...philological study of language as parole? Merely to state the issue in those terms is to recall Flaubert's "book about nothing, a book dependent on nothing external,...support, a book which would have almost no subject. . . .";7 it is also to recall the coincidental efforts of Clive Bell in 1913 (in his book Art) to isolate...

...London 1932 ED Hirsch Jr, Validity in Interpretation. New Haven and London 1967 11 'THE TEXT ITSELF' What I should like to write is a book about nothing,...nothing external, which would be held together by the internal strength of its style. . . . The finest works are those that contain the least matter; the...

...bemused frustration with ruthlessly interpretative criticism. He mentions Flaubert's wish to write "a book about nothing, a book dependent on nothing...would be held together by the strength of its style," and this echoes Simpson's impatience with critics like Elder Olson who believe that poems have numerous...

...imaginary and secret purpose of written speech. Hence that other famous declaration in the same letter: "What seems beautiful to me, what I should like to...about nothing, a book dependent on nothing external, held together by the internal force of its style, just as the earth is suspended in air without external...

...dramatic polarization of energies; little room for subtlety, ambiguity, neutrality. . . . Flaubert, 1852: "What seems beautiful to me, what I should like to write, is a book about nothing, a book dependent upon nothing external, which would be held together by the strength of its style. . . . From the standpoint...

...the world, catches perfectly the essentialism of style in literature. He wanted to write, he said, "a book about nothing, a book dependent on nothing...would be held together by the strength of its style." Craft and style were most often grounded in psychology, being said to be the natural language of the...

...Flaubert's entire project as he himself summarizes it in his famous statement on "a book about nothing": What seems beautiful to me, what I should like to...nothing external, which would be held together by the internal strength of its style, just as the earth, suspended in the void, depends on nothing external...

...desire to be free of the world', so that the poem is a 'closed' form, analogous to Flaubert's imaginary book about nothing, a book dependent on nothing external,...would be held together by the strength of its style ... a book which would have almost no subject, or at least in which the subject would be almost invisible.9...

...thing in itself than a thousand coordinated ways to hold the forces of modernization at a distance: What seems beautiful to me, what I should like to...nothing external, which would be held together by the internal strength of its style, just as the earth, suspended in the void, depends on nothing external...

...novel that would be severed from reality altogether and would hover self-suspended above the world: a book about nothing, a book dependent on nothing...for its support, a book which would have almost no support.8 Thus La Tentation de St Gustave, a temptation that must have at times seemed irresistable;...