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Fugitive Lyric: The Rhymes of the Canting Crew

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Daniel Tiffany
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Abstract

This essay examines the correlation between lyric obscurity and lyric communicability—that is, the capacity of lyric poetry to serve, even in the absence of understanding (for certain communities of readers), as a matrix of social and cultural cohesion. The essay takes up this question by examining the contours of a little-known vernacular tradition in poetry and by considering the correspondences, in a limited sense, between slang and poetry. Specifically, the essay examines the permutations of the so-called canting tradition (lyrics written in the jargon of the criminal underworld) and its relation to the dominant poetic tradition.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 120 , Issue 1: Special Topic: On Poetry , January 2005 , pp. 82 - 96
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2005

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