1. Material Querelle: The Case of Frye and McLuhan.
- Author
-
Cavell, Richard
- Subjects
- *
MATERIALISM in literature , *CRITICISM - Abstract
This essay places current debates about the materiality of discourse into a Canadian context, tracing the querelle over materiality in which Northrop Frye and Marshall McLuhan engaged during a twenty-year span. Whereas Frye espoused the dematerialization of the social in favour of the (re)materialization of the literary as the social achievement of the ideal culture toward which literature gestures, McLuhan sought to formulate a theory of cultural production that emphasized the role of the (apparently) nonmaterial -- the invisibilia of media -- in the creation of social effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 1999