Title: Polity and Poetics: Strategic Uses of the Poem in Public Language
Abstract: Arising from an ongoing project of research into the poetic structures and modalities of
contemporary public language, this paper explores those instances where public figures perform or
quote from poems to augment or illustrate the meaning of their remarks. Such a practice must somehow
reflect performers’ understandings of the scope for poetic function in public language, since it is a
conscious strategy in their communications. On the other hand, the sense of a ‘poetic turn’ (a turning
towards poetry and away from not-poetry) reflects a sense that the poetic is somehow alien to regular
or mundane public language. This paper takes up themes and theoretical frameworks covered in several
earlier papers the author has presented to New Directions in the Humanities conferences. Unlike
those earlier papers, it expressly focuses on particular uses of poems within clearly political contexts.
It will show that the public speaker’s consciousness of the poetics of poetry is inseparable from her
or his poetics of public language. Its salient finding is that parliamentary speakers’ use of poems itself
constitutes a poetic formula within the terms of the poetic-rhetorical system of parliamentary debate.
Publication Year: 2010
Publication Date: 2010-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
Access and Citation
Cited By Count: 18
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