When Words Lose Their Meaning: Constitutions and Reconstitutions of Language, Character, and Community

by James Boyd White

Book Overview

Through fresh readings of texts ranging from Homer's Iliad, Swift's Tale of a Tub, and Austen's Emma through the United States Constitution and McCulloch v. Maryland, James Boyd White examines the relationship between an individual mind and its language and culture as well as the "textual community" established between writer and audience. These striking textual analyses develop a rhetoric--a "way of reading" that can be...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0226895025
• ISBN13: 9780226895024
• Release Date: October 1985
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Length: 394 Pages
• Weight: 1.17 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.0" x 9.0"