POETICS TODAYPub Date : 2021-12-01DOI: 10.1215/03335372-9356883
Lynley Edmeades
{"title":"Where Is This Now, Now?: Gertrude Stein's Literary Innovations and New Sound Media","authors":"Lynley Edmeades","doi":"10.1215/03335372-9356883","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/03335372-9356883","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article addresses the largely unexplored relationship between Stein's literary innovations and the new sound media of her time. By examining these connections, this article looks at Stein's compositional techniques—in particular her concept of the continuous present and her lifelong interest in speech and dialogue—to examine how new media technologies intersected with her attempt to change the way writing was written, read, and heard. By focusing on sound, and looking specifically at her final work Brewsie and Willie (1946), this article reads Stein's innovative poetics against the backdrop of concurrent changes to audio technologies during her career. Finally, the article argues that by paying attention to the ongoing shifts in media ecologies in relation to modernist innovations, we might gain insight into the larger phenomenological and sensorial sphere that formed the backdrop to modernism.","PeriodicalId":46669,"journal":{"name":"POETICS TODAY","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49499397","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
POETICS TODAYPub Date : 2021-09-01DOI: 10.1215/03335372-9026187
Raphaël Baroni
{"title":"Configuration and Emplotment: Converging or Opposite Paradigms for Storytelling?","authors":"Raphaël Baroni","doi":"10.1215/03335372-9026187","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/03335372-9026187","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Reflecting on Paul Ricoeur's discussion of historical configuration and fictional emplotment, this article proposes to actualize his model to oppose two prototypes of narrativity, which form two poles between which narrative representations extend. Instead of basing these prototypes on narrative genres such as historiography and fiction, it compares the configuration of narratives designed to inform readers about the signification of a past event with the emplotment of narratives aiming to immerse readers in a simulated past or a fictive storyworld. While contemporary narratology has been mostly concerned with the latter case, we will see that a comparison between narratives belonging to these two poles can help us better understand the functioning of narrative texts, most of them situated between these two extremes. Drawing on stories of a plane crash found in daily newspapers and magazines, the article shows that news stories usually favor the informative function, but when an event cannot be fully told, information enters a process of serialization, leading to the emergence of a “natural” plot. This leads to the conclusion that artificial emplotment is an imitation of prefiguration rather than the triumph of concordance.","PeriodicalId":46669,"journal":{"name":"POETICS TODAY","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49637696","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
POETICS TODAYPub Date : 2021-09-01DOI: 10.1215/03335372-9026117
Raphaël Baroni, Adrien Paschoud
{"title":"Introduction: Time and Narrative, the Missing Link between the “Narrative Turn” and Postclassical Narratology?","authors":"Raphaël Baroni, Adrien Paschoud","doi":"10.1215/03335372-9026117","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/03335372-9026117","url":null,"abstract":"The three volumes of Time and Narrative (1983 – 85) were published — and soon translated to English (1984 – 88) — in a pivotal moment for narrative studies and for narratology. In the middle of the eighties, the interest in narratives began to spread beyond the traditional fields of literary studies and linguistics and to influence almost all humanities disciplines. However, this remarkable expansion of narrative studies is disconnected from the evolution of narratology, which at the same time entered a period of “crisis” (RimmonKenan 1989), before its revival under the label of “postclassical narratology” (Herman 1997). Indeed, there is a tension between, on the one side, the proliferation of narrative studies throughout the 1980s and 1990s, and on the other side, the loss of interest in the theorization of","PeriodicalId":46669,"journal":{"name":"POETICS TODAY","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43193499","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
POETICS TODAYPub Date : 2021-09-01DOI: 10.1215/03335372-9026173
Marie Vanoost
{"title":"Another Way to Tell the News, Another Way to Read the News: Immersion and Information in Narrative Journalism","authors":"Marie Vanoost","doi":"10.1215/03335372-9026173","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/03335372-9026173","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 While Paul Ricoeur's Time and Narrative (1990) was only concerned with fictional and historical narratives, its influence on narrative theory has been much broader. Ricoeur's reflections expanded into the field of journalism, among other areas, notably through the notion of media narrative (or récit médiatique) as defined by Marc Lits (1997a). Following Lits, Ricoeur's legacy—and, more specifically, the distinction it inspired between immersive and informative narratives (Baroni 2018)—has been used to shed light on a specific kind of journalism often referred to as narrative journalism, that is, journalism that uses the writing techniques of fiction to tell news stories. This article further examines the dialectic between immersion and information in narrative journalism by exploring both journalists’ goals when writing their texts and receivers’ experiences when reading them. First, interviews with journalists show that they are largely aware of this dialectic and purposefully use an immersive form to help readers better understand information. Then, an exploratory study with readers reveals that they claim to look mostly for information yet seem to favor immersive narratives.","PeriodicalId":46669,"journal":{"name":"POETICS TODAY","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43021471","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
POETICS TODAYPub Date : 2021-09-01DOI: 10.1215/03335372-9026229
Justine Pizzo
{"title":"Ecological Form: System and Aesthetics in the Age of Empire","authors":"Justine Pizzo","doi":"10.1215/03335372-9026229","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/03335372-9026229","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46669,"journal":{"name":"POETICS TODAY","volume":"42 1","pages":"461-465"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47594307","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
POETICS TODAYPub Date : 2021-09-01DOI: 10.1215/03335372-9026145
J. Grethlein
{"title":"Mimesis and Experience: A Platonic Perspective on Ricoeur's Time and Narrative","authors":"J. Grethlein","doi":"10.1215/03335372-9026145","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/03335372-9026145","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Ricoeur's Time and Narrative is duly cited in footnotes but does not seem to have had a strong impact on anglophone narratology. One of the reasons for this is certainly Ricoeur's emphasis on plot, which does not harmonize with the focus on consciousness in cognitive narratology. This article suggests that a reconsideration of the concept of mimesis could help build a bridge between Ricoeur's phenomenological approach and cognitive studies in narrative. More specifically, it argues that Plato's discussion of poetry in the Republic, unanimously criticized by modern scholars, can enrich Ricoeur's concept of mimesis. While Ricoeur follows Aristotle, who ties mimesis to plot, Plato, in Republic 2 and 3, considers mimesis an act of impersonation and thereby paves the way to the level of character, on which cognitive narratologists tend to focus. This article first offers a new reading of the Republic's examination of poetry, trying to show that Plato's account of the effects of poetry on the listeners’ souls resonates with current cognitive approaches. Equipped with this reading, it then turns to Ricoeur again. Ricoeur's description of mimesis III, the reader's adoption of the narrative configuration of time in life, remains vague and abstract. Through its focus on the impact of characters on audiences, Plato's idea of mimesis permits us to integrate a cognitivist perspective into Ricoeur's phenomenological account.","PeriodicalId":46669,"journal":{"name":"POETICS TODAY","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45420200","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
POETICS TODAYPub Date : 2021-09-01DOI: 10.1215/03335372-9026131
Marco Malvezzi Caracciolo
{"title":"Emplotment beyond the Human Scale: On Deep Time and Narrative Nonlinearity","authors":"Marco Malvezzi Caracciolo","doi":"10.1215/03335372-9026131","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/03335372-9026131","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 In the second volume of Time and Narrative (1985, 101–12), Paul Ricoeur distinguishes between two layers of temporality in Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway (1925): he calls them “monumental” time and “mortal” time. The former is connected with authority and British imperial politics; the latter is the subjective, highly malleable time of human experience. But there is another time, also active in Woolf's novel and in her oeuvre more generally, that Ricoeur seems to overlook. It is the “deep history” (Shryock and Smail 2011) of geological and planetary phenomena that vastly surpasses the time scale of individual humans or human societies, or even of the human species. This is not to say that narrative is at ease with this deep temporality; as a practice, it seems fundamentally skewed toward the ethical and hermeneutic concerns that Ricoeur foregrounds in his work. But deep time does surface in narrative; this article is concerned with the formal challenges raised by such surfacings.","PeriodicalId":46669,"journal":{"name":"POETICS TODAY","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48624622","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
POETICS TODAYPub Date : 2021-09-01DOI: 10.1215/03335372-9026159
P. Carrard
{"title":"Historical Discourse and Narrativity","authors":"P. Carrard","doi":"10.1215/03335372-9026159","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/03335372-9026159","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Most theorists of history now seem to regard narrative as the only discursive model on which historians rely to make sense of the past. The structure of many works in current historiographic production, however, is not that of a narrative as defined in literary theory. The histories of World War II discussed here, for example, do not all tell a story; several of them take the form of synchronic analyses bearing on some aspects of the conflict. Furthermore, those histories of the war that tell a story follow different models and have widely divergent degrees of narrativity. That is, they resort at various levels of frequency and deliberateness to strategies that narratologists such as Meir Sternberg and Raphaël Baroni view as typical of storytelling. Positing readers who know how the war ended (the Allies won), they do not turn to suspense but seek to arouse curiosity by making counterfactual hypotheses (What if?) that offer alternatives to what actually happened. Furthermore, they attempt to create surprise by proposing “new versions” grounded in recently uncovered evidence and/or thus far unasked questions. As Dorrit Cohn speaks of the “distinction of fiction,” it would thus be legitimate to speak in these areas of the “distinction of historiography.” Indeed, the classical nineteenth-century extra-heterodiegetic narratives to which histories are frequently compared are unlikely to include counterfactuals, as they are unlikely to offer new, “better” versions of the events that they report.","PeriodicalId":46669,"journal":{"name":"POETICS TODAY","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47453200","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}