Event Details

As Inter-American frameworks for literary study have gathered attention over the last thirty years, critics who would trace currents of literary exchange across the Americas have run up against a history of mutual disregard, willful misinterpretation, and obstinate silence. This presentation takes silence as a potentially productive point of departure. Looking closely at the poetic tributes that Octavio Paz and John Cage dedicate to each other, Vaughn argues that each uses silence to reevaluate the other's work. He situates this exchange within a wider phenomenon of "silent" art at mid-century.