65.2 (June), pp. 313–324.

Perloff M. Writing Philosophy as Poetry: Literary Form in Wittgenstein // The Oxford Handbook of Wittgenstein. Oxford: Oxford Uni. Press, 2011. P. 714–728.

Silliman R. Rastvorenie slova, sotvorenie mira [Disappearance of the Word, Appearance of the World] (trans. from Eng. by O. Sokolova) // Ot “Chernoy gory” do “Yazykovogo pis'ma”: Antologiya noveyshey poezii SShA. Ed. and comp. by. I. Probstein, V. Feshchenko. Moscow, Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2022, pp. 557–566. (in Russ.)

Silliman R. The Age of Huts (compleat). Berkeley, Uni. of California Press, 2007, 209 p.

Silliman R. The New Sentence. New York, Roof, 1987, 324 p.

Stepanov Yu. S. V trehmernom prostranstve yazyka: Semioticheskie problemy lingvistiki, filosofii, iskusstva [In the three-dimensional space of language: Semiotic problems of linguistics, philosophy, art]. Moscow, Nauka, 1985, 331 p. (in Russ.)

Waldrop R. Razmyshlenie sleduet [Thinking of Follows] (trans. from Eng. by V. Feshhenko). In: Ot “Chernoy gory” do “Yazykovogo pis'ma”: Antologiya noveyshey poezii SShA. Ed. and comp. by. I. Probstein, V. Feshchenko. Moscow, Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2022, pp. 411–418. (in Russ.)

Zolyan S. T. Semantika i struktura poeticheskogo teksta [Semantics and structure of a poetic text]. 2nd ed. Moscow, URSS Publ., 2014, 331 p. (in Russ.)