Monday, March 7 from 6:10-8pm
Columbia University, 402 Hamilton [campus map]
An abstract of the talk is provided below:
“Poetic diction” is an early modern term of art, used to mark distinctions between prose and verse. It signals a belief that poets speak and write a special kind of language. But “poetic diction” is also the term selected by William Wordsworth in the preface to Lyrical Ballads to sum up and mark a break with eighteenth-century poetics. “Poetic diction,” complained Wordsworth, is “mechanical” and “artificial,” a “hubbub of words.” Poets should instead write poems, claims Wordsworth, famously, in the “real language of men.” By 1800, it would seem the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century stock of words and phrases was well worn if not worn out.
Poetic diction, as a topic of scholarly interest, had itself become well worn by the 1960s; but then computational methods may offer new insights into moribund topics. In particular, when I see critics compile a large “set of phrases” that occur with “wearisome iteration” or provide a short list of stock phraseology (“blushing flowers,” “cool gales,” “ lab’ring oxen,” “curling smokes,” “fleet shades,” and “dusky green”), it is the mechanical, iterative nature of the verse that I would revisit, alongside the twentieth-century attempts of scholars like Josephine Miles to come to terms with it. Computational methods work by iteration; and from the perspective of a computational linguist, the stock of phrases complained of by some literary critics are so many types and tokens, waiting to counted and mapped. An opportunity to identify a representative stock of phrases and visualize their circulation presents itself in the current moment, but the uneven and unbalanced complexion of large-scale text collections challenges responsible search and analysis.For more information about Professor Pasanek's work, past and present, please see his UVa faculty page.
An informal pizza dinner will be held at Jenny Davidson's apartment following the talk; please contact Candace Cunard at cgc2118@columbia.edu if you are interested in attending!
Seminar Discussion with Brad Pasanek: Metaphors of Mind
Tuesday, March 8 from 9-10:30am
Columbia University, 302 Philosophy [campus map]
We will meet to discuss selections from Prof Pasanek's recent first book, Metaphors of Mind: An Eighteenth-Century Dictionary. We encourage you to also take a look at http://metaphorized.net, the online home of the database of metaphors that Prof Pasanek has collected and draws on in composing his book. For PDFs of book selections, and to RSVP, please contact Candace Cunard at cgc2118@columbia.edu.
RSVPs are encouraged for this event so that I can acquire enough coffee and breakfast food for attendees! (Also let me know if you have any dietary restrictions.) Additionally, please note that 302 Philosophy is the seminar room adjacent to the graduate student lounge and requires Columbia ID card to access -- if you'd like to attend but don't have ID card access, please let me know so I can make sure to let you in!
No comments:
Post a Comment