The Pale of Words: Reflections on the Humanities and Performance - Hardcover

Winn, Professor James Anderson

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0300074123 ISBN 13: 9780300074123

Publisher: Yale University Press, 1998

Synopsis

With this book, James Anderson Winn makes an original and thought-provoking contribution to the current debate about the state of humanities education. Contending that humanists from Plato to Alan Bloom have identified excessively with the written word, Winn examines the troubled relations between the humanities and performance and calls for scholars to form a new alliance with performers.

About this title

Review

In the four essays that constitute The Pale of Words, James Anderson Winn contends that literary scholars have systematically given short shrift to the performing arts. Winn, a professor of English as well as a concert flautist, is in the perfect position to offer such a critique. The essays, originally delivered as lectures, are pleasantly informal in tone without being breezy.

Starting with Homer, Winn documents the hostility toward performance shown by Plato, Augustine, Spenser, Milton, Dryden (to whom he devoted an earlier book, John Dryden and His World), Kant, and others. Rousseau's vehement denunciation of D'Alembert's proposal for a theater in Geneva is typical: "Like a servant dressed in his master's clothes," Winn explains, "the actor stands accused of 'forgetting his own place'; his trade is 'servile and base.'" But the virtuosity of Winn's historical discussion overshadows his subsequent exploration of "how the turn to theory might help us reconsider the troubled relations between the humanities and performance," which consists largely of predigested and uncritical exegeses of Saussure, Barthes, and Derrida. (Claude Lévi-Strauss, however, is instructively drubbed for his views on music, particularly his "nostalgic" acceptance of Western tonality as natural.) Overall, Winn's assurances that "theory" is the key to reconciling performance and the humanities are less than convincing. More convincing are the claims of the fourth essay, in which Winn proposes a reunion of the humanities and the performing arts--not merely through interdisciplinary studies but also through recognizing that scholarly excellence in teaching and writing requires proficiency in performing. --Glenn Branch

From Library Journal

Winn (English, Boston Univ.) closely analyzes the humanities, emphasizing their roots in performance traditions and their subsequent development. He concludes that music, visual arts, and theatrical display have been, over time, constrained by the written word and that, as a result, their essential nonverbal power has been undermined. Through musical examples and descriptions, literary quotations, philosophical discussion, and historical details, Winn offers persuasive evidence in support of his ideas. He draws examples from a variety of sources?from the structure of ancient Greek tragedy to the perceptions of jazz musicians to the writings of Roland Barthes, to name just a few. He uses his research brilliantly, coaxing out thought-provoking conclusions. Winn's final proposal, for collaboration between scholars in the humanities and performers, could be heeded with positive results, particularly given the state of the arts in contemporary society. For scholarly collections.?Carol J. Binkowski, Bloomfield, NJ
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0300074123
• ISBN 13: 9780300074123
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 160