The Birth of the Modern Mind: Self, Consciousness, and the Invention of the Sonnet

by Paul Oppenheimer

Overview

This revolutionary study presents new facts and an original theory about the origin of the thought and literature that may be considered "modern." Using fifty-one new translations of sonnets from four languages spanning seven centuries, Oppenheimer argues that "modern" thought and literature were born with the invention of the sonnet in 13th-century Italy. In revealing the sonnet as the first lyric form since the fall of the Roman Empire meant not for music or performance but for silent reading, the book demonstrates that the sonnet was the first modern literary form deliberately intended to portray the self in conflict and to explore self-consciousness. The wide-ranging essay of Part I traces the influences of the sonnet, as invented by Giacomo da Lentino, combining historical fact with the history of ideas and literary criticism. Part II illustrates, in bilingual format, the sonnet's growing appeal and variety during the centuries that followed with translations from Italian, German, French, and Spanish. The selection presents sonnets by more than thirty-five poets, among them Dante, Petrarch, Goethe, Rilke, Ronsard, Valéry, Ibarbourou, and Lorca. The concluding section discusses previous scholarship, offers proofs of the sonnet's introspective and silent inventions, and for the first time establishes the source of the form, in Platonic-Pythagorean mathematics.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780195056921
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	07/06/1989
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	5.81(w) x 8.56(h) x 0.96(d)

About the Author

City College, City University of New York

Editorial Reviews

"Oppenheimer's project is very important for anyone interested in poetics. He treats the sonnet not as a genre so much as a mode of thought, which makes his an original study of the sonnet's role in the development of 'the modern mind.' The world he recreates is a complex blend of classical, medieval, and modern understanding. Oppenheimer brilliantly dramatizes the way thought and the context for thought are mutually dependent. He demonstrates by scholarship and the example of a series of fine translations that for the modern mind the sonnet has been both barometric and constitutive. Anyone interested in the Renaissance, the sonnet, comparative literature, or poetics will find this a useful study."—Wyatt Prunty, The Johns Hopkins University

"A learned, well-tempered and fascinating book about the sonnet....A cunningly constructed homage to its ostensible subject."—Chapman

"Recommended for college and university collections treating poetry and literary history."—Choice

From the Publisher