Radical Historiography

This chapter argues that the currency of Higden’s Polychronicon in later medieval England attests to the profound historiographical investments of a spectrum of polemicists, preachers, translators, and poets. English writers discovered in the Polychronicon a master genre for broad and diverse political engagement and an innovative form with which to theorize a range of issues, especially those pertaining to the institutional Church. The hot topics that modern scholars tend to associate with Wycliffism were given a discursive heft and complexity through the literary appropriation of Higden’s universal history, as we see in Trevisa’s commentary on the Polychronicon, as well as in Langland’s Piers Plowman. In this view, radical historiography leads to radical ecclesiology when compendious genres become loci for the political imaginary.

The Vow to Testify: On the Gulag and Intertextual Economy of Literature (Karlo Štajner, Varlam Shalamov, Danilo Kiš)

The Vow to Testify: On the Gulag and Intertextual Economy of Literature (Karlo Štajner, Varlam Shalamov, Danilo Kiš)Departing from the “aesthetics of unrepresentability” of testimonial literature and implied “belatedness and collapse of witnessing” (G. Agamben, Sh. Felman, D. Laub), the paper engages in the economic foundations of literature through analysis of symbolic meanings of economic metaphors in Štajner’s memoirs Seven Thousand Days in Siberia and Shalamov’s story Lend-Lease, and through illuminating different aspects of intertextual and intercultural exchange between Štajner’s memoirs and Kiš’s “pseudo-factual” fiction A Tomb for Boris Davidovich. What is testimony and can it be – considering the nature of the one who testifies and the language in which he testifies – “valid,” “valuable,” “useful,” to use the language of economy? Can we think about Kiš’s literary appropriation of Štajner’s memoirs as an outlet for reclaiming the voice not only of Štajner, but also of Kiš’s father, who perished in Auschwitz? What are the uses of economic hypothesis in literary studies? Zavjet svjedočenja: o Gulagu i intertekstualnoj ekonomiji književnosti (Karlo Štajner, Varlam Šalamov, Danilo Kiš)Polazeći od “estetike neizrecivosti” književnosti svjedočenja te implicirane “zakašnjelosti i kolapsa svjedočenja” (G. Agamben, Sh. Felman, D. Laub), rad prilazi složenoj problematici ekonomskih temelja književnosti kroz analizu simboličkog značenja ekonomskih metafora u Štajnerovim memoarima 7000 dana u Sibiru i Šalamovljevoj znamenitoj priči Po Lend-Leasu te kroz intertekstualni i interkulturni upis Štajnerovih memoara u Kiševu “pseudočinjeničnu” fikciju u djelu Grobnica za Borisa Davidoviča. Što je svjedočenje i može li ono biti – s obzirom na status svjedoka kao subjekta izricanja i jezik na kojem svjedoči – “valjano” i “korisno” (iskoristimo li jezik ekonomije)? Može li se o Kiševoj aproprijaciji Štajnerovih memoara razmišljati kao o jednom od načina vraćanja prava glasa ne samo Štajneru, nego i Kiševom preminulom ocu, stradalom u Auschwitzu? U čemu je epistemološka korist ekonomskih analiza u proučavanju književnosti? Przysięga świadectwa: O gułagu i intertekstualnej ekonomii literatury (Karlo Štajner, Warlam Szałamow, Danilo Kiš)Wychodząc naprzeciw koncepcjom mówiącym o „poetyce niewyrażalności” literackich świadectw oraz założeniu o „spóźnieniu i upadku świadectwa” (G. Agamben, Sh. Felman, D. Laub), artykuł podejmuje problematykę ekonomicznych podstaw literatury poprzez analizę znaczeń (symboli) metafor ekonomicznych w pamiętniku Siedem tysięcy dni na Syberii Karlo Štajnera oraz opowiadaniu Z lend lease’u Warłama Szałamowa, a także poprzez wskazanie na różne aspekty intertekstualnej i międzykulturowej wymiany pomiędzy wspomnieniami Štajnera a fikcyjną literaturą „pseudo-faktu” Danilo Kiša w książce Grobowiec dla Borysa Dawidowicza. Czym jest świadectwo i czy może być – biorąc pod uwagę to, kim jest świadek i język, w którym daje świadectwo – „ważne”, „wartościowe”, „użyteczne”, używając języka ekonomii? Czy możemy zinterpretować literackie przywłaszczenie wspomnień Štajnera dokonane przez Kiša jako jeden ze sposobów przywracania prawa głosu nie tylko Štajnerowi, ale także ojcu Kiša, który zginął w Auschwitz? Jakie są zastosowania hipotezy ekonomicznej w literaturoznawstwie?

Out of Focus

This chapter explores the contacts and conflict between novelistic point of view and the practice of cinematic spectatorship. It focuses on H. D.’s singular contributions to the film journal Close Up (1927–1933). This film criticism was an important context for developing the forms of prose experimentation that would occupy her during the early 1930s. In detaching vision from a presumed subject, H. D. found that film asks its viewers not only to see but to translate encrypted “abstract . . . remote . . . symbolical” meanings from the “raw-picked” images that pass across the screen. This literary appropriation of spectatorship would come to structure her contemporaneous work, The Usual Star. This novel exemplifies the formal ambition of H. D.’s prose innovations, suggesting an alternate history of the modernist novel in which the totemic value of point of view had been dislodged.

Politicising Euripides: A Mouthful of Birds by Caryl Churchill and David Lan

The article discusses A Mouthful of Birds by Caryl Churchill and David Lan in terms of its relation to its Greek inspiration: Euripides’ Bacchae. Contrary to Michael Billington’s opinion that the fascination with the classics which dominated the 1980s theatre in Britain led to the emergence of an ‘interpretative culture’ motivated by artists’ inability to address current political issues, the article analyses a 1980s play that uses its classical source precisely to make political statements. In the course of the article the intertextual links between A Mouthful of Birds and The Bacchae are analysed with special focus on the politics motivating the modern text. Julie Sanders’ theory of literary appropriation is used to discuss selected themes addressing feminist, postcolonial and gender politics.