Intermediality and Narrative Identity in Paul Auster’s Oeuvre (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Retranslation of Intertextuality: Paul Auster's New York Trilogy
İstanbul Üniversitesi Çeviribilim Dergisi, 2023
Intertextuality is a concept that has emerged in postmodernism and since become an integral part of postmodern theory. It refers to how each text is shaped by its relationship with other texts, as well as to the cultural and historical contexts in which it was produced. Postmodernism questions the notion that a text has a singular, objective meaning, suggesting that each text can be interpreted in multiple ways. This study approaches the translation of intertextuality by examining the intertextual connections in the first and retranslations. The corpus of this study is composed of the famous works of Paul Auster, an American postmodernist writer, namely "City of Glass," "Ghosts," and "The Locked Room" known as the "New York Trilogy". This study aims to analyze the dynamics of retranslation of postmodern literature to present a different understanding of retranslation contrary to the retranslation hypothesis asserted by Berman (1990), Bensimon (1990), and Gambier (1994) as it seems outdated. As postmodernism is a contemporary movement of literature, the first and retranslations of the prevalent narrative techniques require a different understanding from the traditional point of view. This different understanding is related to contemporary approaches to retranslation asserted by Kaisa Koskinen, Outi Paloposki, Tahir Gürçağlar, and Siobhan Brownlie. In the comparative analysis of the examples taken from the "New York Trilogy," the methodology of Hatim and Mason (2001) is utilized.
2020
This creative practice research project proposes that books may act as performative artefacts, and simultaneously discovers the narrative potential of fragmented fictional texts. The hybrid processes used during this research incorporate artistic practice and fiction writing. Throughout the duration of this project, there have been presentations of work across different modes – print publication, live art/performance, conference presentations, articles/essays, workshops, installations and readings. The most significant outcomes of the project are a small collection of physically transformed books, which stand as hybrid art/fiction artefacts. The reader/viewer is encouraged to performatively engage with the books by exploring what is visible, partially visible, and concealed. To spend time touching and reading words, whispers, silence
History and Poetics of Intertextuality
2008
In his book History and Poetics of Intertextuality Marko Juvan argues that intertextuality is constitutive of all textuality and that it may be foregrounded in literary works, genres, or styles such as parody. Juvan surveys the field in order to ground the poetics of intertextuality in the history of its idea and presents its development as general intertextuality (from Kristeva to New Historicism) and citationality (from Genette’s late structuralism to the present text theory). He also discusses the concept’s precursors since Antiquity (imitatio, influence, etc.). In modern times the concept emerged in the 1960s from a radical theory of writing. Based in Derrida’s deconstruction, the notion and practice of intertextuality implied a relational and transformative character of identity, meaning, subject, text, and socio-historical reality. In consequence, the notion gained currency in postmodernist aesthetics while in literary studies it has been transformed from its transgressive content into a detailed descriptive methodology. However, by bringing citationality into focus, practices of intertextuality suggest that literature is an autopoetic system, living on cultural memory, and interacting with other social discourses. The poetics of intertextuality Juvan proposes in his book is based mainly on semiotics and it elucidates factors determining the socio-historically elusive border between general intertextuality and citationality (encyclopaedic literary competence, paratext, etc.). In his analysis Juvan explores modes of intertextual representation. He stresses that in intertextuality pre-texts evoked or re-written in post-texts figure as interpretants of the latter and vice versa. Juvan’s analysis suggests that intertextual derivations and references have become common in literary culture as citational figures and genres.
Visualizing fiction, verbalizing art, or from intermediation to transculturation
World literature studies, 2015
Preliminary remarks Comparative literature as a typical 19 th-century positivist and Eurocentric discipline was based on specific analytical operations such as comparison, looking for similarities rather than differences, and rigid disciplinary and geo-local divisions. It operated in terms of influences, borrowings, typological affinities and constellation of national literatures within the restricted core-European idea of world literature and habitually sought Oriental and African motifs in Western fiction and never the other way round, because it was grounded in the modern human taxonomy constructing a negative image of the other in order to affirm the same. 1 Today the previous division into the West and the rest is dysfunctional at best, as serious and ironic borrowings and influences work both ways-which does not mean that the structural asymmetries are gone. Western and non-Western theorists have come up with different definitions for this complex and chaotic contemporary situation. French aesthetician Nicolas Bourriaud addresses this tendency under the name of altermodern aesthetics, which has appropriated and politically neutered the concepts of transit and creolization borrowed from the postcolonial genealogy of knowledge (2009b). Bourriaud claims that both postmodernism and multiculturalism are now passé and we are living in a homogenous global culture of mixed and lost origins, marked by intensified and simplified contacts, journeys and migrations, translations and subtitles, a culture from which any artist regardless of his or her genealogy can borrow techniques and devices. The main motif of altermodernity then is wandering in time, space and various media forms (2005). Arguing with Bourriaud and other Western neo-universalizing positions that ignore and erase the continuing structural inequalities and lingering Western canonical dominance, decolonial artists, theorists and activists have come up with a different transmodern (in the sense of overcoming modernity) idea of aesthesis instead, as opposed to the Western-tailored aesthetics (Estéticas Decoloniales 2010, Mignolo 2013, Tlostanova 2013). This ongoing debate demonstrates the way the old Orientalism/Occidentalism divisions are being reformulated in today's glocalized culture. The two important contemporary tendencies in the interaction of art and fiction can be defined as transculturation and intermediation, marked by specific forms of
Dynamics of Fictional Positionings in Paul Auster’s Travels in the Scriptorium
Paul Auster blends stories with stories, lives with lives, and reality with fiction, and, finally, presents a full sense of the self trapped in a net of uncertainties. In this article, we examine the fictional positioning of Auster's protagonist in Travels in the Scriptorium (2006Scriptorium ( /2007 to identify the role of storytelling in authoring one's self. Based on the newly developed conceptual framework of "virtual fictional and factual positioning," we elaborate on the possible dialogical coalition of the author's positions as "I-as-artist/ novelist" and "I-as-the-hero-of-my-story," among other positions. The findings of this research indicated that the art of storytelling for Mr Blank becomes a means of survival. In his creative absorption in the fictional and factual positionings and experiencing the life of his hero, Mr Blank as a motivated artist/novelist could develop a dialogical self and reconstitute a more porous sense of his self and identity.
Language of Intermediality: Merging Arts, Cultures and Literature
Language of Intermediality: Merging Arts, Cultures and Literature, 2023
The paper demonstrates through specific examples the peculiarities of intermedial 'language' employed by E.M. Forster to enlarge the contextual field of his novel Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905). Thus, through the application of the close reading technique and hermeneutical method, it covers the specificity of pictorial depictions and theatrical medium, as well as intermedial references integrated into the canvas of the literary artefact to extend its contextual field, draw borders between cultures, deepen the conflicts. It concludes that the writer applies specific intermedial language patterns and frameworks to extend the context of the plot and deepen the conflicts and oppositions between English and Italian, own and strange, old and new.
International Journal of Literature and Arts, 2023
The aim of the paper is to discuss the operational concepts and theory of intertextuality as a postmodern theory.Postmodern theory is a theory that emerged in the second half of the 1960s. This theory was born as a reaction to modernity and its ideals. By the 1970s, postmodern aesthetics, on which postmodern theory was based, began to be felt in almost every field of art, from architecture to painting, from literature to cinema. Intertextuality seems such a useful term because it foregrounds notions of relationality, interconnectedness, and interdependence in modern cultural life. In the Postmodern epoch, theorists often claim, it is not possible any longer to speak of originality or the uniqueness of the artistic object, be it a painting or novel, since every artistic object is so clearly assembled from bits and pieces of already existent art. An author or poet can use intertextuality deliberately for a variety of reasons. They would probably choose different ways of highlighting intertextuality depending on their intention. They may use references directly or indirectly. They might use a reference to create additional layers of meaning or make a point or place their work within a particular framework. A writer could also use a reference to create humour, highlight an inspiration or even create a reinterpretation of an existing work. The reasons and ways to use intertextuality are so varied that it is worth looking at each example to establish why and how the method was used.
Again and Always: Intertextuality outside of Postmodernism
Interlitteraria, 2022
Intertextuality became one of the most popular and important terms in the culture of the 20 th century. It is usually considered in connection with postmodernism and its ironic nature. Contemporary writing is still intertextual, though far from being postmodern. Moreover, even some medieval texts appear to operate intertextual tools systematically. The article presents examples of intertextuality in different novels from both the prepostmodern and postpostmodern worlds, and searches for a possible explanation for this phenomenon through methodical solutions that would improve our understanding of intertextuality in the frame of literature analysis. It shows that different features of intertextual writing should be carefully considered in the frame of postpostmodern literature and questions the accuracy of our approach to discussing cultural process.