{"product_id":"stevie-smith-and-the-aphorism-noreen-masud-9780192895899","title":"Stevie Smith and the Aphorism: Hard Language","description":"This volume argues that aphorism represents a tool for the social management of emotion. Rhetorically corralled into a slick, collectable shape, the aphorism promises arresting and instantaneous epiphany. However, the accomplished elegance which positions the aphorism's message as self-evidently true in fact works to repel further enquiry, and ultimately ensures that it will be forgotten or bypassed in favour of another aphorism: no less eagerly embraced for the earlier disappointment. Aphorism, therefore, is a form in which dangerous ideas and emotions can be safely displayed and, simultaneously, effaced. Because aphorism's style defuses the imperative to act on what is clearly known, writers like Stevie Smith can use the form to stage a withdrawal from the burden of making an impact on the world. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThis book finds that Smith's use of aphorism and its related forms (proverb, epitaph, caption, and fragment) offers a route into her texts. With her disconcerting pen-and-ink drawings, dark comedy, and social ventriloquism which stops short of satire, the rhetorical force of Smith's poetry fascinates and arrests its readers, but nevertheless leaves them unable to react coherently or identify the use-value which her writing appears to promise. Drawing on hitherto unpublished archival material, this project argues that Smith's texts resist analysis because, like the aphorisms embedded throughout them, they offer and exemplify a mode of clearly-declared revelation which, at the same time, makes itself unusable.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Noreen Masud\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 0192895893\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780192895899\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Oxford University Press, USA\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 03\/22\/2023\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 208\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Hardcover\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 1.03lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 9.48h x 6.42w x 0.74d","brand":"Noreen Masud","offers":[{"title":"Hardcover","offer_id":44069585715455,"sku":"9780192895899","price":90.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/files\/img_bc2f3aee-1a46-4583-98a0-7260e31e1122.jpg?v=1685425473","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/stevie-smith-and-the-aphorism-noreen-masud-9780192895899","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}