Talk by John Holloway
Modern literary criticism, the speaker suggests, in its concern with the detailed analysis of individual passages and with those elements that can be discussed under the heads of 'imagery' or ' theme,' has overlooked a whole dimension of literature. Any successful piece of writing, he says, is essentially a sequence and structure in time, and he proposes an approach in terms of a work's ' path ' or ' trajectory.'
This talk was occasioned by Donald Davie 's recent study of the role of syntax in poetry, Articulate Energy.