Vol. 27 Núm. 1 (2026)
Artes

Words fail us: The crisis of language

PDF (English) HTML (English)
Alberto Castelli
Hainan University
DOI: https://doi.org/10.59533/Verb.2026.27.1.1

Publicado 21-07-2026

Palabras clave

  • aesthetics,
  • language,
  • modernism,
  • postmodernism,
  • silence

Cómo citar

Castelli, A. (2026). Words fail us: The crisis of language. Verbum – Analecta Neolatina, 27(1), 7–32. https://doi.org/10.59533/Verb.2026.27.1.1

Derechos de autor 2026 Alberto Castelli

Creative Commons License

Esta obra está bajo una licencia internacional Creative Commons Atribución 4.0.

Resumen

Modernity has ushered in an increasing detachment from life; a divorce of sorts is taking place between the individual and the cultural context. Given certain thoughts and feelings, words fail us. It seems that we fail to communicate, to understand, to carve significance beyond the text. I write this manuscript as a feature of contemporary Zeitgeist, as a response to modern uncertainties about humanity. My belief is that the contract between language and reality is broken; thus, we lost our only hope to make contact with reality.

PDF (English) HTML (English)

Citas

  1. Allen, J. S. (1979): Self-Consciousness and the Modernist Temper. The Georgia Review 33(3): 601–20. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41399693
  2. Barthes, R (2006): The Death of the Author. In: H. Adams & L. Searle (eds.) Critical Theory Since Plato. New York: Wadsworth Publishing. 1256–1258.
  3. Beckett, S. (1965): The Unnamable. In: Samuel Beckett. Three Novels. New York: Grove Press.
  4. Beckett, S. (1995): The Capital of the Ruins. In S. E. Gontarski (ed.) The Complete Short Prose, 1929–1989. New York: Grove Press. 275–78.
  5. Beckett, S. (2009): Letter to Axel Kaun, July 9, 1937. In Martha Fehsenfeld and Lois Overbeck (eds.) The Letters of Samuel Beckett, Volume I: 1929–1940. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 518–20.
  6. Berman, M. (1982): All that is solid melts into air: The experience of modernity. New York: Simon and Schuster.
  7. Bradbury, M. (2001): The Modern British Novel: 1878–2001. London: Penguin.
  8. Camus, A. (1956): The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt, trans. Anthony Bower. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
  9. Castelli, A. (2026a): Love, Despair, and Modernism in Literature. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003712725
  10. Castelli, A. (2026b): The Ecstasy of Reproduction. London: Anthem Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.39488116
  11. Daviau, D. G. (1971): Hugo Von Hofmannsthal And The Chandos Letter. Modern Austrian Literature 4(2): 28–44. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24646955
  12. Dear, M. (1998): The postmodern challenge: Reconstructing human geography. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 13(3): 262–274. https://doi.org/10.2307/622990
  13. Derrida, J. (1978): Structure, sign, and play in the discourse of human sciences. In: Writing and Difference. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 278–293.
  14. Derrida, J. et al. (1975): The Purveyor of Truth. Yale French Studies 52: 31–113. https://doi.org/10.2307/2929747
  15. Dosse, F. (1991): History of Structuralism, vol. I, trans. Deborah Glassman. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
  16. Eagleton, T. (1996): Literary Theory. London: Blackwell.
  17. Eliot, T. S. (1953): Selected Prose, ed. John Hayward. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
  18. Eliot, T. S. (1998a): The Waste Land and Other Poems. Signet Classics.
  19. Eliot. T. S. (1998b): The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. In: The Waste Land and Other Poems. New York: Signet Classic.
  20. Esslin, M. (1960): The Theatre of the Absurd. The Tulane Drama Review 4(4): 3–15. https://doi.org/10.2307/1124873
  21. Gay, P. (2008): Modernism: The Lure of Heresy. New York: W.W. Norton.
  22. Halliwell, S. (2018): Justifying the World as an Aesthetic Phenomenon. The Cambridge Classical Journal, 64: 91–112.
  23. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1750270518000064
  24. Harrison, P. (2006): Poststructuralist Theories. In: Aitken, Stuart; Valentine, Gill (eds.) Approaches to Human Geography. London: Sage. 122–135. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781446215432.n10
  25. Hassan, I. (1971): The Dismemberment of Orpheus: Toward a Postmodern Literature. New York: Oxford University Press.
  26. Heidegger, M. (1968): An Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. Ralph Manheim. New York: Yale University Press.
  27. Hofmannsthal, H. (1995): Lettera di Lord Chandos, trans. Marco Rispoli. Milano: Rizzoli.
  28. Hutchinson, B. (2011): Modernism and Style. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230343207
  29. Ionesco, E. (1959): The Avant-Garde Theatre. World Theatre VIII(3): 171–202.
  30. Ionesco, E. (1960): The Tragedy of Language How an English Primer Became My First Play. The Tulane Drama Review 4(3):10–13. https://doi.org/10.2307/1124841
  31. Johnson, B. (1988): The Frame of Reference: Poe, Lacan, Derrida. In The Purloined Poe. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
  32. Kafka, F. (1958): Briefe 1902–1924. Frankfurt: Fischer.
  33. Kafka, F. (1970): Letters to Friends, Family and Editors 1910–1923, trans. Richard Winston, and Clara Winston. London: Schocken Books.
  34. Kafka, F. (1972): The Metamorphosis, trans. Stanley Corngold. New York: Bantam Books.
  35. Kafka, F. (2008): Dearest Father, trans. Hannah and Richard Stokes. London: Oneworld Classics.
  36. Kierkegaard, S. (1954): Fear and Trembling and The Sickness unto Death, trans. Walter Lowrie. Garden City: Doubleday & Company.
  37. Lyotard, J.-F. (1984): The postmodern condition: A report on knowledge, trans. G. Bennington & B. Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
  38. Mallarmé, S. (1982): Selected Poetry and Prose. Mary Ann Caws (ed.) New York: New Directions.
  39. Moretti, F. (1987): The way of the world: the Bildungsroman in European culture, trans. Albert Sbragia. London: Verso.
  40. Nietzsche, F. (1968): The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R.J. Hollingdale. New York: Vintage Books.
  41. Nietzsche, F. (1974): The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage Books.
  42. Nietzsche, F. (1999): The Birth of Tragedy, trans. Ronald Speirs. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  43. Payne, M. (1993): Reading theory: An introduction to Lacan, Derrida, and Kristeva. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
  44. Perloff, M. (2000): The Poetics of Indeterminacy: Rimbaud to Cage. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
  45. Rajan, B. (1966): The Overwhelming Question. In: A. Tate (ed.) T. S. Eliot: The Man and His Work. New York: Delacorte Press. 364–381.
  46. Raulet, G. (1983): Structuralism and Post-Structuralism: An Interview with Michel Foucault. Telos 55: 195–211. https://doi.org/10.3817/0383055195
  47. Rilke, R. M. (1962): Letters to a Young Poet, trans. M. D. Herter Norton. New York: Norton & Company.
  48. Sartre, J.-P. (1964): Nausea, trans, by Lloyd Alexander. New York: New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1964.
  49. Saussure, F. de (1959): Course in General Linguistics, trans. Wade Baskin. New York: Philosophical Library.
  50. Weller, S. (2018): Language and Negativity in European Modernism. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108566001
  51. Woolf, V. (1969): Between the Acts. London: Hogarth Press.
  52. Wordsworth, W. (2006): Preface to the Lyrical Ballads. In: H. Adams & L. Searle (eds.) Critical Theory Since Plato. New York: Wadsworth Publishing. 482–492.
  53. Yeats, W. (1908): Collected Works in Verse and Prose of William Butler Yeats. London: Chapman & Hall.