Marjorie Perloff in Conversation

LITERARY STUDIES

What is the business of literary studies in the age of technology and “cultural studies”? Is there still a place for aesthetic valuation and evaluation in the literary field when, in fact, “literature” and its canon have come under fire “after deconstruction”? What could be the relation of poetry to ethics and politics, and how crucial are the latter in the heartland of literary scholarship and reading of literature? How could one positively construe the dynamics between tradition and the avant-garde in literary and artistic production, as well as that between critical and creative writing? These are some of the questions addressed by Marjorie Perloff in the interview with David Jonathan Bayot. This volume of conversation, with an appendix of a comprehensive listing of Perloff’s publications, not only provides a succinct philosophical biography that highlights the wide range of Perloff’s critical thought and interests. It likewise foregrounds her energetic engagements with the field of twentieth- and twenty-first-century poetry, alongside her (re)readings of modern and postmodern philosophy and literary ideas, specifically those pertaining to the work of John Cage and Ludwig Wittgenstein.