So, now I have been placed in the wonderful Berrick Saul building at York University and I must say that I am very pleased with that. I still tend to think of it as the Saul Berrick building, though.
The Encyclopaedia article is nearing completion (second draft now) and I am pretty much finished with the paper for Dubrovnik, although I may want to look at it again to make sure it works. I am arguing that there is a symmetry in the way the iconotextual form of emblems which may have had its share in the coming-into-being of Shakespeare's play sort of re-emerges at the other end in another iconotextual form: comic books. Mostly, the paper is about emblems, though, so I might want to shift the attention a little bit more towards manga. On the other hand I might just not bother.
2010-10-07
2010-08-17
Re-pick up
Update: My article for the Cambridge World Shakespeare Encyclopaedia is shaping up nicely, although I haven't yet written much about manga, which is supposed to be the main thing. I still have 1000-1500 words available for the manga bit, which should suffice. The other two are in various states of unfinishitude.
Now for the theory/method discussion that i left off a few posts ago, promising there'd be more. Now there is, only slightly delayed.
Configuration and Intertextuality
In many respects there is an overlap between the way these terms may be applied. In my definition of configuration, however, it is descriptive not of how works appear within one another, but how they become juxtaposed as the new work, the "configuration" appears in the world. This is a clear, formal, skeleton of semiotics, meant to function within a culture-historical frame, which gives it valency and makes it useful. In this way, configuration differs from Julia Kristeva's conception of intertextuality.
In Semiotikè, Kristeva outlines her concept of intertextuality as a response to, or an extension of, Mikhail Bakhtin’s dialogism. Her intertextuality is not instantly recognisable as the intertextuality that many of us have come to think of as the norm, which is usually some web of deferral, where everything is interrelating text. Kristeva’s definition harks back, via Bakhtin, to Russian formalism and the idea of ostranenje, alienation or strangeness. In this conception, there “can be no authoritative fixity for interactive, permutational (inter)text. Hence, ‘intertextuality’ as static, all-encompassing network, with no outside the text, is not Kristevan,” says Maggie Orr.
Doubleness is innate in how Kristeva construes language; it makes itself strange by constant permutation. “Kristeva’s intertextuality is therefore not a mosaic, or a limitless web of deferred meanings, but a logical relationship of ‘X and/or not X’, an ‘an(d)other’” says Orr. The text is an oscillation between itself and not-itself, a notion which incorporates both other texts (plays, novels, poems, instructions for how to assemble a garden chair) and language itself in the text’s unstable (but not deferred) duality.
In this way, intertextuality may serve as a companion to configuration, in order to tease out a trait which has not been evident in my definition of the latter concept.
Kristeva's intertextuality is, for me, a lot more fruitful and useful than Roland Barthes' version of the same concept. For him it is all play and no work, and it certainly has nothing to do with references, allusions or "adaptation," which for him mean "to fall in with the myth of filiation". Only the reader produces meaning, a viewpoint that Orr labels "narcissistic" - and I tend to agree with her.
What does configuration do, then, that intertextuality does not? It does investigate how texts both are themselves and some other text, so that is to an extent similar, but there are other goals as well. For one, configuration is an investigation into how texts come into being in cultural and socio-historical terms. It addresses text-in-text not just as language, but as socially constituted codes of selection. It posits a reader as well as an author, but it is a methodological stance which aims to investigate beyond associations, play and accretion of text, into why a text is present within a text – not, mind, why the author put it there, but why someone did.
Configuration may concern itself with structures, but structures are bound up with their contexts, thus configuration studies share a common ground with cultural materialist and new historicist outlooks (and "source studies"), because configuration addresses relations between works directly. By adopting a lateral understanding of the interrelation between texts, I hope to avoid the myth of filiation (if indeed it is a myth). Moreover, configuration studies are not just about culture, they are also investigations into literature, seeking not just to establish why something connects with something else, but how this happens in a literary frame.
Next time I will try to present some of the answers I have found.
Now for the theory/method discussion that i left off a few posts ago, promising there'd be more. Now there is, only slightly delayed.
Configuration and Intertextuality
In many respects there is an overlap between the way these terms may be applied. In my definition of configuration, however, it is descriptive not of how works appear within one another, but how they become juxtaposed as the new work, the "configuration" appears in the world. This is a clear, formal, skeleton of semiotics, meant to function within a culture-historical frame, which gives it valency and makes it useful. In this way, configuration differs from Julia Kristeva's conception of intertextuality.
In Semiotikè, Kristeva outlines her concept of intertextuality as a response to, or an extension of, Mikhail Bakhtin’s dialogism. Her intertextuality is not instantly recognisable as the intertextuality that many of us have come to think of as the norm, which is usually some web of deferral, where everything is interrelating text. Kristeva’s definition harks back, via Bakhtin, to Russian formalism and the idea of ostranenje, alienation or strangeness. In this conception, there “can be no authoritative fixity for interactive, permutational (inter)text. Hence, ‘intertextuality’ as static, all-encompassing network, with no outside the text, is not Kristevan,” says Maggie Orr.
Doubleness is innate in how Kristeva construes language; it makes itself strange by constant permutation. “Kristeva’s intertextuality is therefore not a mosaic, or a limitless web of deferred meanings, but a logical relationship of ‘X and/or not X’, an ‘an(d)other’” says Orr. The text is an oscillation between itself and not-itself, a notion which incorporates both other texts (plays, novels, poems, instructions for how to assemble a garden chair) and language itself in the text’s unstable (but not deferred) duality.
In this way, intertextuality may serve as a companion to configuration, in order to tease out a trait which has not been evident in my definition of the latter concept.
Kristeva's intertextuality is, for me, a lot more fruitful and useful than Roland Barthes' version of the same concept. For him it is all play and no work, and it certainly has nothing to do with references, allusions or "adaptation," which for him mean "to fall in with the myth of filiation". Only the reader produces meaning, a viewpoint that Orr labels "narcissistic" - and I tend to agree with her.
What does configuration do, then, that intertextuality does not? It does investigate how texts both are themselves and some other text, so that is to an extent similar, but there are other goals as well. For one, configuration is an investigation into how texts come into being in cultural and socio-historical terms. It addresses text-in-text not just as language, but as socially constituted codes of selection. It posits a reader as well as an author, but it is a methodological stance which aims to investigate beyond associations, play and accretion of text, into why a text is present within a text – not, mind, why the author put it there, but why someone did.
Configuration may concern itself with structures, but structures are bound up with their contexts, thus configuration studies share a common ground with cultural materialist and new historicist outlooks (and "source studies"), because configuration addresses relations between works directly. By adopting a lateral understanding of the interrelation between texts, I hope to avoid the myth of filiation (if indeed it is a myth). Moreover, configuration studies are not just about culture, they are also investigations into literature, seeking not just to establish why something connects with something else, but how this happens in a literary frame.
Next time I will try to present some of the answers I have found.
2010-08-03
Time Off
I've just returned from a ten-day vacation in France. Enough, I should think, said.
Must get back in saddle ASAP.
Must get back in saddle ASAP.
2010-07-15
Current activities
Item 1: The Cambridge World Shakespeare Encyclopedia
I am about halfway through the draft stage of an article on Shakespeare comics and manga for this encyclopedia, which will come out in two volumes and which will have a huge online component. From what I understand, the latter bit will be expansive and constantly updated (eventually it will become much bigger than the print version), and it will serve as a starting point for discussions for years to come. Understandably, I am a bit apprehensive about the whole thing, because people are bound to disagree with my conclusions, but I am mostly very glad that I've gotten this opportunity at such an early stage of my work. Also, the research for the article has unearthed a number of interesting things that will go into the thesis work. There are certainly more Shakespeare comics than I had imagined!
Item 2: The Bergen Shakespeare and Drama Network
I will present a paper for the annual symposium - but I have not started writing it yet. I did submit an abstract for it a few weeks ago, but I can't quite remember what I claimed I'd write about. It will come back to me at some stage, I suppose.
Item 3: Shakespeare Configured
Deja vu: I will present a paper for the annual symposium, etc. There is plenty of time still, isn't there?
See the links on the right hand side for more info about these symposia.
Item 4: The dissertation.
I hope to have (at least) 150 pages by the end of the year. That way I will be halfway through the number of pages I've planned to end up on in a third of the time I have available (quantitatively speaking - naturally there will be revision).
Item 5: Must update blog.
I am about halfway through the draft stage of an article on Shakespeare comics and manga for this encyclopedia, which will come out in two volumes and which will have a huge online component. From what I understand, the latter bit will be expansive and constantly updated (eventually it will become much bigger than the print version), and it will serve as a starting point for discussions for years to come. Understandably, I am a bit apprehensive about the whole thing, because people are bound to disagree with my conclusions, but I am mostly very glad that I've gotten this opportunity at such an early stage of my work. Also, the research for the article has unearthed a number of interesting things that will go into the thesis work. There are certainly more Shakespeare comics than I had imagined!
Item 2: The Bergen Shakespeare and Drama Network
I will present a paper for the annual symposium - but I have not started writing it yet. I did submit an abstract for it a few weeks ago, but I can't quite remember what I claimed I'd write about. It will come back to me at some stage, I suppose.
Item 3: Shakespeare Configured
Deja vu: I will present a paper for the annual symposium, etc. There is plenty of time still, isn't there?
See the links on the right hand side for more info about these symposia.
Item 4: The dissertation.
I hope to have (at least) 150 pages by the end of the year. That way I will be halfway through the number of pages I've planned to end up on in a third of the time I have available (quantitatively speaking - naturally there will be revision).
Item 5: Must update blog.
2010-06-29
What I Do. Part I
As I suspected, updating the blog has fallen to the wayside. There's just much other stuff to deal with (including the football World Cup). But here, finally, is the promised presentation of what my project is about.
Method and Theory
Studying adaptations of Shakespearean plays naturally brought me to study adaptation theory. I found that modern adaptation theory, with its postmodern outlook, shares a few ideas with me. First and foremost is the notion that "originals" and "adaptations" should be treated on equal terms from a theoretical viewpoint. They may not be equally valuable, but unless proven otherwise they are equally valid. The former is, a priori, irrelevant while the latter is a necessity. This view, however, has certain terminological challenges.
The word "adaptation" suggests that a) something has been transformed, and b) that it has been accomodated, made more suitable for some purpose or other. Both of these senses are probably misleading when it comes to the way that "adaptation" actually works. First, an "adaptation" does not actually change an "original." Instead, we arrive at a situation where there are two different works between which a tension arises, a tension which is interesting to analyse, formally, aesthetically and socio-historically. A play is not an old car which has been pimped: it is a new, individual car, built according to current standards, with current tools and notions of aesthetics. Further, adaptations of plays need not be made suitable, as per the definition of the word: "ad-apt" = "to-fit". Frequently, an adaptation will fly in the face both of what is aesthetically acceptable today and what is acceptable as presentations of older material. It is possible to say that Shakespeare does not make for good comic books or films, and that films and comic books do not make for good Shakespeares (very simply put). What makes an adaptation of a Shakespeare play valid or valuable is a question I shall return to at a later stage.
Another somewhat damaging aspect of the term "adaptation" is that it usually relates to an "original". Adaptation theorists tend to eschew this term, because it just does not sit right after Deconstruction, Derrida, et al. Yet, they have not been able to find a satisfactory alternative. Finally, "adaptation" is problematical because it lacks proper theoretical demarcation. Some tend to think of it as a freely applicable term (something along the lines of intertextuality), while others use it specifically to denote transmediation (a play appearing in a different medium). Others again, use it to describe plays that are markedly different from the "original," but still in the same medium, while others propose "appropriation" for such usage. This has led to endless and mostly fruitless debates about when something is what. To take a stance within this debate seemed to me unwise.
I needed a new term, and I found one: configuration.
This, of course, is what your computer sometimes does when you start it up. The OED definition, however, is that to configure is "to fashion according to something else as a model". This insight provided me with a number of new tools with which I could explore "adaptation" in greater detail, while also allowing me to do away with certain time-consuming and inane discussions. Neil Gaiman's Sandman, for instance, deals with Shakespeare in a way which is part adaptation, part allusion, part appropriation and part biographical fun and games. Instead of working out what is what, I can move on to talk sensibly (I hope) about how this takes place, and what its effects are (on the comics, as a dialogue with a high cultural canon, for the reader). Even in this case, unfortunately, I need to negotiate a place for "configuration" among other terms that describe how texts and artworks interrelate, such as intertextuality, parody, influence and pastiche.
That, however, will be next time. Until then, ta-ra.
Method and Theory
Studying adaptations of Shakespearean plays naturally brought me to study adaptation theory. I found that modern adaptation theory, with its postmodern outlook, shares a few ideas with me. First and foremost is the notion that "originals" and "adaptations" should be treated on equal terms from a theoretical viewpoint. They may not be equally valuable, but unless proven otherwise they are equally valid. The former is, a priori, irrelevant while the latter is a necessity. This view, however, has certain terminological challenges.
The word "adaptation" suggests that a) something has been transformed, and b) that it has been accomodated, made more suitable for some purpose or other. Both of these senses are probably misleading when it comes to the way that "adaptation" actually works. First, an "adaptation" does not actually change an "original." Instead, we arrive at a situation where there are two different works between which a tension arises, a tension which is interesting to analyse, formally, aesthetically and socio-historically. A play is not an old car which has been pimped: it is a new, individual car, built according to current standards, with current tools and notions of aesthetics. Further, adaptations of plays need not be made suitable, as per the definition of the word: "ad-apt" = "to-fit". Frequently, an adaptation will fly in the face both of what is aesthetically acceptable today and what is acceptable as presentations of older material. It is possible to say that Shakespeare does not make for good comic books or films, and that films and comic books do not make for good Shakespeares (very simply put). What makes an adaptation of a Shakespeare play valid or valuable is a question I shall return to at a later stage.
Another somewhat damaging aspect of the term "adaptation" is that it usually relates to an "original". Adaptation theorists tend to eschew this term, because it just does not sit right after Deconstruction, Derrida, et al. Yet, they have not been able to find a satisfactory alternative. Finally, "adaptation" is problematical because it lacks proper theoretical demarcation. Some tend to think of it as a freely applicable term (something along the lines of intertextuality), while others use it specifically to denote transmediation (a play appearing in a different medium). Others again, use it to describe plays that are markedly different from the "original," but still in the same medium, while others propose "appropriation" for such usage. This has led to endless and mostly fruitless debates about when something is what. To take a stance within this debate seemed to me unwise.
I needed a new term, and I found one: configuration.
This, of course, is what your computer sometimes does when you start it up. The OED definition, however, is that to configure is "to fashion according to something else as a model". This insight provided me with a number of new tools with which I could explore "adaptation" in greater detail, while also allowing me to do away with certain time-consuming and inane discussions. Neil Gaiman's Sandman, for instance, deals with Shakespeare in a way which is part adaptation, part allusion, part appropriation and part biographical fun and games. Instead of working out what is what, I can move on to talk sensibly (I hope) about how this takes place, and what its effects are (on the comics, as a dialogue with a high cultural canon, for the reader). Even in this case, unfortunately, I need to negotiate a place for "configuration" among other terms that describe how texts and artworks interrelate, such as intertextuality, parody, influence and pastiche.
That, however, will be next time. Until then, ta-ra.
2010-06-04
Welcome
Norwegian academics have been accused of being invisible in social media such as blogs and Twitter. This is my modest contribution to rectifying that situation. Now it only remains to see if anybody will ever bother following this blog - and more importantly - whether I'll remember to update it from time to time.
I am currently working on a Doctoral Thesis where I explore how Shakespeare is adaptded into comic books. My first proper post, due shortly, will be a presentation of how I challenge received notions about "adaptation," and how I move from this discussion into an exploration of iconotextual forms. Edge-of-your-seat excitement, in other words.
I am currently working on a Doctoral Thesis where I explore how Shakespeare is adaptded into comic books. My first proper post, due shortly, will be a presentation of how I challenge received notions about "adaptation," and how I move from this discussion into an exploration of iconotextual forms. Edge-of-your-seat excitement, in other words.
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