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Article: "The Birthday of Typography": A Response to Celeste Langan.(Critical Essay)
- Article from:
- Studies in Romanticism
- Article date:
- March 22, 2001
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2001 Boston University. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Wordsworth's last quarto, by the way, is bigger
Than any since the birthday of typography,
A drowsy frowzy poem, call'd the `Excursion,'
Writ in a manner which is my aversion.
(Don Juan 3.94)(1)
WHAT MIGHT WELL BE CALLED "APPLIED LANGAN." IN RESPONDING to Understanding Media in 1805: Audiovisual Hallucination in The Lay of the Last Minstrel" I will do little more than place a frame around Langan's brilliant suggestion that "we need to unravel the Lay as an allegorical history of the transformation of poetry by the book--that is, by the print medium" (63). I will play out her meditations on the connection between blank verse and print by ...