Critical Rhythm

"What does it mean, and what has it meant historically, to participate in verse's rhythmic patternings? This volume, with incandescent and defamiliarizing rhythms of its own, takes up rhythm as the central, ever-fugitive term in debates over sound and sense, the visible and the audible, the history of prosodic discourses, and methodological approaches to reading and performance. Reaching beyond the metrical constraints of foot prosody to powers of rhythm generally left underexplored in Anglo-American criticism, the formidable array of scholars gathered here opens up resonant inquiries into empirical, historical, ontological, phenomenological, and allegorical dimensions of rhythm in English-language verse of the past two centuries." -- Max Cavitch, University of Pennsylvania

Ben Glaser (Edited By) Ben Glaser is Assistant Professor of English at Yale University. Jonathan Culler (Edited By) Jonathan Culler is Class of 1916 Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Cornell University and the author of numerous books on literary theory, including Structuralist Poetics, On Deconstruction, and Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction. His most recent book is Theory of the Lyric (Harvard, 2015).

Introduction Ben Glaser, 1 Rhythms Critiques Why Rhythm? Jonathan Culler, 21 What Is Called Rhythm? David Nowell Smith, 40 Sordellos Pristine Pulpiness Simon Jarvis, 60 Body, Throng, Race The Cadence of Consent: Francis Barton Gummere, Lyric Rhythm, and White Poetics Virginia Jackson, 87 Contagious Rhythm: Verse as a Technique of the Body Haun Saussy, 106 Constructing Walt Whitman: Literary History and Histories of Rhythm Erin Kappeler, 128 Beat and Count The Rhythms of the English Dolnik Derek Attridge, 153 How to Find Rhythm on a Piece of Paper Thomas Cable, 174 Picturing Rhythm Meredith Martin, 197 Fictions of Rhythm Beyond Meaning: Differing Fates of Some Modernist Poets Investments of Belief in Sounds Natalie Gerber, 223 Sapphic Stanzas: How Can We Read the Rhythm? Yopie Prins 247 Rhythm and Affect in Christabel Ewan Jones, 274 Acknowledgments 297 List of Contributors 299 Index 303