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Le Ton Beau De Marot: In Praise Of The Music Of Language
by Hofstadter, Douglas R
- Used
- Fine
- Paperback
- Condition
- Fine
- ISBN 10
- 0465086454
- ISBN 13
- 9780465086450
- Seller
-
Amherst, Nova Scotia, Canada
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
New York: Basic Books. Fine. 1998. Softcover. 0465086454 . Tight unmarked book in crisp covers with flaps; 1.73 x 9.21 x 7.4 Inches; 832 pages; Lost in an artthe art of translation. Thus, in an elegant anagram (translation = lost in an art) , Pulitzer Prize-winning author and pioneering cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstadter hints at what led him to pen a deep personal homage to the witty sixteenth-century French poet Clément Marot. Le ton beau de Marot literally means The sweet tone of Marot, but to a French ear it suggests Le tombeau de Marotthat is, The tomb of Marot. That double entendre foreshadows the linguistic exuberance of this book, which was sparked a decade ago when Hofstadter, under the spell of an exquisite French miniature by Marot, got hooked on the challenge of recreating both its sweet message and its tight rhymes in Englishjumping through two tough hoops at once. In the next few years, he not only did many of his own translations of Marot's poem, but also enlisted friends, students, colleagues, family, noted poets, and translatorseven three state-of-the-art translation programs! to try their hand at this subtle challenge. The rich harvest is represented here by 88 wildly diverse variations on Marot's little theme. Yet this barely scratches the surface of Le Ton beau de Marot, for small groups of these poems alternate with chapters that run all over the map of language and thought. Not merely a set of translations of one poem, Le Ton beau de Marot is an autobiographical essay, a love letter to the French language, a series of musings on life, loss, and death, a sweet bouquet of stirring poetrybut most of all, it celebrates the limitless creativity fired by a passion for the music of words. Dozens of literary themes and creations are woven into the picture, including Pushkin's Eugene Onegin, Dante's Inferno, Salinger's Catcher in the Rye, Villon's Ballades, Nabokov's essays, Georges Perec's La Disparition, Vikram Seth's Golden Gate, Horace's odes, and more. Rife with stunning form-content interplay, crammed with creative linguistic experiments yet always crystal-clear, this book is meant not only for lovers of literature, but also for people who wish to be brought into contact with current ideas about how creativity works, and who wish to see how today's computational models of language and thought stack up next to the human mind. Le Ton beau de Marot is a sparkling, personal, and poetic exploration aimed at both the literary and the scientific world, and is sure to provoke great excitement and heated controversy among poets and translators, critics and writers, and those involved in the study of creativity and its elusive wellsprings. Read less .
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Details
- Bookseller
- B-Line Books (CA)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 62653
- Title
- Le Ton Beau De Marot: In Praise Of The Music Of Language
- Author
- Hofstadter, Douglas R
- Format/Binding
- Softcover
- Book Condition
- Used - Fine
- Binding
- Paperback
- ISBN 10
- 0465086454
- ISBN 13
- 9780465086450
- Publisher
- Basic Books
- Place of Publication
- New York
- Date Published
- 1998
- Keywords
- 0465086454
- Bookseller catalogs
- Language/Writing;
Terms of Sale
B-Line Books
Return: If the book is not as described, we will refund cost of book and shipping. If for any reason the buyer does not want the book, even though it is as described, we will offer a refund minus shipping both ways (within 14 days).
About the Seller
B-Line Books
Biblio member since 2003
Amherst, Nova Scotia
About B-Line Books
B-Line Books is an internet business operating from my large home in Amherst, Nova Scotia. I am a retired English teacher with a lifetime of gathered books for sale. Presently, about 24,000 books in 90 categories are listed with an emphasis in the humanities. I look for books I am interested in myself, and feel that most of the inventory is of high quality. See for yourself.
Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- Tight
- Used to mean that the binding of a book has not been overly loosened by frequent use.
- Fine
- A book in fine condition exhibits no flaws. A fine condition book closely approaches As New condition, but may lack the...
- Miniature
- A book that is less then 3 inches in width and ...
- Crisp
- A term often used to indicate a book's new-like condition. Indicates that the hinges are not loosened. A book described as crisp...