Keywords
tropes
antiquity
early novel
contemporary poetry.
Puntuación
"trope"
antigüedad
"early novel"
poesía contemporánea
Punctuation
tropes
antiquity
early novel
contemporary poetry
How to Cite
Abstract
Most literary critics have long ignored punctuation in literary texts. And yet punctuation is a vital part of the creative process. How individual writers use punctuation can tell us as much about their creative sensibilities as their use of metaphor, metonymy, or any other literary trope. This artic1e attempts to review the use of the "trepe" of punctuation in the early English novel and show that many of the rules that today guide student compositions were completely unknown throughout the Renaissance as well as the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. Much the same can be said for contemporary American poetry, where poets of all shapes and sizes matter-of-factly and consciously write comma splices, fragments, and run-on sentences for poetic effect. This artic1e reviews the use of punctuation in antiquity and then explores the rather remarkable creative use, or perhaps creative misuse, of punctuation, which makes up an integral part of so much of the literature that we read and value.
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