The Writing of Spirit

Soul, System, and the Roots of Language Science

Sarah M. Pourciau (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

384 Seiten

2017
Fordham University Press (Verlag)
978-0-8232-7563-2 (ISBN)

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Contemporary thought has been profoundly shaped by the early-twentieth-century turn toward synchronic models of explanation, which analyze phenomena as they appear at a single moment, rather than diachronically as they develop through time. But the relationship between time and system remains unexplained by the standard account of this shift. Through a new history of systematic thinking across the humanities and sciences, The Writing of Spirit argues that nineteenth-century historicism wasn’t simply replaced by a more modern synchronic perspective. The structuralist revolution consisted rather in a turn toward time’s absolutely minimal conditions, and thus also toward a new theory of diachrony.

Pourciau arrives at this surprising and powerful conclusion through an analysis of language-scientific theories over the course of two centuries, associated with thinkers from Jacob Grimm and Richard Wagner to the Russian Futurists, in domains as disparate as historical linguistics, phonology, acoustics, opera theory, philosophy, poetics, and psychology. The result is a novel contribution to a pressing contemporary question—namely, what role history should play in the interpretation of the present.

Sarah Pourciau is Assistant Professor of German at Princeton University.

Introduction Part I. Eternal Etymology: From Sprachgeist to Ferdinand de Saussure 1. Language Ensouled Grammatical Life * Life Science * Kosmon Psychon * How Inflection Unfolds * Etymology: the Method * Spirit Superfluous? * The Demise of Analysis 2. Saussure's Dream In Search of the Literal * Neither Flesh nor Spirit * But Rather Writing * Postmeditation 3. Verse Origins Through the Letters Wafts the Spirit * 2 L, 2 P, 4 R (=2+2) * Little Sticks, Letter Rhymes * The Rhythm of Geist * The Cult of Cancellation Part II. Tending Toward Zero: From Runes to Phonemes 4. Wagner's Poetry of the Spheres Philology + Harmony * Wotan's Staff 5. Pythagoras in the Laboratory The Wagnerian Sound of Sense * Wave Systems (Acoustics) * The Undulating All (Psychophysics) * A Philology of the Ear (Poetics) 6. Jakobson's Zeros Analogy: the Method * Zero Degree Rhyme * The Silent "e" * Mama and Papa * In Retrospect: The Future Afterword Notes Bibliography Index

Erscheinungsdatum	14.05.2017
Verlagsort	New York
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Anglistik / Amerikanistik
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturwissenschaft
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Sprachwissenschaft
	Naturwissenschaften
ISBN-10	0-8232-7563-9 / 0823275639
ISBN-13	978-0-8232-7563-2 / 9780823275632
Zustand	Neuware