From physics to metaphysics: philosophy and style in the critical writings of T. S. Eliot (1913-1935)

This thesis considers Eliot's critical writing from the late 1910s till the mid-1930s, in the light of his PhD thesis - Knowledge and Experience in the Philosophy of F. H. Bradley - and a range of unpublished material: T S. Eliot's Philosophical Essays and Notes (1913- 4) in the Hayward Bequest (King's College, Cambridge University); T. S. Eliot's Family Papers in the T. S. Eliot Collection at the Houghton Library (Harvard University); and items from the Harvard University Archives at the Pusey Library. 'Me thesis offers a comprehensive view of Eliot's critical development throughout this important period. It starts by considering The Sacred Wood's ambivalence towards the metaphysical philosophy of F. H. Bradley and Eliot's apparent adoption of a scientific method, under the influence of Bertrand Russell. It will be argued that Eliot uses rhetorical strategies which simultaneously subvert the method he is propounding, and which set the tone for an assessment of his criticism throughout the 1920s. His indecision, in this period, about the label 'Metaphysical' for some poets of the seventeenth century, reveals the persistence of the philosophical thought he apparently rejects in 1916, when he chooses not to pursue a career in philosophy in Harvard. This rhetorical tactic achieves its fulfilment in Dante (1929), where Eliot finds a model in the medieval allegorical method and 'philosophical' poetry. Allegory is also examined in connection with the evaluation of Eliot's critical writings themselves to determine, for instance, the figurative dimension of his early scientific vocabulary and uncover metaphysical residues he had explicitly disowned but would later embrace. Finally, it is suggested that, the hermeneutics of allegory are historical and it is used here to test the relationship between Eliot's early and later critical writings, that is the early physics and the later metaphysics

Romanticism regained. Viorica Patea and Paul Scott Derrick, eds. Modernism Revisited: Transgressing Boundaries and Strategies of Renewal in American Poetry. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007. 243 pages.

ReseñaRevie

Staging the Sounds of the Nation: The Poetic Soundscapes of the USA

Staging the Sounds of the Nation: The Poetic Soundscapes of the US

Lee mis labios: la acústica visual de la pantalla en las primeras películas de Alfred Hitchcock

This essay will cover some of Alfred Hitchcock’s early silent movies up to and including Blackmail (1929), of which he filmed both a silent and a sound version simultaneously. Hitchcock’s success with sound was directly linked to his training in silent technique. Silent movies actually allowed him to explore how they were capable of sound. This essay will consider how silent movies were able to induce an acoustic experience without the aid of extra-diegetic practices that added live – and sometimes gramophonic – soundtrack to films. What I am interested in is the aural effect of the visual experience of the screen alone. In the early days of cinema, the frame was silently read for all kind of sounds heard in the head of the spectator.Este artículo trata sobre las películas mudas de Alfred Hitchcock hasta Blackmail (1929), de la que filmó simultáneamente una versión muda y otra sonora. Su habilidad para gestionar el sonido venía de su aprendizaje con técnicas del cine mudo. Las películas mudas, de hecho, le permitieron explorar como ya eran capaces de producir sonidos. Este artículo examina cómo las películas mudas podían inducir una experiencia acústica sin la ayuda de prácticas extradiegéticas que añadían bandas sonoras en vivo – a veces gramofónica – al film.  Lo que a mí me interesa es el efecto aural solo de la pantalla. En los principios del cine, la pantalla era leída en silencio a modo de escuchar todo tipo de sonidos dentro de la cabeza del espectador

Sam Halliday, Sonic Modernity: Representing Sound in Literature, Culture and the Arts

Sam Halliday’s dashingly titled Sonic Modernity starts off with some big questions: ‘What is “modern” about sound, and what is the significance of sound for modernism? How is sound represented in literature, and the other arts?’ (1). Ambitious? Perhaps, but there is nothing wrong with ambition if one gets what on sets out for. Yet, the first thing the reader does not quite get is the kind of subtle distinction Halliday is sketching between ‘modernity’ and ‘modernism’. That ‘sound in modernism..