Rational meaning : a new foundation for the definition of words and supplementary essays / Laura (Riding) Jackson and Schuyler B. Jackson ; edited by William Harmon ; introduction by Charles Bernstein.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Jackson, Laura (Riding), 1901-1991.

Contributor:

Jackson, Schuyler B.

Harmon, William, 1938-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Jackson, Laura (Riding), 1901-1991--Philosophy.

Jackson, Laura (Riding).

Jackson, Laura (Riding), 1901-1991--Ethics.

Jackson, Laura (Riding), 1901-1991.

Meaning (Philosophy).

Semantics.

Poetics.

Ethics.

Philosophy.

Physical Description:

xxiii, 598 pages ; 25 cm

Other Title:

Rational meaning and supplementary essays

Place of Publication:

Charlottesville : University Press of Virginia, 1997.

Summary:

Existing only in manuscript since the 1940s but enjoying an underground reputation among friends and advocates, this primary document by one of the most original and influential of American poets and thinkers is now being published as Rational Meaning, Laura (Riding) Jackson's testament of the necessity of living for truth. Begun as a dictionary and thesaurus in the 1930s, the work developed into a fundamental reevaluation of language itself. Riding, in close collaboration with her husband, Schuyler B. Jackson, continued this monumental project over the succeeding decades, completing it after his death in 1968. The work, which she regarded as a "Magna Carta of the human mind", has heretofore been seen by only a handful of people. Yet the recent resurgence of interest in Laura Riding (19011991) is nourishing the growth of scholarship and study, in which this culmination of a life's work will play its part as her true significance becomes more widely understood.

At the age of forty, having already produced a substantial and challenging body of poetry. stories, and criticism, Laura (Riding) Jackson renounced poetry and began to concentrate on the discovery of the principles that embed truth and meaning in words. She believed that, if words and meaning could be irrevocably fused, people would become "morally articulate" and thus could never lie. This inquiry, which reaches out to include literature, philosophy, linguistics, and lexicography, would become central to the latter half of her long life and would finally result in Rational Meaning. Included in this edition are essays that Riding wanted published as supplements to Rational Meaning.

At the core of this work which aims torestore the truth of language by arguing that meaning inheres in words, stands the idea that a total renovation of the knowledge of language is needed, not to develop mere verbal sophistication and respectability but fundamentally to reinvigorate the intellectual processes of consciousness. The book reveals the disastrous extent to which language has been "unlearned" and shows how it may be learned again. Rational Meaning will be essential reading, not only for students of literature but flit radical-minded linguists and lexicographers unhappy with the orthodoxies current in their disciplines.

Among Laura (Riding) Jackson's other publications are First Awakenings: The Early Poems of Laura (Riding) Jackson and The Word "Woman" and Other Related Writings. Schuyler B. Jackson's writings have been published in several magazines, including The New Republic and Time.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0813916828

OCLC:

34721705