The Dialect of the Tribe: Speech and Community in Modern Fiction

by Margery Sabin

Overview

The bold careers of Henry James, D.H. Lawrence, James Joyce, and Samuel Beckett—writers with profoundly unsettled cultural identities—spark Margery Sabin's investigation of values carried through inherited forms of speech. The Dialect of the Tribe offers fresh readings of such great novels as The Golden Bowl, Women in Love, Ulysses, and the Beckett trilogy which illustrate how complex attitudes toward the speech forms of language inform the most varied social, psychological, and aesthetic structures in modern fiction. Sabin explores the powerful tension in these writers between appreciation for the resources of common speech in English and contrary longings for a freedom associated with abstraction, system, and foreign or private language. Her own critical procedures transcend restrictive and reductive polarizations, as she lucidly analyzes the biases of both the Anglo-American critical tradition and the challenge to that tradition in French literary theory and practice. Written in a jargon-free, accessible style, The Dialect of the Tribe argues that the ambiguous cultural positions of the great modern novelists in English emerge as a major source of their strength—the rich traditions of the English language give enlivening power to writers also remarkable for their drive toward radical independence and skepticism.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780195041538
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	03/05/1987
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	5.81(w) x 8.56(h) x 0.94(d)

About the Author

Wellesley College

Table of Contents

	Introduction	3
1	The Life of English Idiom, the Laws of French Cliche	10
	English and French Traditions	10
	The Life of Idiom in Joyce and Lawrence	25
2	The Community of Intelligence and the Avant-Garde	43
3	Competition of Intelligence in The Golden Bowl	65
	Charlotte's Risk	65
	Maggie's Method	82
4	Constructing Character: Speech and Will in Women in Love	106
5	Near and Far Things in Lawrence's Writing of the Twenties	139
	The Spectacle of Reality: Australia, the Sea, and Sardinia	139
	St. Mawr: Spectacle and Symbol	162
6	Postures and Impostures of English in Ulysses	179
	Dramatic Language: "Every word is so deep"	179
	The Comedy of Psychic Depth: "You ought to see yourself"	210
	The Shelter from Fact in "Eumaeus"	224
7	Signs of Life and Death in Beckett's Trilogy	241
	Le bon sens and Horse-Sense	241
	Molloy: l'unijambiste	252
	Throes and Calm in Malone meurt / Malone Dies	264
	Le type respiratoire / The Respiratory Type: L'Innommable / The Unnamable	278
	Notes	292
	Index	307

Editorial Reviews

"[An] often brilliant study."—D.H. Lawrence Review

"Margery Sabin is a critic of rare lucidity and brilliance, and The Dialect of the Tribe should redirect and enrich our reading of modern fiction."—Richard Poirier, Rutgers University

"Splendid insights on every page....Sabin in a sensitive, thoughtful critic...Brilliant."—The D.H. Lawrence

"The book is impressive, the work of a formidable critic."—James H. Maddox, George Washington University

"An intelligent study of language play in the composition and detection of attitude and harmony or tension within a literary work....Offers a rich reward of fresh intellectual exploration."—Choice

From the Publisher