Black Riders: The Visible Language of Modernism

by Jerome J. McGann

"English literature," Yeats once noted, "has all but completely shaped itself in the printing press." Finding this true particularly of modernist writing, Jerome McGann demonstrates the extraordinary degree to which modernist styles are related to graphic and typographic design, to printed letters--"black riders" on a blank page--that create language for the eye. He sketches the relation of modernist writing to key developments in book design, beginning with the nineteenth-century renaissance of printing, and demonstrates the continued interest of postmodern writers in the "visible language" of modernism. McGann then offers a philosophical investigation into the relation of knowledge and truth to this kind of imaginative writing.


Exploring the work of writers like William Morris, Emily Dickinson, W. B. Yeats, Ezra Pound, and Gertrude Stein, as well as Laura Riding and Bob Brown, he shows how each exploits the visibilities of language, often by aligning their work with older traditions of so-called Adamic language. McGann argues that in modernist writing, philosophical nominalism emerges as a key aesthetic point of departure. Such writing thus develops a pragmatic and performative "answer to Plato" in the matter of poetry's relation to truth and philosophy.

216 pages, Paperback

First published May 17, 1993

Reviews

[Anthony · Rating 4 out of 5]

an interesting discussion of visual language and the effect of printing/typography on literary history, but the best feature of this book is the on-going critical debate McGann has with himself; as if to make sure you don't unquestioningly accept his claims, a fussy "reader" interjects every now and then with wonderfully hostile objections

[S P · Rating 3 out of 5]

‘In a poetry that has imagined and executed itself as a scriptural rather than a typographical event, all these matters fall under the work’s initial horizon of finality.’ (38)

‘The textual move is the opposite of the transcendental because we are not borne away with these pages, we are borne down by them. The work forces us to attend to its immediate and iconic condition, as if the words were images and objects in themselves, as if they were values in themselves (rather than vehicles for delivering some further value or meaning).’ (75)

‘The text is an emblem for a poetry that means to come to its senses.’ (83)

[Robyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I know I liked it but it's blending together with Beauty of Inflections. I'll have to revisit it after this class is over.