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Understanding McLuhan
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Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso
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08883_Field_TCGG T648.txt
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1996-03-19
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908b
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16 lines
Blank verse was a means to make English roar and
resonate in a way suited to the new extension and
consolidation of the vernacular by typography. In our own
century as the vernacular has met the non-verbal competition
of photo, film, and television, a reverse effect has occurred. It
was strikingly noted by Simone de Beauvoir in The Mandarins :
“What a derisory triumph, to be a great writer of Guatemala or
Honduras! Yesterday he had thought himself the inhabitant of
a privileged part of the world, from which every sound
reverberated through the entire globe; but now he knew that
his words died at his feet.”
What an extraordinary insight this passage affords into
the Gutenberg era and into blank verse! It is not strange that
literary research has failed to reveal the origins of blank verse.
Equally fruitless would be seeking the origins of the long lines