Cannon Schmitt
Biographic Data
| ID | 3858317 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Cannon Schmitt |
| GIVEN NAMES | Cannon |
| FAMILY NAME | Schmitt |
| SIGNATURE | SCHMITT C |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Toronto |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 8 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 12 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 8 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2002 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2019 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Peak Freedgood
The allusion in my title, of course, is to Marion King Hubbert's theory of “peak oil,” that moment in history when petroleum production reaches maximum output and then begins to decline. But Peak Freedgood is not Time's fool. It is an ever-fixèd mark: a quality or an intensity rather than a quantity; a stretch of Elaine Freedgood's work in which she is most like herself—when Elaineness production reaches maximum output. Such passages can be encou…
Refamiliarizing Viktor Shklovsky
My title is paradoxical, possibly wrong. Refamiliarizing means reintroducing the once known but since forgotten on the assumption that familiarity fosters understanding. The logic on view inheres in the root word, “familiar”: “known to a person from long or close association.” But Viktor Shklovsky (1893–1984), enfant terrible of the Russian Formalists from the second decade of the twentieth century right to the end of his long life (another parad…
Interpret or Describe
In "Narrate or Describe?" (1936), Georg Lukács codified the aesthetic superiority of narration to description. Current debates around descriptive approaches in literary studies reprise this binary in a critical register, valorizing interpretation over description (or, less frequently, vice versa). Beginning with a reconsideration of Lukács's essay, I propose the inevitable interdependence of interpretation and description. Brief readings of techn…
Denotatively, Technically, Literally
Denotative, literal, and technical language-transparent and lacking in resonance-seems to be the opposite of literary language. A vigorous reading of the former, we argue, should seek to realize its opacity and difficulty, its nonidentity with itself. To do so requires a revised and expanded sense of denotation, a rethinking of reference, the dereification of writing, an appeal to more expansive and heterodox archives, a historicism that forestal…
Technical Maturity in Robert Louis Stevenson
Technical language in novels, rare in itself, is still more rarely interpreted. Focusing on Robert Louis Stevenson's bildungsromans, in this essay I argue that a technical maritime lexicon marks their protagonists' accession to maturity. But that lexicon and the love for the world it attests to and demands also forces a redefinition of what it means to be mature, offering an open, adventurous, never-to-be completed Bildung that refuses the stasis…
Tactics, Groups, Practices
Darwin's Savage Mnemonics
Tracing Charles Darwin's repeated invocations of his initial encounter with the inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego, in this essay I argue that those invocations constitute a "savage mnemonics"-a relation to savagery that clarifies the nature of the work of memory demanded by the effort to grasp evolutionary theory
Introduction
In 1860, John Hollingshead, writing in All the Year Round, complained about the inadequate if not incompetent auditing practices of joint-stock companies. Only when company managers and shareholders are compelled to "call in professional accountants, and resort to an 'independent investigation,'" he argued, do they learn that "real auditing is a necessary part of a business organization, and that it becomes all the more costly the longer it has b…
Denotatively, Technically, Literally
Denotative, literal, and technical language-transparent and lacking in resonance-seems to be the opposite of literary language. A vigorous reading of the former, we argue, should seek to realize its opacity and difficulty, its nonidentity with itself. To do so requires a revised and expanded sense of denotation, a rethinking of reference, the dereification of writing, an appeal to more expansive and heterodox archives, a historicism that forestal…
Interpret or Describe
In "Narrate or Describe?" (1936), Georg Lukács codified the aesthetic superiority of narration to description. Current debates around descriptive approaches in literary studies reprise this binary in a critical register, valorizing interpretation over description (or, less frequently, vice versa). Beginning with a reconsideration of Lukács's essay, I propose the inevitable interdependence of interpretation and description. Brief readings of techn…
Introduction
In 1860, John Hollingshead, writing in All the Year Round, complained about the inadequate if not incompetent auditing practices of joint-stock companies. Only when company managers and shareholders are compelled to "call in professional accountants, and resort to an 'independent investigation,'" he argued, do they learn that "real auditing is a necessary part of a business organization, and that it becomes all the more costly the longer it has b…
Darwin's Savage Mnemonics
Tracing Charles Darwin's repeated invocations of his initial encounter with the inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego, in this essay I argue that those invocations constitute a "savage mnemonics"-a relation to savagery that clarifies the nature of the work of memory demanded by the effort to grasp evolutionary theory
Tactics, Groups, Practices
Denotatively, Technically, Literally
Denotative, literal, and technical language-transparent and lacking in resonance-seems to be the opposite of literary language. A vigorous reading of the former, we argue, should seek to realize its opacity and difficulty, its nonidentity with itself. To do so requires a revised and expanded sense of denotation, a rethinking of reference, the dereification of writing, an appeal to more expansive and heterodox archives, a historicism that forestal…
Technical Maturity in Robert Louis Stevenson
Technical language in novels, rare in itself, is still more rarely interpreted. Focusing on Robert Louis Stevenson's bildungsromans, in this essay I argue that a technical maritime lexicon marks their protagonists' accession to maturity. But that lexicon and the love for the world it attests to and demands also forces a redefinition of what it means to be mature, offering an open, adventurous, never-to-be completed Bildung that refuses the stasis…
Interpret or Describe
In "Narrate or Describe?" (1936), Georg Lukács codified the aesthetic superiority of narration to description. Current debates around descriptive approaches in literary studies reprise this binary in a critical register, valorizing interpretation over description (or, less frequently, vice versa). Beginning with a reconsideration of Lukács's essay, I propose the inevitable interdependence of interpretation and description. Brief readings of techn…
Refamiliarizing Viktor Shklovsky
My title is paradoxical, possibly wrong. Refamiliarizing means reintroducing the once known but since forgotten on the assumption that familiarity fosters understanding. The logic on view inheres in the root word, “familiar”: “known to a person from long or close association.” But Viktor Shklovsky (1893–1984), enfant terrible of the Russian Formalists from the second decade of the twentieth century right to the end of his long life (another parad…
Peak Freedgood
The allusion in my title, of course, is to Marion King Hubbert's theory of “peak oil,” that moment in history when petroleum production reaches maximum output and then begins to decline. But Peak Freedgood is not Time's fool. It is an ever-fixèd mark: a quality or an intensity rather than a quantity; a stretch of Elaine Freedgood's work in which she is most like herself—when Elaineness production reaches maximum output. Such passages can be encou…
History (7 works) · Art (4 works) · History (4 works) · Literature (4 works) · Philosophy (4 works) · Epistemology (3 works) · Law (3 works) · Linguistics (3 works) · Economics (2 works) · History of Science and Natural History (2 works)