Books by Shudong Chen

Based closely in spirit upon the most recent development in prosodic studies, Verbal Transformation, Despair, and Hope in The Waste Land attempts another round of ';philosophical investigation'. The book demonstrates how The Waste Land could be read afresh in terms of the hidden verbal transformation that reveals the overlooked performative and collaborative nature of language. This verbal transformation makes The Waste Land flow naturally as truly ';rhythmical creation of [meaningful] beauty' the way Poe defines poetry, especially through what Eliot calls ';auditory imagination' or what Herder calls ';intermediary sensation' that makes the poetry ';the first language' of humanity or ';the dictionary of the soul.' The verbal transformation also serendipitously makes sounds of despair the sounds of hope.

With exemplary cases of original texts from across disciplines and cultures, this is the first book that discusses how reading and understanding could often be surreptitiously and serendipitously influenced by the "invisible" but prosodically indispensable text-enlivened "trivial" function words.