The Dialect of the Tribe: Speech and Community in Modern Fiction - Hardcover

Sabin, Margery

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0195041534 ISBN 13: 9780195041538

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1987

Synopsis

The bold careers of Henry James, D.H. Lawrence, James Joyce, and Samuel Beckett--writers with profoundly unsettled cultural identities--spark Margery Sabin's investigation of values carried through inherited forms of speech. The Dialect of the Tribe offers fresh readings of such great novels as The Golden Bowl, Women in Love, Ulysses, and the Beckett trilogy which illustrate how complex attitudes toward the speech forms of language inform the most varied social, psychological, and aesthetic structures in modern fiction. Sabin explores the powerful tension in these writers between appreciation for the resources of common speech in English and contrary longings for a freedom associated with abstraction, system, and foreign or private language. Her own critical procedures transcend restrictive and reductive polarizations, as she lucidly analyzes the biases of both the Anglo-American critical tradition and the challenge to that tradition in French literary theory and practice. Written in a jargon-free, accessible style, The Dialect of the Tribe argues that the ambiguous cultural positions of the great modern novelists in English emerge as a major source of their strength--the rich traditions of the English language give enlivening power to writers also remarkable for their drive toward radical independence and skepticism.

About this title

About the Author

Margery Sabin is at Wellesley College.

Review

"[An] often brilliant study."--D.H. Lawrence Review

"Margery Sabin is a critic of rare lucidity and brilliance, and The Dialect of the Tribe should redirect and enrich our reading of modern fiction."--Richard Poirier, Rutgers University

"Splendid insights on every page....Sabin in a sensitive, thoughtful critic...Brilliant."--The D.H. Lawrence

"The book is impressive, the work of a formidable critic."--James H. Maddox, George Washington University

"An intelligent study of language play in the composition and detection of attitude and harmony or tension within a literary work....Offers a rich reward of fresh intellectual exploration."--Choice

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 1987
• ISBN 10: 0195041534
• ISBN 13: 9780195041538
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320