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dc.contributor.authorFarmer, Gareth
dc.date.accessioned2020-07-03T08:16:14Z
dc.date.available2020-07-03T08:16:14Z
dc.date.issued2019-06-21
dc.identifier.citationFarmer G (2019) 'Languishing in 'rent-a-Marx/Margaret rhetoric': the phono-politics of Douglas Oliver's The Infant and the Pearl', Textual Practice, 34 (8), pp.1227-1248.en_US
dc.identifier.issn0950-236X
dc.identifier.doi10.1080/0950236X.2019.1627403
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10547/624129
dc.description.abstractIn The Infant and the Pearl (1985), the poet Douglas Oliver draws on the alliterative and allegorical features of mediaeval verse to create a dream-like satire of Britain under Margaret Thatcher. Once a central feature of most Old English poetry, since Chaucer, alliteration and rhyme have often been used in the service of parody and satire. But, how do complex sound-structures aid satire and generate political content? Drawing on Oliver’s poetic and critical work, as well as contemporary research into prosody and politics, this article argues that the sound patterning in The Infant and the Pearl creates a caricatured version of Thatcher’s ‘politically unsound’ Britain. Oliver uses sonic patterns to create an artificial parody of the bathetic ‘uncommon rhetoric’ of consumerism and the ‘false pearls’ of the political classes. Far from being an accessory to meaning, the sound structures are vehicles for parodying the operations of the rhetoric of the ‘unreal’ apparent in social and political discourse. Oliver envisages sound patterning – as performed with every private and public reading – as offering recalibrations of people’s experience of language and the world, as well as leading to glimpses of a communality beyond political and social division.en_US
dc.language.isoenen_US
dc.publisherTaylor and Francisen_US
dc.relation.urlhttps://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0950236X.2019.1627403en_US
dc.rightsGreen - can archive pre-print and post-print or publisher's version/PDF
dc.subjectDouglas Oliveren_US
dc.titleLanguishing in 'rent-a-Marx/Margaret rhetoric': the phono-politics of Douglas Oliver's The Infant and the Pearlen_US
dc.typeArticleen_US
dc.identifier.eissn1470-1308
dc.contributor.departmentUniversity of Bedfordshireen_US
dc.identifier.journalTextual Practiceen_US
dc.date.updated2020-07-03T08:14:01Z
dc.description.noteover 3m from publication
refterms.dateFOA2020-12-02T09:32:50Z


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