Modern Poetry and the Idea of Language: A Critical and Historical Study

-- Gerald Bruns's ground-breaking analysis compares two contrasting functions of language: the hermetic, where language is self-contained and self-referencing, and the Orphic, which originates from a belief in the mythical unity of word and being. Bruns lucidly depicts the distinctions and convergences between these two lines of thought by examining the works of Mallarme, Flaubert, Joyce, Beckett, and others.

Gerald L. Bruns is William P. and Hazel B. White Professor of English at the University of Notre Dame. His books include Hermeneutics Ancient and Modern and Heidegger's Estrangements: Language, Truth, and Poetry in the Later Writings.