Abstract
What is poetic cinema? The term denotes a relation to the literary genre of poetry, but that definition has changed through the centuries. The Greek term poesis could be applied to any work of fiction, including drama and the epic. However, the modern understanding of the term derives primarily from the romantic valorization of lyric poetry. Twentieth-century critics identify poetry with a use of language different from the everyday and stresses qualities of sound or the use of metaphor. Theories of poetic cinema have tended to refer to films which privilege cinematic devices such as editing and composition. Two schools of poetic cinema are discussed: Surrealism and the postwar American avant-garde films.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Bibliography
Abel, Richard. 1988. Photogénie and Company. In French Film Theory and Criticism, vol. I, 95–124. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Abrams, M.H. 1965. Theories of Poetry. In Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, ed. Alan Preminger. Princeton: University of Princeton Press.
Aristotle. 1951. Aristotle’s Theory of Poetry and Fine Art. Trans. with critical notes by S. H. Butcher. New York: Dover Publications.
Brakhage, Stan. 1970. Interview with P. Adams Sitney. In Film Culture Reader, ed. P. Adams Sitney, 201–229. New York: Praeger Publishers.
———. 2001a. Metaphors on Vision. In Essential Brakhage: Selected Writings on Filmmaking by Stan Brakhage, 12–134. New York: Documentext.
———. 2001b. Poetry and Film. In Essential Brakhage: Selected Writings on Filmmaking by Stan Brakhage, 174–191. New York: Documentext.
Breton, Andre. 1969. Manifestos of Surrealism. Trans. Richard Seaver and Hellen Lane. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
———. 1978. As in a Wood. In The Shadow and it Shadow: Surrealist Writings on Cinema, ed. Paul Hammond, 42–45. London: British Film Institute.
Child, Abigail. 2005. This Is Called Moving: A Critical Poetics of Film. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.
Elder, H. Bruce. 1998. The Films of Stan Brakhage in the American Tradition of Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein and Charles Olson. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier Press.
Epstein, Jean. 1921a. La Poésie d’aujourd’hui un nouvel état d’intelligence. Paris: Éditions de la sirène.
———. 1921b. Bonjour Cinema. Paris: Éditions de la sirène.
———. 1988a. Magnification. In French Film Theory and Criticism, ed. Richard Abel, vol. I, 235–241. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
———. 1988b. The Senses i (b). In French Film Theory and Criticism, ed. Richard Abel, vol. I, 241–246. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
———. 2012a. Cinema and Modern Literature [1921]. In Jean Epstein: Critical Essays and New Translations, ed. Sarah Keller and Jason N. Paul, 271–276. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
———. 2012b. The Fluid World of the Screen. In Jean Epstein: Critical Essays and New Translations, ed. Sarah Keller and Jason N. Paul, 383–394. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
———. 2012c. The Delirium of a Machine. In Jean Epstein: Critical Essays and New Translations, ed. Sarah Keller and Jason N. Paul, 372–381. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
Guigon, Emmanuel. 2015. With Hidden Noise. In Joseph Cornell and Surrealism, ed. Matthew Affron and Sylvie Ramond, 48–57. Charlottesville: The Fralin Museum of Art.
Gunning, Tom D.W. 1991. Griffith and the Origins of American Narrative Cinema: The Early Years at Biograph. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Hauptman, Jodi. 1999. Joseph Cornell: Stargazing in the Cinema. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Jakobson, Roman. 1987a. Linguistics and Poetics. In Language in Literature, ed. Krystyna Pomorska and Stephen Rudy, 62–94. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
———. 1987b. The Dominant. In Language in Literature, ed. Krystyna Pomorska and Stephen Rudy, 41–46. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Kane, Daniel. 2009. We Saw the Light: Conversations Between the New American Cinema and Poetry. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press.
Kellerman, Sarah, and Jason N. Paul, eds. 2012. Jean Epstein: Critical Essays and New Translations. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
Kirtland, Katie. 2012. Introduction: Lyrosophie. In Jean Epstein: Critical Essays and New Translations, ed. Sarah Keller and Jason N. Paul, vol. 281. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
Leblanc, Gérard. 1998. La poétique epsteinienne. In Jean Epstein Cinéaste, Poète, Philosophe, ed. Jacques Aumont, 25–38. Paris: Cinematheque français.
Lindsay, Vachel. 1970. The Art of the Moving Picture. New York: Liveright. (originally 1916).
McCabe, Susan. 2005. Cinematic Modernism: Modern Poetry and Film. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Michelson, Annette. 2017a. Poetics and Savage Thought: About Anagram. In On the Eve of the Future: Selected Writings on Film, 79–108. Cambridge: MIT Press.
———. 2017b. Rose Hobart and Monsieur Phot: Early Films from Utopia Parkway. In On the Eve of the Future: Selected Writings on Film, 137–164. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Morra, Anne. 2015. Unforgettable: How Joseph Cornell Wrested Rose Hobart (1936) from East of Borneo (1931). In Joseph Cornell and Surrealism, ed. Matthew Affron and Sylvie Ramond, 122–133. The Fralin Museum of Art.
Pasolini, Pier Paolo. 1988. Cinema and Poetry. In Heretical Empiricism, 167–186. Trans. Ben Lawton and Louise K. Barnett, ed. Louise K. Barnett. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press.
Piotrovskij, A. 1981. Towards a Theory of Cine-Genres. Trans. Anna M. Lawton in Russian Formalist Film Theory, ed. Herbert Eagle. Ann Arbor: Michigan Slavic Publications.
Plato. 1961. The Republic in Plato: Collected Dialogues, ed. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns, 575–844. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Poetry and the Film: A Symposium. 1970. Film Culture Reader, ed. P Adams Sitney, 171–186. New York: Praeger Publishers.
Shklovsky, Victor. 1965. Art as Technique. Russian Formalist Criticism. Trans. and ed. Lee T. Lemon and Marion J. Reis, 3–24. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Sitney, P. Adams. 1974. Visionary Films: The American Avant-Garde. New York: Oxford University Press.
———. 1990. Modernist Montage: The Obscurity of Vision in Cinema and Literature. New York: Columbia University Press.
———. 2015. The Cinema of Poetry. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Solomon, Deborah. 2015. Utopia Parkway: The Life and Work of Joseph Cornell. New York: Other Press.
Steiner, Peter. 1984. Russian Formalism: A Metapoetics. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Wall-Romana, Christophe. 2013a. Cinepoetry: Imaginary Cinema in French Poetry. New York: Fordham University Press.
———. 2013b. Jean Epstein: Corporeal Cinema and Film Philosophy. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Additional information
Humbly dedicated to Annette Michelson, critic and mentor
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Gunning, T. (2019). The Question of Poetic Cinema. In: Carroll, N., Di Summa, L.T., Loht, S. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of the Philosophy of Film and Motion Pictures. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19601-1_24
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19601-1_24
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-19600-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-19601-1
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)