Background
Wesling, Donald Truman was born on May 6, 1939 in Buffalo. Son of Truman Albert and Helene Marguerite (Bullinger) Wesling.
(First and last, what moors poetry to society is speech: t...)
First and last, what moors poetry to society is speech: the speech that gets into writing. So why do most political readings of literature neglect this fundamental orientation? Mikhail Bakhtin never forgets the central role of utterance: his philosophy of literary dialogism is based on the idea of fighting out social issues on the ground of the spoken word. Accordingly, conflict-in-language is the theme of this book's introduction as if it is of the whole volume. In this book, Donald Wesling offers an organized reading of Bakhtin's thought, to achieve an account of why Bakhtin scamped poetry; and an account of how a poetics of utterance is a major achievemnt, if we employ in the dialogic reading of poetry many of the powerful terms Bakhtin developed for the novel. After an Introductory chapter that is polemical and pedagogical, this book contains chapters on the social poetics of dialect writing, on the clash of inner and outer speech, on the problem of rhythm, and on broader conflicts of types of discourse in English Romanticism and in the American 1990s. Examples come from England and Scotland, Russia, and the USA. Traveling with and beyond Bakhtin, this book extends to Anglo-American instances of communication theory with Russian origins.
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(Joys and Sorrows of Imaginary Persons is a literary appro...)
Joys and Sorrows of Imaginary Persons is a literary approach to consciousness where Donald Wesling denies that emotion is the scandal or handmaid of reason-rather emotion is the co-creator with reason of human life in the world. Discoveries in neuro-science in the 1990s Decade of the Brain have proven that thinking and feeling are wrapped with each other, and regulate and fulfill each other. Accepting this co-creative equality, we reveal a new role for literature, or a traditional role we've repressed: literature as a set of processes in time where we've thought feeling through stories about the lives of imaginary persons. We need these stories in order to practice emotions for when we return to the world from reading. Donald Wesling argues that to be more accurate in our dealings with stories, we require a grammar of this new recognition, where we build up traditional stylistics by a more careful tracking of emotion-states as these are set into writing. The first half of Joys and Sorrows of Imaginary Persons offers a creative stock-taking of the current state of scholarship on emotion, based on wide reading in several fields. The second half gives three focused studies, rich in examples, of emotion as cognition, as story, and as historical structure of feeling.
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( The Scissors of Meter concerns itself with the ways we ...)
The Scissors of Meter concerns itself with the ways we read poetry. In it, Donald Wesling elaborates his influential theory of grammetrics, which argues that syntax and meter, like a pair of scissors, work together to separate lines of poetry into distinct units of meaning. The first part of the book provides a critique of modern theories of meter and poetic form, which the author believes are limited by errors of logical typing, false analogy with other languages or other arts like music, and ethical assumptions, as well as an inability to be interpretive. Subsequent chapters present the theory of grammetrics and demonstrate its usefulness by applying it to fourteen diverse poems. Wesling demonstrates that the reintroduction of metrics into the humanities allows for grammetrical readings of a variety of poetic styles, such as traditional verse, free verse, and prose poems, from diverse historical eras. "The Scissors of Meter is a seminal study that deserves the close attention of all concerned with poetry. It has all the merits of an outstanding contribution to knowledge: precision, intelligence, confidence, humility, and grace." --Richard D. Cureton, University of Michigan "Donald Wesling's concept of grammetrics is a valuable and sensible concept that should be permanently added to literary studies." --T. V. F. Brogan, Indiana University, Donald Wesling is Professor of English, University of California, San Diego.
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Wesling, Donald Truman was born on May 6, 1939 in Buffalo. Son of Truman Albert and Helene Marguerite (Bullinger) Wesling.
Bachelor, Harvard University, 1960. Doctor of Philosophy, Harvard University, 1965. Bachelor, Cambridge University, England, 1962.
Assistant professor, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, 1965-1967; associate professor, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, 1970-1980; professor, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, since 1981. Lecturer U. Essex, Colchester, England, 1967-1970.
(Joys and Sorrows of Imaginary Persons is a literary appro...)
(First and last, what moors poetry to society is speech: t...)
( The Scissors of Meter concerns itself with the ways we ...)
Member Amnesty International.
Married Judith Elaine Dulinawka, July 28, 1961. Children: Benjamin, Molly, Natasha.