Book Chapter

Epilogue

HAZARD ADAMS

2011

Overview

In 1977, Mary Louise Pratt published a persuasive summary account of arguments against the notion, popular among many critics in the twentieth century, of a special poetic language and a special nonpoetic one.¹ She declared, among other things, that any attempt to define literature in the terms of special linguistic characteristics fails because the characteristics always turn out to be present in other forms of linguistic expression. In the wake of the so-called “-linguistic turn,” it is important to be so reminded.² The foregoing offense of poetry has not sought to define poetry, only to indicate some of its means

• Publisher: University of Washington Press
• ISBN: 9780295987422, 0295987421