≡ METABOLE ≡

In this post I will focus primarily on a particular feature of literary works -- their physical character, whether audial or visible.

I shall be pointing out why these features are important in a literary point of view and also sketching certain practical means for elucidating these textual features. This last matter -- the central subject of this post -- is also the most difficult. The methodology I shall be discussing requires the scholar to learn to use a new set of scholarly tools.

One final introductory comment. My remarks here apply only to textual works that are instruments of scientific knowledge. The poet's view of text is necessarily very different. To the imagination the materialities of text (oral, written, printed, electronic) are incarnational not vehicular forms. But for the scientist and scholar, the media of expression are primarily conceptual utilities, means rather than ends; to the degree that an expressive form hinders the conceptual goal (whether it be theoretical or practical), to that extent one will seek to evade or supercede it -- perhaps even, in critical times, to develop new intellectual devices. But good poets do not really quarrel with their tools.

As William Morris famously observed, "You can't have art without resistance in the materials".