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Week 7 February 27, 2020

Survey of Choices as Introduction to the Major Paper Assignment: A Material Text Biography

For each text, consider, what theory of textuality, what idea of language, writing, and reading is implied? What kind of text technology did the writer use to create the text? How does it enlist materiality in the making of its meaning? What text technologies does it reference? How does it reflect on or otherwise signal its own materiality? How do words interact with matter to create meaning? What is the media ecology in which it first circulated? How can a media archaeology approach elucidate the biography of this text? How would the meaning change if it was remediated? 

George Bornstein “How to Read a Page” PDF in our class google drive folder. 

Jerome McGann “Introduction” (3-18) from The Textual Condition (Princeton, 1991) PDF in our class google drive folder.  

  1. WB Yeats “The Circus Animals’ Desertion” (1933)
  2. Seamus Heaney “Digging”
  3. Bruce Nauman “None Sing Neon Sign” and Gertrude Stein “Five Words in a Line”
  4. Percy Bysshe Shelley “Ozymandius” (leads into discussions of cuineform,Sumerian and Egyptian glyphs and forward into all manner of stone ingraving practices)
  5. Steve McCaffery excerpt from Carnival (a few panels) or Charles Olson Maximus. 
  6. Brian Kim Stefans “The Dreamlife of Letters” 
  7. Eduardo Kak “Biopoetry” and Christan Bok “The Great Order of the Universe” -if you like this explore Xenotext for your paper https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/52727/the-great-order-of-the-universe 
  8. Samuel Beckett “Krapp’s Last Tape” PDF and watch performed by Patrick Magee https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otpEwEVFKLc (33 minutes)
  9. Franz Kafka “In the Penal Colony” (23 pages)
  10. W.H. Auden “The Shield of Achilles” https://poets.org/poem/shield-achilles
  11. Alfred Lord Tennyson “The Lady of Shalott” (1832) https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45359/the-lady-of-shalott-1832 *
  12. Amaranth Borsuk & Brad Bouse. Between Page and Screen *
  13. Shelley Jackson Patchwork Girl *
  14. Edgar Allen Poe “The Purloined Letter” https://poestories.com/read/purloined or access at https://www.google.com/search?q=Edgar+Allen+Poe+%E2%80%9CThe+Purloined+Letter%E2%80%9D&oq=Edgar+Allen+Poe+%E2%80%9CThe+Purloined+Letter%E2%80%9D&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l7.429j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 or at Project Gutenberg https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2148/2148-h/2148-h.htm 
  15. Juliet Davis “Pieces of Herself” http://collection.eliterature.org/2/works/davis_pieces_of_herself.html
  16. Micha Cardinås Redshift & PortalMetal https://micharoja.itch.io/redshift-and-portalmetal
  17. Jonathan Cayley “The Listeners” https://programmatology.shadoof.net/?thelisteners