A01=Karl Simms
AD=20201116
Author_Karl Simms
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=DSC
Category=NL-DS
Category=NL-HP
Category=QDHR7
Comparative Literature
Continental Philosophy
COP=United Kingdom
Deconstruction
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
Format=BB
Hermeneutics
HMM=229
IMPN=Rowman & Littlefield International
ISBN13=9781783488667
Language_English
Literary Theory
PA=Not yet available
PD=20180115
POP=London
Price=€100 to €200
PS=Active
PUB=Rowman & Littlefield International
Subject=Literature: History & Criticism
Subject=Philosophy
WMM=152
Product details
- ISBN 9781783488667
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 15 Aug 2025
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
- Publication City/Country: London, GB
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
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Hermetic poetry is poetry which contains aporias, or gaps in reference, which frustrate a conventional search for meaning – their meaning lies in what is 'unsaid'. Many readers find such poetry obscure or difficult, since what is left unsaid is, typically, what the poem is 'about'. Hermetic poems are often, but not necessarily, minimalistic: this book, however, studies hermeticism in poetry, rather than merely assuming that hermetic poetry is a separate, self-contained genre, and so also finds hermetic moments or interludes in longer works. To this end the book is part historical overview, part close textual analysis, of poems which exhibit this phenomenon, from their origins in Renaissance sonnet cycles to contemporary popular songs. In this lucid account, Karl Simms deploys a radical hermeneutics – mediating between the hermeneutics of Gadamer and the deconstruction of Derrida, and between philosophical theory and literary critical practice – to analyse hermetic poetry. In so doing he finds hermetic poetry to be the poetry that most authentically speaks the truth of being to mankind.
Karl Simms is Reader in Hermeneutics at the University of Liverpool. He is the author of Paul Ricoeur (2003), Ricoeur and Lacan (2007), and Hans-Georg Gadamer (2015).
