{"title":"“The Aberrant Is the Classic”: William Carlos Williams and Literary History","authors":"Anne L. Cavender","doi":"10.5406/15437809.58.1.04","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"\n The “classic” is a vexed term in the work of William Carlos Williams. He uses the category to describe both the stale classicism of T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound and, conversely, the authentic, “aberrant” classic of James Joyce and surrealism. Analyzing unpublished archival manuscripts alongside the posthumously published collection of essays, The Embodiment of Knowledge, I approach the classic through Williams's theories of pedagogy. Williams parodies and rejects academic modes of reading that cling to the “malignant rigidities” of the past. Yet Paterson and The Embodiment also theorize the reader's interpretive power to disrupt any homogenizing conformity latent in the literary tradition. This dissonant hermeneutics can recuperate the classics and represents a form of resistance to a binary logic of past versus present, or European versus American literature.","PeriodicalId":45866,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF AESTHETIC EDUCATION","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4000,"publicationDate":"2024-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"JOURNAL OF AESTHETIC EDUCATION","FirstCategoryId":"1092","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.5406/15437809.58.1.04","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"N/A","JCRName":"HUMANITIES, MULTIDISCIPLINARY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
The “classic” is a vexed term in the work of William Carlos Williams. He uses the category to describe both the stale classicism of T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound and, conversely, the authentic, “aberrant” classic of James Joyce and surrealism. Analyzing unpublished archival manuscripts alongside the posthumously published collection of essays, The Embodiment of Knowledge, I approach the classic through Williams's theories of pedagogy. Williams parodies and rejects academic modes of reading that cling to the “malignant rigidities” of the past. Yet Paterson and The Embodiment also theorize the reader's interpretive power to disrupt any homogenizing conformity latent in the literary tradition. This dissonant hermeneutics can recuperate the classics and represents a form of resistance to a binary logic of past versus present, or European versus American literature.
期刊介绍:
The Journal of Aesthetic Education (JAE) is a highly respected interdisciplinary journal that focuses on clarifying the issues of aesthetic education understood in its most extensive meaning. The journal thus welcomes articles on philosophical aesthetics and education, to problem areas in education critical to arts and humanities at all institutional levels; to an understanding of the aesthetic import of the new communications media and environmental aesthetics; and to an understanding of the aesthetic character of humanistic disciplines. The journal is a valuable resource not only to educators, but also to philosophers, art critics and art historians.