Revista de la Asociación Española de Estudios Anglo-Norteamericanos
This issue is dedicated to the fond memory of
CATALINA MONTES MOZO (1929-2011)
and
SOLEDAD PÉREZ DE AYALA BECERRIL (1967-2011)
Vol. 33, núm. 1 Junio 2011
33.1 (June 2011) 33.1 (Junio 2011)
EDITORS Editores
General Editor: Angela Downing Universidad Complutense de Madrid Assistant Editor: Ludmila Urbanová Managing Editor: Carmen Méndez University of Brno Universidad Complutense de Madrid Book Reviews Editor: Clara Calvo Editor’s Assistant: Juan Rafael Zamorano Universidad de Murcia Universidad Complutense de Madrid Universität Bremen Copy Editor: Jorge Arús Hita Universidad Complutense de Madrid
EDITORIAL BOARD Consejo de Redacción
BOARD OF ADVISORS Consejo Asesor
Andrew Blake Heinz Ickstadt University of Winchester Freie Universität Berlin Martin Bygate J. Hillis Miller Lancaster University University of California at Irvine Teresa Fanego Susheila M. Nasta Universidad de Santiago de Compostela Open University Fernando Galván Francisco J. Ruiz de Mendoza Universidad de Alcalá de Henares Universidad de La Rioja
BOARD OF REFEREES Consejo Científico y Evaluador
Ana Antón-Pacheco Maggie Ann Bowers Christopher S. Butler Universidad Complutense de Madrid University of Portsmouth Swansea University Joan C. Beal Kris Van den Branden Graham D. Caie University of Sheffield Katholieke Universiteit Leuven University of Glasgow Jesús Benito Sánchez Mario Brdar Gordon Campbell Universidad de Valladolid Josip Juraj Strossmayer University University of Leicester Marcella Bertuccelli Papi Laurel J. Brinton Isabel Carrera Università di Pisa University of British Columbia Universidad de Oviedo Nilufer E. Bharucha Manuel Broncano Shirley Chew University of Mumbai Texas A & M International University University of Leeds Anita Biressi Jorge Luis Bueno Alonso Robert Clark Roehampton University University of Vigo University of East Anglia Thomas Claviez Juan Carlos Hidalgo Ruth Parkin-Gounelas University of Bern Universidad de Sevilla Aristotle University of Thessaloniki Tom Cohen Ton Hoenselaars Javier Pérez Guerra University of Albany Utrecht University Universidad de Vigo Juan Camilo Conde-Silvestre Jacqueline Hurtley James Procter Universidad de Murcia Universitat de Barcelona University of Newcastle upon Tyne Chantal Cornut-Gentille David Johnson Victor J. Ramraj D’arcy The Open University University of Calgary Universidad de Zaragoza Stephan Kohl David Richards Francisco J. Cortés Rodríguez Julius-Maximilians-Universität University of Stirling Universidad de La Laguna Würzburg Caroline Rooney Isabel de la Cruz Cabanillas Zoltán Kövecses University of Kent Universidad de Alcalá de Henares Eötvös Loránd University Francisco J. Ruiz de Mendoza Pilar Cuder Manfred Krug Universidad de La Rioja Universidad de Huelva Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg Dianne F. Sadoff Daniela Daniele Merja Kytö Rutgers University Università di Udine Uppsala University Esther Sánchez-Pardo Denise deCaires Narain Alberto Lázaro Universidad Complutense de Madrid University of Sussex Universidad de Alcalá de Henares Jürgen Schlaeger Celestino Deleyto Ursula Lenker Humboldt-Universität Berlin Universidad de Zaragoza Catholic University of Eichstätt Elena Seoane Balz Engler María José López Couso Universidad de Santiago de University of Basel Universidad de Santiago de Compostela Charles Forceville Compostela María Josep Solé Sabater University of Amsterdam Dámaso López García Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona Javier Franco Aixelá Universidad Complutense de Madrid Alasdair Spark Universidad de Alicante María Losada Friend University of Winchester Jean-Michel Ganteau Universidad de Huelva Neelam Srivastava Université Paul-Valéry, Ricardo Mairal Usón University of Newcastle upon Tyne Montpellier III UNED M. S. Suárez Lafuente María del Pilar García Mayo Ana María Manzanas Calvo Universidad de Oviedo Universidad del País Vasco Universidad de Salamanca Juan Antonio Suárez Cristina Garrigós Javier Martín Arista Universidad de Murcia Universidad de León Universidad de La Rioja Henry Sussman Dirk Geeraerts John McLeod University of Buffalo / Yale University University of Leuven University of Leeds Justine Tally Lincoln Geraghty Lavinia Merlini Universidad de La Laguna University of Portsmouth Università di Pisa Paloma Tejada Caller Vincent Gillespie Silvia Molina Plaza Universidad Complutense de Madrid University of Oxford Universidad Politécnica de Madrid Geoff Thompson Cristina Giorcelli Rafael Monroy University of Liverpool Università di Roma Tre Universidad de Murcia I. M. Tieken-Boon van Ostade Manuel José Gómez Lara Carmen Muñoz University of Leiden Universidad de Sevilla Universitat de Barcelona Harish Trivedi José Luis González Escribano Jo Anne Neff Van Aertselaer University of Delhi Universidad de Oviedo Universidad Complutense de Madrid Carmen Valero Garcés Francisco Gonzálvez García Heather Nunn Universidad de Alcalá de Henares Universidad de Almería Roehampton University Boris Vejdovsky Agnieszka Graff Begoña Núñez Perucha University of Lausanne Warsaw University Universidad Complutense de Madrid Ruth Wodak Leighton Grist James Ogude Lancaster University University of Winchester University of the Witwatersrand Pilar Zozaya Adolphe Haberer Ana Ojea University of Barcelona Université Lumière-Lyon 2 Universidad de Oviedo Felicity Hand Cranham Klaus-Uwe Panther Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona Universität Hamburg Pilar Hidalgo Pedro Javier Pardo Universidad de Málaga Universidad de Salamanca
Abstracting and Indexing
Atlantis is indexed in the following Thomson Reuters services: ♦ Arts and Humanities Citation Index® ♦ Current Contents®/Arts & Humanities ♦ Social Sciences Citation Index® ♦ Journal Citation Reports/ Social Sciences Edition ♦ Current Contents®/Social and Behavioral Sciences (Thomson-Reuters)
Atlantis is also indexed or abstracted in the following databases and directories: ♦ Academic Search Complete ♦ Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature (ABELL) ♦ Bibliography of European Journals for English Studies (BEJES), published by the European Society for the Study of English (ESSE) ♦ CSA Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts (LLBA) ♦ DICE, Difusión y Calidad Editorial de las Revistas Españolas de Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales y Jurídicas ♦ ERIH, European Reference Index for the Humanities ♦ Expanded Academic Index ♦ Fuente Academica, Humanities ♦ Humanities International Complete (HIC) ♦ Infotrac Onefile ♦ International Bibliography of Book Reviews of Scholarly Literature in the Humanities and the Social Sciences (IBR) ♦ International Bibliography of Periodical Literature in the Humanities and the Social Sciences (IBZ) ♦ ISOC (CINDOC-CSIC) ♦ JSTOR ♦ LATINDEX ♦ Linguistics Abstracts ♦ Literature Resource Center ♦ MLA Directory of Periodicals ♦ MLA International Bibliography, published by the Modern Language Association of America ♦ Periodical Index Online (PIO) ♦ Periodicals Contents Index (PCI) ♦ RESH, Revistas Españolas de Ciencias Sociales y Humanas ♦ Sociological Abstracts ♦ The Year’s Work in English Studies
Revista de la Asociación Española de Estudios Anglo-Norteamericanos
33.1 (June 2011) 33.1 (Junio 2011)
Table of Contents • Índice
Remembering absent friends • Recuerdos de amigos ausentes
Catalina Montes Mozo (1929-2011) ...... 11 Soledad Pérez de Ayala Becerril (1967-2011) ...... 13
Articles • Artículos
The ‘Moving’ Lines of Neo-Baroque in Will Self’s Dorian: An Imitation José M. Yebra Centro Universitario de la Defensa, Universidad de Zaragoza ...... 17
Shakespeare in García Lorca’s Early Poems Juan F. Cerdá University of Murcia ...... 33
Marketing Strategies, Consumerism and the Exercise of Democracy in W.H.H. Murray’s Adventures in the Wilderness; or, Camp-Life in the Adirondacks Claudia Alonso Recarte Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha ...... 53
Testimony and the Representation of Trauma in Eva Figes’ Journey to Nowhere Silvia Pellicer-Ortín University of Zaragoza ...... 69
Reconstructing the Old English Cultural Model for Fear Javier E. Díaz Vera Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha ...... 85
The Language of British Teenagers. A Preliminary Study of its Main Grammatical Features Ignacio M. Palacios Martínez Universidad de Santiago de Compostela ...... 105
The Morphological Structure of Old English Complex Nouns Roberto Torre Alonso Universidad de La Rioja ...... 127
Reviews • Reseñas
Gómez Reus, Teresa and Aránzazu Usandizaga, eds. 2008: Inside Out: Women Negotiating, Subverting, Appropriating Public and Private Space. reviewed by Rosario Arias ...... 149
Silvia del Pilar Castro Borrego and María Isabel Romero Ruiz, eds. 2009: Identidad, migración y cuerpo femenino. reviewed by Justine Tally ...... 157
Anis S. Bawarshi and Mary-Jo Reiff 2010: Genre. An Introduction to History, Theory, Research, and Pedagogy. reviewed by JoAnne Neff van Aertselaar ...... 163
Carol Griffiths, ed. 2008: Lessons from Good Language Learners. reviewed by Anik Nandi ...... 173
Laura Alba 2009: Perspectives on Discourse Analysis: Theory and Practice. reviewed by Noa Talaván Zanón ...... 179
Manuel M. Martín Rodríguez 2009: Gaspar de Villagrá: Legista, soldado y poeta. reviewed by M. Carmen Gómez Galisteo ...... 185
Josep M. Armengol 2010: Richard Ford and the Fiction of Masculinities. reviewed by Peter Ferry ...... 191
Gerardo Rodríguez Salas 2009: Katherine Mansfield: El Posmodernismo incipiente de una modernista renegada. reviewed by Eva Gómez Jiménez ...... 197
Acknowledgements ...... 203
Editorial policy and Instructions to contributors ...... 205
REMEMBERING ABSENT FRIENDS
RECUERDOS DE AMIGOS AUSENTES
CATALINA MONTES MOZO (1929-2011)
Cati/Katy Montes, Professor Catalina Montes left us on April 5th 2011. Coquettishly, her birth-date was always kept incognito and her youthful image at all times concealed her true age. Professor Montes seemed eternal; we had all come to consider her a permanent fixture in the English department of the University of Salamanca. Her death has taken all of us by surprise. Although she retired some years ago, after her years as Professor Emeritus of the University of Salamanca, she did keep an office, in which she spent many days, in the Department of English Philology till the very last. Indeed, she continued in her retirement what had been her daily schedule from day one: her permanent presence and availability to all every single working day of the week. Her absence in these last few weeks since her passing is daily, and heartfelt, noticed by all of us. Catalina was also a member of AEDEAN and a strong supporter of Atlantis. From 1989 to 1991 she was Director of the journal, in effect the journal’s third Editor, following on after Antonio Garnica and Javier Coy. Cati held degrees in English Philology, History and Music. She became a full Professor in English Linguistics although her love for English Literature never declined. I need not mention her many publications in both fields. Much has been said in national newspapers about her work for the people of El Salvador as a consequence of the killing of her brother Segundo. I will not add to it, but, evidently, it shows her great capability to work and produce results under the hardest circumstances. We will all miss her because she was such a permanent presence in our lives and because she was always “the lady with the perennial smile”. May she rest in peace.
María Fuencisla García-Bermejo Giner Universidad de Salamanca
SOLEDAD PÉREZ DE AYALA BECERRIL (1967-2011)
To see a world in a grain of sand And a heaven in a wild flower. Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And eternity in an hour. William Blake
These four lines, the prelude to William Blake’s ‘Auguries of Innocence,’ bring to mind the extraordinary depth that our dear friend and colleague, Soledad Pérez de Ayala, displayed in looking into reality. The lines are not only overwhelming in their complexity of thought, but also characterize a sentience few people possess. Soledad’s capacity for profound emotion, the intensity with which she experienced life, and her acute awareness of her intuitive senses, her imagination and intelligence, all contributed to her exceptionally perceptive and empathetic abilities. Soledad was always a keen and indefatigable scholar and researcher on language and pragmatics. An eager reader, she traversed the narrow edge between Linguistics and Literature, navigating the borders of these two provinces that, in her view, were never apart. For her 1996 PhD dissertation, supervised by Prof. Angela Downing, Sole chose the subject of politeness and tension in Prime Minister’s Question Time in the English Parliament. In it Soledad explored the linguistic exchanges of British MPs during Question time, laying bare strategies that portray an acute, subtle, ironical and provocative use of language. Her dissertation was later published as a monograph, Cortesía e Imagen en el Parlamento Británico: Question Time. Madrid. Congreso de los Diputados, 2002. As a lecturer and tutor, she was always able to connect and to interest audiences. Enthusiastic and passionate, her captivating personality showed us that teaching and learning were for her works of love. The circularity of discourse, eternal recurrence brings me back to Blake’s two-fold vision. In his view, this ‘visionary’ vision lies in the perception of human values in all things and it reveals infinite life and virtue (ethics and aesthetics harmoniously combined). Both Soledad Pérez de Ayala and William Blake were capable of seeing through a child’s eyes, in a state of Innocence, while still being aware of the state of Experience. They both knew that Innocence is the ideal state of wisdom, wherein the sense of wonder is retained, where a person is totally attuned to her surroundings. And it is in this state of Innocence where, those who attain it, have a healthy regard for their fellow creatures. This is the purity of the state of Innocence. And thanks to you, dear Soledad, we know that it exists; we have experienced it innumerable times with you.
Esther Sánchez-Pardo González Universidad Complutense de Madrid
ARTICLES
ARTÍCULOS
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 17–31 ISSN 0210-6124
The ‘Moving’ Lines of Neo-Baroque in Will Self’s Dorian: An Imitation
José M. Yebra Centro Universitario de la Defensa, Universidad de Zaragoza [email protected]
This essay aims at reading Will Self’s Wildean Dorian: An Imitation (2002) as part of an increasingly popular neo-baroque style. Against the minimalism of past decades, there seems to be a proliferation of things baroque at the turn of the millennium. We will see how Self’s novel fits the excess and movement characteristic of this aesthetics (against the harmony and stasis of classicism) and will analyse its purpose. Excess and movement should not be viewed exclusively as aesthetic concepts, since they involve the reader politically and ethically. As I will attempt to demonstrate, Dorian: An Imitation relies on a complex (baroque) structure and on intertextuality to meet this end. The effect of neo- baroque manifestations on the one who looks, hears or reads must be inscribed in the ethics of affects, the language of new technologies and the awe-inspiring power of the sublime. With this purpose, I will make extensive use of the concept of line as a perennial metaphor for artistic representation running from Hogarth to Newman, Derrida and Deleuze.
Keywords: Neo-baroque; lines; excess; intertextuality; sublime; AIDS
Líneas que (con)mueven. El neo-barroco en Dorian: An Imitation de Will Self
Este ensayo propone una lectura de la novela Wildeana Dorian: An Imitation, de Will Self, como ejemplo de un estilo neo-barroco cada vez más popular. Frente al minimalismo de décadas pasadas, parece que, con el cambio de milenio, se está experimentando un triunfo de lo barroco. Veremos cómo la novela de Self refleja el gusto por el exceso y el movimiento de esta estética (en contra de la harmonía y lo estático del clasicismo) y por qué lo hace. Ni el exceso ni el movimiento se plantean exclusivamente como conceptos estéticos, ya que tienen implicaciones políticas y éticas. Como intento demostrar, Dorian: An Imitation se sustenta sobre una estructura (barroca) compleja y sobre relaciones intertextuales. El efecto de las manifestaciones neo-barrocas sobre el que ve, escucha o lee se inscribe en la ética de los afectos, el lenguaje de las nuevas tecnologías, y el poder conmovedor de lo sublime. Con este propósito, haré uso del concepto de línea como metáfora perenne de la representación artística de Hogarth a Newman, de Derrida a Deleuze.
Palabras clave: Neo-barroco; líneas; exceso; intertextualidad; lo sublime; el SIDA 18 José M. Yebra
1. Introduction: The baroque ‘Aeon’1
Although often denigrated, the baroque has become a perennial mood, spirit or movement; hence the subtitle of this preliminary section. Strictly speaking, the term baroque was coined with reference to the artistic manifestations and productions of seventeenth-century European art. Against normative classicism, the traits of the baroque are regarded as “unusual, vulgar, exuberant, and beyond the norm” (Ndalianis 2004: 7). Together with these, excessiveness and ‘beyondness’ deserve special emphasis, arguably the most relevant characteristics of Self’s novel. The denigration of the baroque did not end until the twentieth century. Still in the nineteenth century, as Ndalianis recalls, “critics and historians perceived it as a degeneration or decline of the classical and harmonious ideal epitomized by the Renaissance era” (2004: 7). Just as the sublime constitutes the necessary other of beauty, the baroque may be said to work as the underside of classicism. Hence, “the baroque was [not] frozen within the temporal parameters of the seventeenth century… It continued to have a life, albeit one beyond the limits of the canon” (2004: 8). It can be argued, therefore, that the baroque constitutes a liminal and fluid phenomenon, always beyond itself and its alleged spatio- temporal parameters. In other words, the spirit of the baroque existed well before the movement itself and continues much after its conclusion. The aeon of the baroque has been targeted by many art historians. As Angela Ndalianis recalls in Postclassical, Modern Classicism, or Neo-Baroque? Will the Real Contemporary Cinema Please Stand Up? (2004), art critics like Helena Sassone (1972), Christine Buci-Glucksman (1986, 1996), Omar Calabrese (1992) and Martin Jay (1994) find traces of baroquism in Romanticism and in twentieth-century art, particularly the early avant-gardes. The excess of signifier and the non-normative freedom associated with the baroque literally flood all artistic and cultural manifestations in the twentieth century, from literature to cinema, from music to fashion. Ndalianis provides an exhaustive list of neo-baroque manifestations in the last decades. Despite the diversity of texts in the list, which includes from Federico Fellini’s masterpieces to Sally Potter’s eponymous adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando (1992), all of them produce a similar effect of the hyperbolic and the theatrical. Likewise, baroque traits such as multiple framing, intertextuality and parody recur in postmodernist neo-baroque texts. According to Ndalianis, the seventeenth century and the turn of the millennium mirror each other, as they constitute moments of transformation, transition and, consequently, ontological and epistemological crises (2004: 21). In other words, the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century finds its updated counterpart in the era of new technologies. Ndalianis endorses Francesco Guardini’s description of “our culture as being, like the seventeenth-century era that ushered in the scientific revolution, in the eye of an epochal storm, in the middle of a gigantic transformation of cultural and socioeconomic proportions” (Ndalianis 2004: 22). Just as the discoveries of Galileo, Kepler and Copernicus changed the perception of reality of their respective eras, ours is conditioned by cybernetics and the current proliferation of (virtual) realities. Whereas
1 I borrow the term aeon from Eugenio d’Ors’ essay ‘Del Barroco’ (1934) “as a constant in the history of aesthetic forms” (in Ganteau 2005: 194).
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 17–31 ISSN 0210-6124 The ‘Moving’ Lines of Neo-Baroque in Will Self’s Dorian: An Imitation 19 the seventeenth-century baroque constituted the prelude to the era of reason, the turn- of-the-millennium neo-baroque may be seen as heralding the era of the homo cyberneticus. Fluidity, transformation, movement, chaos, ontological and epistemological uncertainty, performativity, parody, intertextuality, hybridity, sublimity, excess and hyperbole are baroque features peppered throughout the writings of various critics— from classics such as Heinrich Wölfflin (1986), Walter Benjamin (1996) and Eugenio D’Ors (1993), to more recent ones such as Christine Buci-Glucksman (1986, 1996), Gilles Deleuze (1988), Benito Pelegrín (2000) and Jean-Michel Ganteau (2000, 2005)— to characterise turn-of-the-millennium neo-baroque. Thus, although these traits are recurrent in Western culture, it is the postmodernist updating of former baroque texts that brings them all together as a potent aesthetics of change. As Jean-Michel Ganteau points out: The novels of Angela Carter or Salman Rushdie tend to be classified in a narrative category or mode that has been called new baroque. Such texts share aesthetic and ethical traits mainly based on the prevalence of hyperbole, proliferation, depravity of ornamentation, and flux that tend to challenge prior aesthetic codes … and unremittingly focus on the darker, submerged, neglected sides of contemporary society and history, on alternative psychological and spiritual experiences, on complementary worlds and heterocosms … on the prevalence of the other in a mass culture generally obsessed with the rhetoric of the same and its simulacra. (2005: 198-99) With all this in mind, it is the main concern of this essay to decide whether Dorian: An Imitation (2002) also partakes of the poetics and politics of the neo-baroque and, if so, to what extent and with which purpose(s). On the whole, I follow the lead of Ndalianis and Ganteau. However, I particularly focus on the sexual side of the neo- baroque to fully understand Self’s novel.
2. Movement vs. stasis, excess vs. harmony, the sublime vs. beauty. Dorian and the realm of the liminal
At the risk of being too simplistic, there seems to be an intrinsic tendency to view art as either ‘harmonious and balanced’ or ‘convoluted and excessive’. The former associated with Apollonian beauty, reached its apex in the Renaissance, Neoclassicism, Realism and, recently, in minimalism. Against the normative classicism of the first, there arises (in Dollimore’s terms) a perverse dynamic of ‘otherness’, which stems from the Dionysian and the sublime and bursts out in the baroque aeon. Briefly stated, the baroque is the sign of a compound crisis, whereby the cosmic equilibrium and stasis that Andrea Cellarius represents in his painting Harmonia Macrocosmica (1660) gives way to a more complex concept of the world and aesthetics (Eco 2004: 225). In the seventeenth century, the crisis of knowledge led to a relentless search for new expressions of beauty. As Eco points out, new art forms were increasingly astonishing and apparently disproportionate in the attempt to ‘move’ the reader or spectator (2004: 228-29). Likewise, drawing on Benito Pelegrín, Ganteau argues that, out of the traditional goals of classical rhetoric (docere, delectare, movere), neo-baroque English
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 17–31 ISSN 0210-6124 20 José M. Yebra literature prefers the third. What this implies, in his view, “is that by addressing feelings, senses and emotions, one courts and instrumentalizes the sensational—even sensationalism—to win, to convince, to seduce” (2005: 210). Echoing the seventeenth- century baroque, the late-twentieth-century neo-baroque uses the irregular, the distorted and the excessive so as to involve the reader aesthetically, emotionally and even physically.2 Seventeenth-century discoveries (particularly on astronomy) can explain the metaphoric lines that, for Eco, make up baroque aesthetics: “There is no line which does not lead the eye to a ‘beyond’ that must be reached, there is no line without tension: the immobile and inanimate beauty from the classic model is replaced by a dramatically tense one” (2004: 234, my translation).3 The readers and spectators of neo- baroque manifestations are propelled following a (neo)sublime force, thus defying the pleasant stasis, or nothingness, of classicism. Etymologically, baroque stems from Spanish barrueco and Portuguese barroco, “both referring to an irregular pearl deviating from the canon of the perfectly round one” (Pelegrín, in Ganteau 2005: 194). Likewise, the neo-baroque constitutes a deviation, formal and ethical, from the normative, the regular. This irregularity, which goes beyond and perverts the canon, and leads to unknown territories, is a complex phenomenon. Moreover, against the insightfulness of classicism, neo-baroque aesthetics prefers surfaces. Yet, we should be careful on interpreting the ethos of the neo-baroque, for it is intrinsically contradictory: paradoxically chaotic, albeit under control; allegedly spiritual, yet highly corporeal (see Buci-Glucksmann 1986: 96-97). Behind its irregular lines, which lead the eye to the metaphysical, and subvert classicist straightness and equilibrium, this aesthetics relies on a multiplicity of layers or frames of representation which, being arranged en abyme, match the postmodernist poetics of repetition and fragmentation. For example, the baroque trompe l’oeil recurs in neo-baroque painting and literature, putting forward the complex ontological crisis at the turn of the millennium. This logic of endless framing recalls Roland Barthes’ sens obtus, “a meaning that comes in excess of representation, or a signifier without a signified, a profusion without a tangible/explicit referent” (in Ganteau 2000: 38). Also following the poetics of postmodernism, the neo-baroque is essentially auto-referential. Signifiers only mean if related to other signifiers. Despite this mimetique du rien (see Ganteau 2000: 38), which folds the neo-baroque text within itself, its extraordinary capacity for affect does not fade away. This apparent contradiction questions Fredric Jameson’s contention that postmodernism invests in “arbitrariness, artificiality, and the waning of affect” (1991: 16). The excess of signifier and physicality of neo-baroque discourse renders it invaluable to explore the
2 The boundaries between the aesthetic and the ethical/emotional are not easily defined in baroque art, whose ethics relies on the all-embracing totality of artistic creation (Eco 2004: 234). In this respect, neo-baroque art differs from its seventeenth-century predecessor. At present, when a totalising artistic creation is no longer conceivable, the relation between ethics and aesthetics has become much more complex, as the studies of many critics prove. See Eskin (2004). 3 “No hay línea que no guíe al ojo hacia un ‘más allá’ que siempre hay que alcanzar, no hay línea que no se cargue de tensión: la belleza inmóvil e inanimada del modelo clásico es sustituida por una belleza dramáticamente tensa” (Eco 2004: 234).
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 17–31 ISSN 0210-6124 The ‘Moving’ Lines of Neo-Baroque in Will Self’s Dorian: An Imitation 21 unfathomable or sublime. Such a poetics of the limitless, of absolute dispersal, maximum corporeality and postmodernist transcendence are the constitutive elements of Dorian: An Imitation. Self’s novel displays most neo-baroque traits, inhabiting a liminal space. It inscribes and shows the ontological crisis in the era of simulacra, particularly the sort associated with the proliferation of realities fostered by new technologies. It operates on the borderline between the turn of the millennium, its baroque substratum and its actual hypotexts, especially Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891). It also swings between the poetics of the sublime and the beautiful, preferring the ‘otherness’ of the former to the normative character of the latter. Finally, as an overtly gay text revising a homosexual (albeit canonical) hypotext, the novel is simultaneously marginal and central to Western culture.
3. Recasting late-Victorian excess for (postmodernist) effect and affect
I have repeatedly made reference to excess and movement as essential features of neo- baroque aesthetics, and of Dorian: An Imitation in particular. My main concern henceforth will be to explore how, why and with what effect both features are accomplished in Self’s novel. However, I will firstly focus on its intertextual character and its consequences.
3.1 Imitating what?
The novel’s subtitle somehow defies the postmodernist concept of intertextuality. In fact, Self’s novel has been severely criticised for virtually cloning Wilde’s masterwork, normally for the worse (Harrison 2003; Leclair 2004; Anon. 2002). As a whole, the plot of the hypertext coincides almost to the letter with that of the hypotext. Only the girl Wilde’s Dorian fancies for a while is replaced by a rent boy in Self’s novel. However, Dorian: An Imitation cannot be regarded as a mere pastiche of its late-Victorian predecessor. The homosocial relations between the characters in Wilde’s novel become overtly gay in the former, just as obscure perversions turn into violent episodes and strange scars into signs of AIDS. Moreover, Dorian: An Imitation introduces a postmodernist, neo-baroque sense of crisis, which goes beyond or, at least, problematises the art/life binomial in The Picture of Dorian Gray. Whereas Wilde’s Dorian finds out his ‘true’ nature trapped in a self-portrait, Self’s (unempathetic) Dorian does so in Baz’s video installation, aptly named Cathode Narcissus: The first monitor … zigged and zagged into life. It showed the naked figure of a beautiful young man, posed like a classical Greek kouros, one hand lightly on hip, the other trailing in groin, half-smile on plump lips. A naked figure that turned to face the viewer as the camera zoomed in. The second monitor came to life and this displayed a closer view of the still turning youth. The third view was closer again. The sensation imparted as all nine monitors came to life was of the most intense, carnivorous, predatory voyeurism. The youth was like a fleshy bonbon, or titillating titbit, wholly unaware of the ravening mouth of the camera. The ninth monitor displayed only his mobile pink mouth. (Self 2003: 12)
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 17–31 ISSN 0210-6124 22 José M. Yebra
Both metaphors—picture and video installation—point to a common referent, namely the way in which art (re)presents ‘otherness’. The complex crisis of ontological frames that seventeenth-century art suggested, and Wilde’s tale confirmed, has become the core of Self’s novel. It constitutes a sort of hyperreal web of cross-references. Wilde’s texts and Dorian: An Imitation, as well as their metaphors for ‘otherness’, reflect each other, not as a mere imitation but feeding each other in what may be described as a fractalled series. The Picture of Dorian Gray echoes Charles Maturin’s4 gothic novel Melmoth the Wanderer (1820). Like Maturin’s Melmoth, Dorian is magically released from the marks of age and sins, though he is eventually condemned. However, this is only part of the story. Behind the obvious moralistic reading, there is a more complex one. As metaphors of the abject, the picture and Cathode Narcissus are hidden in a dark room. These metaphoric artefacts and spaces are not simply tropes for otherness. Being arranged en abyme, they stand for their respective texts as a whole and are projected beyond, breaking ontological boundaries and interpellating us through the process of reading. Dorian: An Imitation agglutinates all the texts (baroque and late-Victorian) mentioned so far, but from a postmodernist neo-baroque stance.
3.2 Trompe l’oeil and moving lines
As Angela Ndalianis points out, against the widespread view that the baroque “implies losing control, … [it] often reveale[s] an obsessive concern with control and rationality” (2004: 4). Likewise, neo-baroque texts generally rely on well-designed structures. Echoing this, the increasingly chaotic life stories of the different Dorians in Self’s novel are embedded within a well-tightened (albeit open) pattern. The novel is split into three parts and an epilogue, which masterfully distorts the meaning and the logic of the novel so far. Each of the three parts—aptly entitled ‘Recordings’, ‘Transmission’ and ‘Network’—ends with a death. The first part puts an end to the eighties with the death of Herman, a black male prostitute and a surrogate of the actress Wilde’s Dorian kills in The Picture of Dorian Gray. Dorian’s body is recorded as ‘points of light’ in Baz’s nineteen-eighties, when the virus of AIDS was being ‘recorded’ in gays’ bodies. The second part closes with Baz’s murder, and stands for most of the nineteen- nineties, when AIDS was transmitted through what the narrator metaphorically calls “lines of buggery” (Self 2003: 154). In the third part, transmission has evolved into a multi-referential network of death, affecting virtually everybody, even the so-far unscathed Dorian. However, the death of Dorian eventually turns out to be mere fiction, part of a roman à clef devised by Lord Henry while he himself is dying of AIDS. In other words, what we have been reading so far is not Dorian’s ‘real’ story, but a meta-fictionalisation made up by one of the characters. Yet, as the epilogue advances, Lord Henry’s roman proves to be rather more reliable than the ‘real’ Dorian acknowledges.
4 Charles Robert Maturin (1782-1824) was Wilde’s uncle. His famous Melmoth the Wanderer was deeply influenced by Milton, as well as the myths of Faust and the wandering Jew.
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 17–31 ISSN 0210-6124 The ‘Moving’ Lines of Neo-Baroque in Will Self’s Dorian: An Imitation 23
Dorian’s replication is very complex and is inscribed in a wider context. As Ndalianis argues, thanks to a number of technical advances and an incipient consumerism, the baroque era was witness to “a nascent popular culture, one that was accompanied by a new fascination with the serial and the copy” (2004: 11). Centuries later, we are living a world of replicas and virtual realities, which propels us to confront a number of frames or (in Derrida’s terms) parerga without content or ergon, when reading a text like Self’s. In this context, the baroque trompe l’oeil has gained new significance. The trompe l’oeil constitutes an artistic device which uses different proportions and perspectives so that the viewer is confused by apparently different levels of representation. Its ultimate purpose is to question taken-for-granted ontological boundaries. The eye can be tricked and so can our reason. Thus, as readers, we belong (albeit vicariously) in the artistic event. In this respect, I think that Derrida’s concept of the parergon—borrowed from Kant—gains significance. The French philosopher defines it as a negation: the parergon is “neither work (ergon) nor outside the work [hors d’oeuvre], neither inside nor outside, neither above nor below, it disconcerts any opposition but does not remain indeterminate and it gives rise to the work” (Derrida 1987: 9). Although the imagery of the parergon is especially graphic in the beaux arts, literature does not escape its logic. Dorian: An Imitation is arranged into different parerga that somehow stand for and defer the ergon itself. Rather than actual referents, it is contours that really matter in the novel. Thus, Lord Henry Wotton’s roman à clef,5 or ergon of the novel, only means in relation to its orbiting parerga or frames, namely the epilogue, Lady Di’s tele-visual story and Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. On analysing Derrida’s The Truth in Painting (1987), Phillip Shaw attempts to explain the reason why art requires frames. In his view, irrespective of the form it adopts, the parergon is not peripheral, “rather it is directly related to the lack in the interior of the ergon” (2006: 117). Drawing on Cheetham, parergon and ergon are interchangeable for Shaw. Like the video installation in Lord Henry’s roman à clef, and the high technology replicas of the ‘real’ Dorian and his ‘other’, Lady Di, the picture in Wilde’s novel constitutes both the core, or ergon, and the parerga of the story. They are essential to formulate the endless otherness of the hero, yet they remain liminal to the story proper. Following the paradoxical logic of the baroque, Self’s novel is overwhelmed and overwhelming owing to its redundant structure and its allegorical story. The Dorian whom Lord Henry devises is an alter ego both of the ‘real’, Blairite Dorian and of Wilde’s hero. Like his inter- and intra-textual ‘others’, Wotton’s Dorian lives in a world of excess that inevitably affects us as readers and witnesses. On entering the Wottons’ Chelsea home, we necessarily feel confused, at a loss: It was impossible to tell whether it was day or night-time. Not only was there this crucial ambiguity, but the seasons and even the years were indeterminate. Was it this century or that one? was she wearing this skirt or that suit? Did he take that drug or this drink? Was his preference for that cunt or this arsehole? (Self 2003: 3)
5 The roman à clef is already a liminal phenomenon, swinging between fiction and its ‘real’ referent.
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 17–31 ISSN 0210-6124 24 José M. Yebra
Lord Henry is still the Pygmalion who ushers the hero into aestheticism and decadentism, though late-Victorian affectation has turned into overt gayness. From the moment Dorian poses for Baz, he undergoes a frenetic process of corruption whereby the gothic tone of Wilde’s novel turns gory and overwhelmingly explicit. It is not only that most of the characters are overtly gay. The novel tries (and, in my view, manages) to dissect bodies to the scrutinising eyes of the prospective readers/viewers, following what for Buci-Glucksman constitutes “the main axiom of baroque aesthetics: ‘To be is to see’” (in Ganteau 2000: 29). Dorian: An Imitation is extremely visual, to the same extent as a video game. This is especially so when the narrator recounts the filthy underworld peopled by the hero and his peers. Lord Henry tells Dorian: “You are a mere corpuscle, travelling along these arteries, whereas I have a surgeon’s perspective. I float above it all, and I see Hyde Park as but a green gangrenous fistula in London’s grey corpse” (Self 2003: 26).6 Likewise, as the narrator confirms, London’s brilliant surface cannot “cover up this malodorousness, the swamp that lies beneath the pleasure gardens, and the miasma percolating up through the run-down ornamental terraces” (2003: 62). Dorian’s descent to Hell is so vividly described that it necessarily implicates the reader: He reclined beside a half-open sash window on a bank of organic detritus. Filthy clothes, rotting banana skins, used syringes, stale crusts of bread. Dorian had known that there was squalor like this in London, but he never conceived of himself as part of it… This infective moraine upon which he lay was, Dorian realised, truly sordid… They all felt it— Dorian, Herman, Ginger—the giant plunger of darkness pushing down the weeping sides of the space over their heads, the pressure boiling their blood, then popping their skins, so that their puréed bodies mingled with the grime and muck and the shit to concoct an ultimate fix: the filthy past injected into the vein of the present to create a deathly future. (2003: 48-49) The neo-baroque saturation of matter and filth appeals to our senses and, through them, to our conscience. Scenes of rapid sex and drug-taking (like the one quoted above) recur, transmitting a sense of motion and affective unsettlement to the reader. The technique and effect are analogous to those of recent neo-baroque films like Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge (2001) and Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes (2009), to name just a couple. By adapting the baroque chiaroscuro to the hyper-realistic imagery of computers, these films accomplish a characteristic turn-of-the-millennium aesthetics. Despite (or precisely because of) their excessive explicitness, vividness and gory details, Luhrman’s Paris and Lord Henry’s and Ritchie’s Londons turn out to be convincingly (un)realistic. All of them emulate the working of the trompe l’oeil. The optical effect of this technique, provoked by an excess of realism, has been developed to unimaginable limits by computer technology. Never before have the boundaries between ontological realms been more easily blurred. In fact, it is increasingly difficult to dissociate the virtual imagery from ‘reality’, as Self’s novel proves. As the novel comes to an end, the ‘real’ Dorian seems unable to detach himself from his alter ego as conceived in Lord
6 The organic rendering of Dorian’s London as a pestilent body is nothing new. Other cities, like Venice in Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice, are also personified as decrepit corpses able to propagate death.
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 17–31 ISSN 0210-6124 The ‘Moving’ Lines of Neo-Baroque in Will Self’s Dorian: An Imitation 25
Henry’s fictional work. This excess of realism is paradoxically accomplished through a set of mirrors reflecting en abyme the experience of the different intertextual, intra- or extra-diegetic Dorians. This process of window-opening which trompe l’oeil painting and computers alike have exploited escapes its own dimension and grasps the viewer or reader. This constant shift of perspective, in the form of windows or pages, updates the concept of baroque movement. The relation between the classic concepts of stasis and movement is renegotiated in Dorian: An Imitation. The novel’s overall effect is one of movement, though it continues to rely on still images. Warhol’s Marilyn series, Madonna’s computerised videos or Lady Di’s tabloid shots prove the efficiency of the process: the reiteration of stasis produces a strange sense of movement. This is the way motion pictures work. Yet, against the truth-effect that most classic films allegedly targeted, neo-baroque texts, like Self’s, do not aim at truth, at least not in a conventional way. It is my contention that, rather than at portraying truth per se, the combination of violence, sexual explicitness and a pleasurable narration of AIDS in the hectic eighties aims at moving the reader. It is in this sense that I consider Dorian: An Imitation a novel of affects. The leitmotif, “live fast, die young, and you will leave a good-looking corpse”,7 fits the protagonist and his ‘real’ alter ego, namely Lady Di. If both Dorian and the Princess mirror each other and project their images outside the text or the screen, we, as readers, become deflectors of the whole process. Both figures represent “the [mutable] spirit of the age” (Self 2003: 243), fabricating themselves into visual products in order to be consumed, either in a BBC interview (2003: 239) or in the video installation of a conceptual artist. In spite of their emblematic character, their age seems to have had “too much of him [and her]” (2003: 243), and they must die: the princess “because her name was Di” (2003: 274), and Dorian because it is intertextually necessary. Symbolically, the hero witnesses her death “on the central monitor [of Cathode Narcissus]” (2003: 274) when he is going to die for the second time. If video killed the radio star, new technologies are killing their own products almost as quickly as they create them. The live broadcast of her death while entering “the underpass on the périphérique hotly pursued by paparazzi” (2003: 274) engages the reader or spectator with a postmodernist feeling of immediacy and movement. Likewise, Dorian ends his days dodging one of his victims in an agonising persecution. In Dorian: An Imitation, lines are metaphoric and distorted into sinuous curves, as Cathode Narcissus shows. Baz’s piece of conceptual art is made up of nine screens or parerga which frame Dorian’s own contours and high-camp posing. Working like “reflective surfaces” (2003: 15), the screens constitute a symbolic line that separates the piece of art from the outside. For Derrida, framing is a fundamental aspect of re- representation whereby we can understand the interiority of the work (in Marriner 2002: 354). Without this mutual implication (of the intrinsic and the extrinsic), Derrida goes on, “the object of art/the aesthetic does not come into being” (Marriner 2002: 355). The narcissistic character of Baz’s video installation and the whole novel make
7 This is a sentence spoken by Nick Romano, the hero in Willard Motely’s Knock on Any Door (1947), which became a film two years later with John Derek playing Romano’s part and Humphrey Bogart as Romano’s lawyer, Andrew Morton.
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 17–31 ISSN 0210-6124 26 José M. Yebra
Derrida’s framing of meaning particularly complex; more so, if we take into account the implications that narcissism has (had) for gayness. Dorian’s high-camp posing is unequivocally gay, theatrical and excessive according to our cultural standards. Opposed to the depth, stasis and straightness of the hetero-normative, Dorian’s cathodic ego and alter egos are superficial, mobile and curvilinear. The reflection of the hero on the screen, split into dancing Narcissi, reveals an unfeasible and fractured identity. Moreover, as happens in Wilde’s novel, Dorian soon catches a glimpse of his terrible metamorphosis. The perfect lines that originally inspired and made up the symmetry of Baz’s masterpiece are distorted: “Dorian saw it: the faces on the screen had all changed—and for the worse… He grimaced and drew closer… Closer and closer he drew, until all he could see were lines of dots leading into the future” (Self 2003: 70). Our eye is guided beyond by Dorian, reducing the illusion of a beautiful male body to mere lines, and its cells into dots of light. Both Ndalianis and Ganteau make reference to Deleuze’s Pli Infini, or Infinite Fold. Closely connected to Derrida’s parerga and the way they are multiply folded, as happens in trompe l’oeil motives, “the infinite fold is designed to create the illusion that … it can leave the surface of the painting freed from all material constraints” (Ganteau 2000: 32). Coming from Leibnitz, Deleuze’s concept can be applied to literature, as Ganteau demonstrates in his analysis of Peter Ackroyd’s English Music. It is my contention that in Dorian: An Imitation, the infinite fold is both metaphorical and physical, a static and mobile curve. Thus, characters are connected to each other through “congas of buggery” in a spiral of all-embracing pleasure and death (Self 2003: 95). Drawing on Gottfried Leibnitz’ and Gilles Deleuze’s theories, Ndalianis renders an acute description of the production and reception of neo-baroque art: One serial turns into another, and into yet another still: one illusion leads to an alternate path outside the “text”, then finds its way back to affect interpretation; or one medium connects fully to another, relying on the complex interconnectedness of the system as a whole… The series of folds construct a convoluted labyrinth that the audience is temptingly invited to explore. Yet the baroque and neo-baroque differ in a significant way: Digital technology … has created more literal labyrinths for players to traverse. Highlighting a crisis in traditional forms of symptomatic interpretation, the multilinear nature of game spaces suggests that our modes of interpretation need to reflect an equally neo-baroque multiplicity. (2004: 27) Although we are not players, as readers we are invited to unfold Dorian’s labyrinth, or should we say Henry Wotton’s? In any case, we must confront the polyhedric nature of the text and the heroes’ bodies, the way an illusion turns into another, and how this wavering effect necessarily affects ourselves as it affects our perception of the ‘reality’ we inhabit. The ‘lines’ or fibres of Dorian’s body swing between the beautiful and the sublime. His symmetry echoes that of Greek kouroi, though its whole effect goes beyond harmony. The curve of his back is, for Wotton, “like the spine of some antediluvian creature, browsing in the sexual swamp. His haunches quivered as he bowed down, rose, bowed down, as if abasing himself before a phallic idol, an idol which panted and groaned and eventually cried out under the pressure of such adulation” (Self 2003: 159). Dorian’s body and its multiple reflections recall different linear patterns other than
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 17–31 ISSN 0210-6124 The ‘Moving’ Lines of Neo-Baroque in Will Self’s Dorian: An Imitation 27 baroque: namely William Hogarth’s (1997) ‘line of beauty’, Aubrey Beardsley’s curve (Denisoff 2002: 80), and the lines of the postmodernist sublime as represented, according to Shaw (2006: 120-23), in Barnett Baruch Newman’s paintings. I will finally focus on Newman’s painting and his use of lines,8 as approached by Philip Shaw. This will necessarily lead us to Jean-François Lyotard’s notion of the postmodern sublime and, indirectly, to AIDS. As Shaw points out, though apparently simple, the impact of Newman’s “large, asymmetrical blocks of colour divided by rectilinear lines, or zips, … on the viewer is mesmerising” (2006: 121). The brushstrokes “draw the eye into the canvas, to the point where it is impossible to distinguish between object and subject: the inside of the painting, the ergon, and the outside, or parergon, in which it occurs”. For Newman, the effect of this warping of time and space is profoundly spiritual. As he writes in his influential essay ‘The Sublime Now’ (1948), the intention is to “reassert … man’s natural desire for the exalted, for a concern with our relationship to the absolute emotions” (Shaw 2006: 121). What is here at stake is how contemporary literature in general, and Self’s novel in particular, uses different devices and tropes, like lines or intertextual references, to render the sublime and thus interpellate our emotions. Against (or rather supplementing) Kantian aesthetic theories, critics like Derrida and Lyotard and artists like Newman (and other abstract expressionists) still consider the sublime as a notion worth discussing. Although lacking its former transcendentalism, the sublime forces disruption, leading “critical thought to a crisis [through] its resistance to rationalist appropriation” (Shaw 2006: 129-30). In Shaw’s view (2006: 122), the blocks of colour split by zips in Newman’s paintings produce a bizarre feeling of extinction and nothingness. In contrast to the beautiful, which, for Lyotard, relies on “the unity of experience” (1984: 72), on producing “data that can be grasped by sensibility and that are intelligible to understanding” (1984: 124), the postmodern sublime resists a closed conceptualization, as far as it “can only take place … at the price of suspending the active powers of the mind” (1984: 124). Therefore, the question is whether Dorian: An Imitation makes us feel something akin to what, in Shaw’s view, Newman’s paintings do. In other words, do the novel’s overflowed frames of meaning and their metaphoric lines place us on the edge of otherness, making us revise the astonishment fostered by the sublime? Are we compelled by its moving lines as we are reading the text?
3.3 The excess of AIDS
The sublime allegedly transports our bodies and moves our minds and conscience to the limit, i.e. to a disturbing astonishment that cancels reason. However, opposed to the classic concept of transcendence, the postmodern sublime is rather demythologising. The feeling of astonishment enmeshed in the face of AIDS and of its victims points to a sense of undecidability which, paradoxically, demands articulation. This takes us to
8 It may seem contradictory to use Newman —one of the forerunners of minimalism— in an article on the neo-baroque. Yet, his artistic production proves to be particularly useful to describe the postmodern sublime.
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 17–31 ISSN 0210-6124 28 José M. Yebra
Lyotard’s masterpiece, where he points out: “In the differend, something asks to be put into phrases and suffers from the wrong of not being able to be put into phrases right away” (1988: 13). For Lyotard, this state of undecidability, whereby we are surpassed by our inability to supply a concept for an unspeakable event is ‘ideally’ represented by the Holocaust (1988: 88). In Dorian: An Imitation, the Holocaust is replaced by AIDS. Although literature can still astonish, it can no longer aim at transcending its textuality. That is, despite the many frames Dorian: An Imitation may overflow, it cannot escape its textuality, and thus any reference to the transcendental constitutes an ephemeral delusion. Its characters will always escape our reach, for they multiply ad infinitum, like Lyotard’s analoga. Who is the ‘real’ Dorian? The one Wotton devises? Or the one living the Blairite dream? Who is the ‘real’ Lady Di? And, to what extent does she or her imagery interact with the hero(es)? What do artefacts such as the picture, the video installation or Wotton’s roman à clef make reference to? Are they metaphors? Of what? Of beauty, death, the sublime, the crisis of representation, or of our interaction with the other? All these open questions only corroborate the complex and ironic character of contemporary transcendence. The intangible texts and images evoked in the novel refer paradoxically to an excess of corporeality. Dorian himself is a metamorphic beast whom, owing to his excessive physicality, Wotton regards as “the true retrovirus” (Self 2003: 108). The swing between sexual omnivorousness (2003: 98) and insubstantiality (2003: 112) works like Marilyn Monroe’s imagery in Warhol’s series, simultaneously disembodied and sexually reified. When we find out that the Dorian we have been reading about is part of another character’s imagination, we confront anew the logic of the sublime. The hero’s capacity to multiply fold ontological layers turns into a fake transcendentalism, a mere textual game. Only as far as we believe Wotton’s metafiction can we grasp a glimpse of the sublime. It is only through the process of reading that we have access to the different Dorians’ fragmentation and replication. The outburst of AIDS revived the poetics of the sublime, as Self’s novel proves. Although published when gays—like the ‘real’ Dorian—had gained some rights during Blair’s first term and the disease was becoming for many a matter of the past, Wotton’s roman à clef returns to the nineteen-eighties. The character’s intradiegetic narration is particularly eager to describe the terrifying effect of the disease on youths, whose “radiator-grille ribcages and concentration-camp eyes telegraphed … the front line with Death” (Self 2003: 78), and whose “faces were studded with Kaposi’s sarcoma” (2003: 78). Wotton’s apocalyptic discourse defies the blockage of representation that this type of traumatic episode usually brings about, more insofar as he is also infected by the virus, both as a diegetic character and narrator and also as an intradiegetic character. The narrator’s visual rendering of the physical impact of the disease stands out against his failing sight, as he suffers from “severe viral conjunctivitis … [and] post-operative cararacts” (2003: 183). It is, he argues, “as if a veil of beauty has been thrown over the world—because, let’s face it, the closer you get to someone the uglier they become”
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 17–31 ISSN 0210-6124 The ‘Moving’ Lines of Neo-Baroque in Will Self’s Dorian: An Imitation 29
(2003: 183). Wotton’s discourse recalls Derek Jarman’s latest films which, in turn, evoke Newman’s (and Yves Klein’s) sublime paintings.9 Like Newman’s paintings, Jarman’s last film Blue (1993) shows no recognizable images. It consists “of an uninterrupted aquamarine screen … revolving around Jarman’s experience of AIDS, … an ascetic denial of visual pleasure” (Moor 2000: 49). The monochromatic screen of Blue “comments primarily upon the loss of sight which he suffered as a result of his own illness” (2000: 50). Despite the “free-floating immateriality” of the film, for Moor, “the melding of matter and spirit forms the basis of Jarman’s romantic quest” (2000: 52), as it does in Dorian: An Imitation. Blue’s monochrome both renders and rejects the materiality of AIDS. Instead of rotten bodies, Jarman resorts to a semiotic void that “is still a signifier, and its cultural connotations of spirituality or infinity propel the film towards the sublime” (Moor 2000: 63). However, like Self’s novel, other works by Jarman surpass this spiritual sublime to render the bodily effects of the disease on its (gay) victims. There may be a void of monochromatic nothingness in what the characters and readers or spectators see, or how they see themselves reflected; even that nothingness may be particularly effective to represent “the cellular Auschwitz of AIDS” (Self 2003: 252). Yet, there must be a more corporeal response to AIDS. Dorian is insubstantial, but excessively physical. Likewise, Jarman’s Queer exhibition of paintings in 1992 is predominantly red, aggressive and explicit, “connoting carnality and rage, and provocatively suggesting the body’s fluids and the disease of the flesh, … a stark antithesis to the cool of Blue” (Moor 2000: 64). Both Self and Jarman conflate spirit and matter, the sublime and the corporeal, so as to render testimony of the otherwise unspeakable, and thus astonish the spectator.
4. Conclusion
Dorian: An Imitation constitutes a masterful example of the aeon of the baroque in late- postmodernism. Instead of the safety, stasis and depth of classicism, the novel definitely prefers the distorted discourse and imagery of neo-baroque. It scrutinizes contemporary society, particularly its most neglected and dark corners, in search of new ways of rendering ‘reality’. Like the seventeenth century, the turn of the millennium is a moment of transition which, therefore, needs new formulas to represent a new status quo. However, this process is especially problematic in our time, when an overall ontological crisis makes it difficult, or virtually impossible, to represent what lies outside the text. As the novel focuses on the gay underworld of the nineteen-eighties, the crisis of representation derived from the outburst of AIDS constitutes a fundamental issue. Dorian: An Imitation updates baroque devices and tropes, particularly excess and movement, in order to affect the reader. Through intertextual references, visual narratives, frames and metaphoric lines, we are propelled to the realm of the sublime.
9 Moor points to Yves Klein (1928-1962) as a referent for Jarman’s monochromatic last films (2000: 63). In spite of the religiosity implicit in his paintings, Klein’s monochromes are comparable to those by Newman.
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 17–31 ISSN 0210-6124 30 José M. Yebra
However, this push to the unbounded is not akin to the sublime in Burke’s Empiricism or classic German Idealism, but is controlled by and de-secularised out of the logic of late postmodernism. Although readers are purportedly affected by the sense of movement and excess of the frantic narration of Wotton and the extradiegetic voice of the epilogue, we are never led to transcendence. The novel is blocked within the limits of the ergon and its surrounding parerga. The ultimate aporia of Dorian: An Imitation is however that its ergon is a void, which only has meaning through multiple references and within the artistic paraphernalia of parerga. The story of Wotton’s Dorian is deferred to that of Wilde’s Dorian and that of Blair’s Dorian. Likewise, these characters are reduced to the lines of their delusive beauty, as represented in interconnected arte- facts and metaphors, namely Cathode Narcissus, a decadent portrait, and Lady Di’s avalanche of shots. This web of never-ending references produces a sense of frenzy akin to that produced by action films and video games. This neo-baroque vertigo necessarily moves readers, confronting them with their own role, as well as with “the neglected and other”, particularly that implicit in the act of reading itself.
Works Cited Anon. 2002: ‘A Selfish Dorian’. Times Online 16 October
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 17–31 ISSN 0210-6124 The ‘Moving’ Lines of Neo-Baroque in Will Self’s Dorian: An Imitation 31
Lyotard, Jean-François 1984: The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi. Manchester: Manchester UP. ––––– 1988: The Differend: Phrases in Dispute. Trans. Georges Van Den Abbeele. Manchester: Manchester UP. Marriner, Robin 2002: ‘Derrida and the Parergon’. Paul Smith and Carolyn Wilde, eds. A Companion to Art Theory Represented. Oxford: Blackwell Companions in Cultural Studies. 349-59. Maturin, Charles 2000 (1820): Melmoth the Wanderer. London and New York: Penguin. Moor, Andrew 2000: ‘Spirit and Matter: Romantic Mythologies in the Films of Derek Jarman’. David Alderson and Linda Anderson eds. Territories of Desire in Queer Culture. Manchester: Manchester UP. 49-67. Ndalinais, Angela 2004: Neo-Baroque Aesthetics and Contemporary Entertainment. Cambridge: MIT P. Pelegrín, Benito 2000: Figurations de l’infini: l’Âge baroque européen. Paris. Seuil. Ritchie, Guy 2010 (2009): Sherlock Holmes. Warner Home Videos. Sassone, Helena 1972: ‘Influencia del barroco en la literatura actual’ Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos 90.268: 147-60. Self, Will 2003 (2002): Dorian: An Imitation. London: Penguin. Shaw, Philip 2006: The Sublime. London and New York: Routledge. Wilde, Oscar (2007) (1891): The Picture of Dorian Gray. New York and London: Norton. Wölfflin, Heinrich 1986 (1888): Renacimiento y barroco. Barcelona: Paidós.
Received 4 September 2010 Revised version accepted 20 January 2011
José M. Yebra holds a PhD from the University of Zaragoza, where he is currently Lecturer. His research interests centre on gender and trauma; postmodernism.
Address: Department of English, Centro Universitario de la Defensa-AGM, University of Zaragoza. Ctra. de Huesca s/n, 50090, Zaragoza, Spain. Tel.: +34 976739636. Fax: +34 976739824
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 17–31 ISSN 0210-6124
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 33–52 ISSN 0210-6124
Shakespeare in García Lorca’s Early Poems
Juan F. Cerdá University of Murcia [email protected]
After establishing Lorca’s possible access to Shakespeare’s plays, this essay seeks to characterise the transformation of Shakespeare’s dramatic materials — especially A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Hamlet, but also Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet and Othello — in Lorca’s early poetry (1917-1919). It analyses the neo-romantic reclamation of Shakespearean drama, and of Shakespeare as a cultural figure, within Lorca’s rupture with the aesthetics of realist poetry. It relates Lorca’s assimilation of Shakespeare’s plays to Shakespeare’s reception in Continental symbolist poetry and within the British pre- Raphaelite movement. It investigates the appropriation of Shakespeare’s cultural value in Lorca’s early access to the literary field.
Keywords: Shakespeare; García Lorca; Spain; Europe; reception studies; poetry
Shakespeare en los primeros poemas de García Lorca
Tras establecer las posibles vías de acceso de Lorca a las obras de Shakespeare, este ensayo persigue caracterizar la transformación del material dramático shakesperiano — especialmente El sueño de una noche de verano y de Hamlet, pero también Macbeth, Romeo y Julieta, y Otelo — en la poesía de juventud de Lorca (1917-1919). Se analiza la recuperación neo- romántica de la obra y la figura de Shakespeare dentro de la ruptura lorquiana con la poesía de estética realista, y se relaciona la asimilación del teatro shakesperiano de García Lorca con el simbolismo poético de la Europa continental y el pre-rafaelitismo británico. Se investiga la apropiación del valor cultural de Shakespeare en la incorporación al campo literario del joven Lorca. Palabras clave: Shakespeare; García Lorca; España; Europa; estudios de recepción; poesía 34 Juan F. Cerdá
1. Introduction Already in his earliest poems, certain linguistic choices suggest that García Lorca’s poetic language was permeated by an early reading of Shakespeare’s plays. Dated 23 October 1917, the second poem in Lorca’s earliest poetry (Yo estaba triste frente a los sembrados [I was sad before the sown fields]; García Lorca 1994b: 30-32) stands as the first trace of such a relationship. The poem indicates Lorca’s familiarity with A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the age of nineteen, while other pieces from this period (1917-1919) illustrate that Lorca had also access to other plays by Shakespeare.1 Bearing in mind that Lorca’s knowledge of English was probably fairly limited, it seems reasonable to suppose that the edition of Shakespeare’s complete works which Mathilde Pomès found on Lorca’s desk in 1931 was either not in English or an iconic memento of his brief visit to London and Oxford in the summer of 1929 (Martín 1986: 95-97). In addition to this, since Luis Astrana Marín’s all-prose translations, which had the merit of being the first rendering of the entire corpus from the original English, began to appear in 1921, it is more likely that Lorca initially grew familiar with Shakespeare’s work through Rafael Martínez Lafuente’s rendering of French versions of the plays (1915-1918). Four of the eight volumes of Martínez Lafuente’s Complete Works of Shakespeare were found in Lorca’s library (Adani 1999: 10). The volumes included: I. Hamlet, The Two Gentlemen of Verona; IV. The Merchant of Venice, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Cymbeline; V. Macbeth, Troilus and Cressida, Henry VIII; VIII. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Tempest, The Merry Wives of Windsor. These four volumes account for almost all the references to Shakespeare in Lorca’s juvenilia and later work. Familiarity with Othello and, especially, Romeo and Juliet, which will be appropriated in Lorca’s later experimental dramatic work, must then be attributed to other translations, stage productions or, as Fernández Montesinos believed (Adani 1999: 10), to the possibility that Lorca had owned all eight volumes of Martínez Lafuente’s Complete Works. In these early years, it is perhaps significant, therefore, that the speaker in Yo estaba triste frente a los sembrados refers twice to his copy of A Midsummer Night’s Dream as a librote: the image of the ‘large book’ among whose pages the speaker of the poem falls asleep could be connected with these volumes. Also equally conceivably, Lorca may have retained an image of the Italian actor Ermete Zacconi’s highly acclaimed performances at the Teatro Comedia and the Princesa or more recent productions by Ricardo Calvo, José Tallaví, Francisco Morano and Emilio Thuillier.2 In either case, whether Lorca worked from actual texts or live performances, it is a creative assimilation of Shakespearean dramaturgy, rather than a precise recollection of the scripts themselves, that spills over into Lorca’s production. It is, precisely, such active appropriation that serves as a point of departure for the analysis of Shakespeare’s presence in Lorca’s early poems.
1 The research for this essay was done under the auspices of the projects BFF2002-02019 and HUM-2005-02556/FILO, financed by the Ministerio de Educación and Feder. 2 For the performance history of Shakespeare’s plays in Spain, see Par 1936 and the Shakespeare in Spain Performance Database from the Shakespeare in Spain research project at the University of Murcia (www.um.es/shakespeare).
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 33–52 ISSN 0210-6124 Shakespeare in García Lorca’s Early Poems 35
The analysis of Shakespeare’s role in García Lorca’s early poetic production has been largely overlooked by academic criticism. While Silvia Adani’s book, La presenza di Shakespeare nell’opera di García Lorca (1999), offers an almost exhaustive inventory of Lorca’s references to Shakespeare, the author does not engage in analysing or characterising the presence of the English playwright in Lorca’s work. Thus, within Lorquian criticism, where Shakespearean drama is only of marginal interest, the few passing allusions to Shakespeare tend to cluster round the visible traces of Shakespearean drama in Lorca’s experimental plays such as El público and Comedia sin título, where the explicit theatrical role of Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream is hardly avoidable (Martínez Nadal 1976; Laffranque 1978; Huerta Calvo 2006). On the other side of the critical spectrum, García Lorca’s El público appeared in Fischlin and Fortier’s Adaptations of Shakespeare: A Critical Anthology of Plays from the Seventeenth Century to the Present (2000). There, their short introduction to the play probably stands as the only contribution to the study of the relationship between Shakespeare and García Lorca within the field of Shakespeare Studies. Perhaps, the explicit visibility of Shakespearean drama in Lorca’s experimental plays and the late publication and marginality of Lorca’s early poetry within his better known poetic and dramatic production have prevented critical interest in the topic. Consequently, this article seeks to halt the delay in the study of Shakespeare’s role in García Lorca’s early poetry. In its first part, this essay interrogates the formal and thematic mechanisms that Lorca recurrently applied to Shakespearean drama. The analysis of these mechanisms provides a coherent frame for the otherwise seeming arbitrariness of Lorca’s creative appropriation. At the same time, these processes advance the seminal guidelines of Lorca’s experimental adaptation of Shakespearean drama at the latter stages of his production in the 1930s. Subsequently, in the second part, the discussion moves on to describe Lorca’s perception of Shakespeare as a literary figure. Here, the early poems serve to illustrate Shakespeare’s role in Lorca’s aesthetic aspirations, the position that both are imagined or projected to fill, through the poems, within Lorca’s contemporary cultural landscape and, subsequently, the image of Shakespeare projected by Lorca at this early stage. As in the case of Lorca’s creative mechanisms of adaptation, this section closes with a discussion of the poems as an anticipation of Lorca’s later traits. In these, Lorca already demonstrates an interest in Shakespeare’s canonical iconicity, which will become a problematic concern at a later stage in his experimental dramas.
2. Lorca’s early rewriting techniques: The tragic appeal of Shakespearean drama In this early period (1917-1919), Lorca’s engagement with the poetic expression of tragic love results in the reformulation of Shakespeare’s forest in A Midsummer Night’s Dream as a central signifier and site for the expression of fatalistic poetic pictures of despair and frustration, which will later on extend to Lorca’s experimental plays El público (The Public; 1930) and Comedia sin título (Play Without a Title; 1936). Lorca’s poem from 1917 reads:
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 33–52 ISSN 0210-6124 36 Juan F. Cerdá
Yo estaba triste frente a los sembrados. I was sad before the sown fields. 3 Era una tarde clara. It was a clear afternoon. Dormido entre las hojas de un librote Asleep among the pages of a heavy book Shakespeare me acompañaba… Shakespeare was with me... El sueño de una noche de verano A Midsummer Night’s Dream Era el librote. Was the heavy book. Estaban The ploughs Descansando en la tierra los arados. Were resting on the soil. La tristeza de aquellos armatostes The sadness of those big useless objects Dormidos junto al agua. Asleep by the water. ¡Qué hermosas son las nubes del otoño! How beautiful are the clouds of autumn! Lejos los perros ladran. Afar the dogs bark. Y por los olivares lejanos aparecen And through the distant olive groves appear Las manos de la noche. The hands of night. Mi distancia My internal Interior se hace turbia. Distance grows blurred. Tiene mi corazón telas de araña… My heart has cobwebs... ¡El demonio de Shakespeare The demon of Shakespeare Qué ponzoña me ha vertido en el alma! What poison he has poured into my soul!
(García Lorca 1994b: 29-30)
Yo estaba triste frente a los sembrados (I was sad before the sown fields) stands as the earliest trace of Shakespeare’s dramaturgy in Lorca’s verses. In the poem, the English playwright is blamed for causing the speaker’s sadness after falling sleep. The speaker’s melancholy — provoked by the ‘poison poured in to the soul’ when reading A Midsummer Night’s Dream — is explored in parallel to Shakespeare’s play, which Lorca borrows in order to reflect on the arbitrariness of affections and the afflictions of unrequited love:
¡Casualidad temible es el amor! A fearsome coincidence love is! Nos dormimos y un hada We fall asleep and a fairy Hace que al despertarnos adoremos Makes us adore the first passer-by ¡Qué tragedia tan honda! What a profound tragedy! . . . Al primero que pasa When we awake.
(García Lorca 1994b: 30)
Like the characters in Shakespeare’s play, in the poem the speaker suffers the consequences of love at first sight, a prey to the influence of ‘a fairy’. From there, he moves on to question the nature of ‘a fairy’, and the agonic unpredictability of the human experience of love (García Lorca 1994b: 31-32). In a way, almost all other Shakespearean characters and references in Lorca’s early poems are swallowed by the ‘dark green forest’ already formulated in Yo estaba triste frente a los sembrados. As is also characteristic of Lorca’s later verse, in these poems images and metaphors are already constantly revisited and reformulated. At this first stage, Lorca rewrote Shakespeare’s materials and adapted them to his early poetic
3 All Lorca’s translations are mine.
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 33–52 ISSN 0210-6124 Shakespeare in García Lorca’s Early Poems 37 interests by having their former dramatic characteristics transformed into the mood of a new poetic locus. Thus, only three months later (30 January 1918), García Lorca went back to some of the ideas included in Yo estaba triste frente a los sembrados when he united his dark vision of the forest in A Midsummer Night’s Dream’s with Hamlet in El bosque (The Forest). Unlike the earlier poem, in El bosque references to Hamlet are not metaphorical, thematic or oblique:
El bosque es lo romántico de la naturaleza The forest is that which is romantic in nature. Ideales figuras desfilaron por él. Ideal figures paraded in it. Shakespeare glorioso y triste a Hamlet vio Sad and glorious Shakespeare saw Hamlet pasar walk by Un día que entró en su negra verdura a One day as he entered its black greenness to meditar. meditate . . .
(García Lorca 1994b: 122)
In his reformulation of Shakespeare’s work, Lorca relocates Hamlet’s meditations at Elsinore by imagining the character inserted in the Dream’s forest. Thus, Lorca’s El bosque offers a rare example of poetic adaptation, through the rewriting and conflation of two apparently distant dramatic works by Shakespeare;4 this adaptation will become recurrent when, in La muerte de Ofelia (The Death of Ophelia), Lorca again reunites disparate Shakespearean elements. Thus, just as he had merged the Dream and Hamlet in El bosque, in La muerte de Ofelia Lorca potentially summons one image from a different Shakespearean source:
Hundiéndose en las sombras. Hamlet con Sinking in the shadows. Hamlet with his su siniestra sinister Mirada ve el espectro que lleva el corazón Look sees the spectre he bears in his heart Herido y a una daga Wounded and a dagger Que sangra en las tinieblas. That bleeds in the darkness.
(García Lorca 1994b: 420-421)
Lorca had already diverged form its Shakespearean source when, in his poetic reconstruction of Ophelia’s death, Hamlet stood as witness of the scene. In the
4 In 1930, Lorca will rewrite Romeo and Juliet into the metatheatrics of his experimental play El público (The Public), while at the same time Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream will operate as underlying theme. As Anderson has suggested, “the scenographic and symbolic nexus of night, darkness, wood and moonlight is a key factor in A Midsummer Night’s Dream . . . A strikingly similar range of scenographic elements, possessing both individual extended significance and a place in a more complex web of imagery, is to be found in several of Lorca’s plays” (Anderson 1985: 189-90). Also, critics such as Anderson or Ernesto Jareño have seen Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream as the originating locus for the setting in the unfinished early drama Elenita from 1921 (Jareño 1970: 223), and later of Bodas de sangre (Blood Wedding; Anderson 1985: 189-190).
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 33–52 ISSN 0210-6124 38 Juan F. Cerdá rewriting, just before Ophelia drowns, Hamlet has a vision of Ophelia’s wounded heart and of the ‘dagger that bleeds in the darkness’. Certainly, this last image may autonomously stand as a symbol of Hamlet’s responsibility for Ophelia’s death, yet the hallucination of the bleeding dagger as a response to a guilty conscience does not belong to the ‘tragedy of the ghost prince’, but to Macbeth:
MACBETH Is this a dagger which I see before me, . . . A dagger of the mind, a false creation Proceeding from the heat-oppressèd brain? . . . I see thee still, And on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood . . .
(II.i.33, 38-39,45-46) 5
One way to account for Lorca’s recycling of the bloody dagger in his poem about Ophelia’s death or his placing of Hamlet in the forest of A Midsummer Night’s Dream is to regard such conflation as a case of misplacement, that is, as if Lorca “did not know his Shakespeare”. Regardless of the extent of Lorca’s familiarity with Shakespeare’s plays, the issue that will close the conclusions of this essay, the fact is that throughout his body of work Lorca never showed an interest in direct quotation or verbatim appropriation of his sources. It would perhaps be more accurate, therefore, to describe Lorca’s intertextual relationship with Shakespeare as an interested creative derivation or as an idiosyncratic reworking of selected materials. In the case of Lorca, interest in Shakespeare can be limited to an image, a symbol, a setting, perhaps even a mood that eventually travels into the poet’s writing. Together with this, La muerte de Ofelia also illustrates two characteristics of Lorca’s appropriation of Shakespeare. On the one hand, the poem provides an active interpretation of the source, Queen Gertrude’s narration of Ophelia’s Death:
LAERTES Drowned? O, where? QUEEN GERTRUDE There is a willow grows aslant a brook That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream. Therewith fantastic garlands did she make Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples, That liberal shepherds give a grosser name, But our cold maids do dead men’s fingers call them. There on the pendent boughs her crownet weeds, Clamb’ring to hang, an envious silver broke, When down the weedy trophies and herself Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide, And mermaid-like a while they bore her up;
5 All quotations from Shakespeare are from Wells and Taylor’s 2005 edition.
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 33–52 ISSN 0210-6124 Shakespeare in García Lorca’s Early Poems 39
Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes, As one incapable of her own distress, Or like a creature native and endued Unto that element. But long it could not be Till that her garments, heavy with their drink, Pulled the poor wretch from her melodious lay To muddy death. (IV.vii.138-55).
In the Spanish poem, Ophelia’s death is connected to the dark green forest — which Lorca extracts from Shakespeare’s Dream in Yo estaba triste frente a los sembrados — in the way both forests give shelter to those ‘incapable of [their] own distress’. As is characteristic of Lorca’s appropriation of Shakespeare in his early poetry, when he committed himself to reconstructing Ophelia’s drowning, Lorca is drawn by the play’s potential to develop the theme of unrequited love. On the other hand, the poem fills a space in the play by providing a poetic picture of Ophelia’s actual death, which is absent in the play:
¡Con qué santa dulzura With such a holy sweetness Se muere la doncella! The maiden dies! Shakespeare tejió con vientos Shakespeare wove with winds La maravilla tierna de la mujer extraña The tender wonder of the strange woman Que pasa en la tragedia del príncipe That passes by the tragedy of the ghost fantasma prince Como un sueño de nubes Like a dream of clouds Recogidas y castas, Cloistered and chaste, Hecha de espigas rubias Made of blonde ears of corn Y estrellas apagadas, And extinct stars, Que se fue sonriendo por los reinos del Who left smiling through the kingdoms agua of water Como una luz errante Like a wandering light Que encuentra al fin su lámpara. That finds its lamp at last.
(García Lorca 1994b: 422-23)
Lorca will re-use this technique again when he opens up a narrative space for Juliet in the middle of his experimental play El público, later on in 1930. For the time being, in this fragment Lorca casts Ophelia as a virgin through the religious tones of his early poetry (‘holy sweetness’, ‘sacred sadness’, ‘vague corolla of a religious flower’), adapting Shakespeare’s character to the development of his own field of poetic expression. As Lorca develops these early poetic landscapes, the collection of juvenile verses evinces a complex network of Shakespearean intertextuality, which comprises a relative unity arising from the common objective: putting Shakespeare to work for Lorca’s early tragic project.6 Thus, as Lorca merges Ophelia’s death with Macbeth’s imaginary
6 As Silvia Adani points out, Lorca’s assimilation of the Shakespearean forest can also be seen to resonate in other juvenilia poems like ‘Baladas de las niñas en los jardines’, ‘Lux’, or in Lorca’s early prose work, Impresiones y paisajes (Adani 1999: 33-35). Then, Adani locates echoes of
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 33–52 ISSN 0210-6124 40 Juan F. Cerdá dagger, or makes Hamlet witness Ophelia drowning and strides through A Midsummer Night’s Dream’s forest of fairies, the disparate Shakespearean references gain uniformity if perceived as reinforcing the collection’s tragic ethos. Lorca’s initial interest in Shakespeare relies on tragedy and, even when the Spanish poet incorporates Shakespearean comedy into his poetry, the festive, harmonious or conciliatory elements of a play like A Midsummer Night’s Dream are reshaped into the despair of the poems’ speakers. As fellow poet and scholar, Pedro Salinas put it,
Lorca . . . expresses the feeling for death with an undoubted originality and personal accent . . . He discovers it all around him, in the native air that gives him breath, in the singing of the servants in his house, in books written in his tongue, in the churches of his city . . . (Salinas 1955-1956: 18).
However personal or original, Lorca also found a well of images, symbols and characters to develop the tragic initial interests of his early poetry in the foreign dramaturgy of Shakespeare. The earliest poem, Yo estaba triste frente a los sembrados, is particularly characteristic of this early phase in the way it assimilates Shakespeare’s Dream into the tragic mode, an idiosyncratic example of what will later be developed in subsequent work. Lorca’s rewriting can be compared with one of the seminal characterisations of Shakespeare’s forests put forward by Northrop Frye who, writing in the 1950s and 1960s, suggested a characterisation of Shakespeare’s archetypical green world. Like Lorca, Frye also detected the tragic potential of Shakespearean comedy, yet he located and delimited it to a certain moment in the comic narration. For Frye, “the images of chaos, tempest, illusion, madness, darkness, death, belong to the middle of the action of the comedy, in the phase of confused identity” (Frye 1965: 137), yet, in the case of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, “[after] the action moves from a world of parental tyranny and irrational law into the forest . . . the comic resolution is attained, and the cast returns with it into their former world” (Frye 1965: 141). By contrast, in Lorca’s rewriting of the Dream’s forest there is no harmonic return. In fact, in Lorca the forest stands as a site of the opposite tyrannical and irrational laws of love. While for Frye Shakespeare’s green world constitutes a device for the resolution of comedy, Lorca’s forest is painted with a “black greenness” (“Negra verdura” [García Lorca 1994b: 122]) from which the speaker never returns. These mechanisms of selection and revision are characteristic of both Lorca’s early relationship with Shakespeare and of his latter incorporation of Shakespearean elements into his experimental dramas.
Hamlet in Lorca’s early prose (Meditación que trata de nuestra pequeñez y del misterio de la noche), other early poetry (‘La balada de Caperucita roja’) and later poems like ‘Baladilla de Eloisa muerta’, ‘Sombra’, ‘Reflexión’, ‘El sátiro blanco’, (from Lorca’s Suites), ‘Nocturnos de la ventana’ (from Canciones) and ‘Romance sonámbulo’ (from Romancero Gitano). According to Adani, echoes from ‘La muerte de Ofelia’ reach Lorca’s very late poem, ‘Casida de la muchacha dorada’, from 1936 Diván del Tamarit (see Adani 1999: 77-110 and Martín 1988: 205).
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 33–52 ISSN 0210-6124 Shakespeare in García Lorca’s Early Poems 41
The tragic assimilation of Shakespearean drama initiated in Yo estaba triste frente a los sembrados permeates the rest of Lorca’s Shakespearean early poems. Thus, although the forest in El bosque seems to be initially characterised through brighter tones —
El bosque surge en los campos serenos The forest emerges in the serene fields Como acorde profundo de azul Like a profound chord of blue profundidad… profundity...... El bosque es una piedra preciosa con vida . . . The forest is a precious stone with life Que oculta melodías de infinito cristal. That hides melodies of infinite crystal. Tiene acento de luna su divina maleza, Its divine undergrowth has a moon accent, Tienen sus troncos tonos de una épica Its trunks have tones of epic grandeur. grandeza.
(García Lorca 1994b: 121)
— this ambivalent forest ends up being characterised through attributes that lie closer to the darker overtones of the earlier poem:
El bosque tiene algo de mística tragedia, The forest has some of that mystical tragedy, Tiene melancolía de dulce terciopelo . . Has melancholy of sweet velvet . . . Encierran sus encantos un silencio mortal. Its charms hide a mortal silence.
(García Lorca 1994b: 121)
El bosque can thus be traced back to Lorca’s earlier version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which, for him, stands as a symbolic location of disharmony. Again, it seems as if Lorca had dispossessed Shakespeare’s forest of all of its reconciliatory potential and focused on the tensions created by the fairies. As in the earlier poem, Lorca’s version of Shakespeare’s forest generically recasts the Dream into the tragic mode:
Por la noche su orquesta canta en clave de fa. At night its [the forest’s] orchestra sings in the key of F. Sus naves escarchadas de amargura y de pena Its naves frosted in bitterness and sorrow Las cruzan silenciosas almas enamoradas Are crossed by silent souls in love Que vivieron dolientes las antiguas baladas . . . That lived the old ballads in suffering.
(García Lorca 1994b: 121-22)
Then, in La muerte de Ofelia, which dates from 7 September 1918, the poem starts by constructing the image of Ophelia, slowly drowning in the “green water”, “a hidden pool / Among the clear waves of hope/dream/illusion” (“Agua verde”, “un oculto remanso / Entre las ondas claras de illusion” [García Lorca 1994b: 420]). Lorca, then, juxtaposes a number of images to construct the symbolic narration of the poem:
Como vaga corola de una flor religiosa Like the vague corolla of a religious flower Se hunde y el Amor She drowns and Love
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 33–52 ISSN 0210-6124 42 Juan F. Cerdá
Ha tronchado su arco sobre una encina vieja Has cracked its arrow on a holm-oak Hundiéndose en las sombras. Sinking in the shadows.
(García Lorca 1994b: 420)
The poem then extends the characteristic religious overtones of Lorca’s early writing through a second image:
Y Ofelia dulce cae And sweet Ophelia falls En el abismo blando. Into the soft abyss. Toda sacra tristeza All sacred sadness Y palpitar de tarde. And afternoon throb. Sobre el tenue temblor Over the faint trembling De la aguas, su pelo Of the waters, her hair Se diría una vaga y enigmática sangre, Seemed like vague and enigmatic blood, Unas algas de oro Golden seaweed Que cayeran del cielo That’d fall from the sky O un ensueño de polen Or a dream of pollen De azucena gigante... Of a giant white lily.
(García Lorca 1994b: 421)
The succession of images closes with one last picture of Ophelia’s hair as she finally drowns in the river:
No queda en el remanso sino la Nothing is left in the pool but the cabellera head of hair Que flota. ¡Un gran topacio! That floats. A great topaz! Deshecho por el ritmo Undone by the rhythm De eterna primavera Of eternal spring Que agita el dulce espacio That stirs the sweet space De las aguas serenas. Of calm waters.
(García Lorca 1994b: 421)
The last lines of the poem ratify that, in its melancholic natural setting, this green river bears parallels to the forest constructed in previous poems:
Ofelia yace muerta coronada de flores. Ophelia lies dead crowned by flowers. En el bosque sombrío In the sombre forest La llora la Balada. The Ballad weeps for her.
(García Lorca 1994b: 423)
In this way, La muerte de Ofelia seems to secure the recasting of Shakespeare’s dark forest in the tragic mode, as Lorca finds points of departure in Shakespeare mainly to engage with the catastrophic consequences of love, a central theme of the poet’s juvenilia.
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 33–52 ISSN 0210-6124 Shakespeare in García Lorca’s Early Poems 43
3. Lorca’s initial shaping of the bard: Shakespeare’s cultural role in the early poems Within the poetic scenarios of his early verses, Lorca submitted a number of passages and images from Shakespeare’s dramas to a process of adaptation. Thus, Lorca’s early adaptation techniques can be thematically characterised by the way they consistently contribute to the verses’ tragic drive. Although through elements from Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet and Othello, Shakespearean tragedy contributes to this process, it is a comedy, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, that turns out to be Shakespeare’s most productive material at this early stage in Lorca’s writing. As his experimental dramas will evince, when Lorca turns to Shakespeare, the shadow of the Dream’s forest recurrently taints the other Shakespearean images. In parallel to this tragic drive, in Lorca’s reformulation the Dream’s forest is attributed with certain qualities – ‘romantic’ qualities – El bosque suggests. This characterisation is connected with the opening poem in Paepe’s anthology of unpublished poems (García Lorca 1994b), that is, Lorca’s earliest dated poetry, where the verses incorporate a number of different Romantic authors. With the characteristically “exalted religious feeling and unbridled sensuality” of his early writings (“Exaltado sentimiento religioso y una desenfrenada sensualidad” [Herrero 1989: 1825]), in Canción: Ensueño y confusión (Song: Dream and Confusion),7 Lorca explores “a night of sheer lust” (“una noche de plena lujuria”) through a blend of exotic geographic settings, Catholic iconography, allusions to Spanish Romantic writers — Larra and Hartzenbusch — and European Romanticism — Berlioz, Goethe, Mérimée/Bizet (García Lorca 1994b: 25-27). In relation to this first poem, in El bosque Lorca defines the Shakespearean forest as that which is ‘romantic in nature’. It is immediately after this line that the speaker moves on to reference Shakespeare and establish the connection between Hamlet, his meditative sadness and the ‘romantic’ forest. The juxtaposition of these elements suggests Lorca’s initial assimilation of Shakespeare as a Romantic literary figure. As in the opening poem of the anthology, in El bosque the speaker identifies with Romantic values, Hamlet is characterised as ‘sad’ yet ‘glorious’ and as one of the ‘ideal figures’ that visited the ‘romantic’ forest, which in the poem is filled with “strange characters, with divine animals, with crosses, with ghosts, with pilgrim saints, [and] Christian romances” (“Raros personajes, de animales divinos, de cruces, de fantasmas, de santos peregrinos, [and] romancescos cristianos” [García Lorca 1994b: 122]). Lorca’s neo- Romantic imagery seems to recast the forest in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Hamlet and, ultimately, Shakespeare, as Romantic figures; that is, to insert them as part of the Romantic literary tradition. This image of Shakespeare had been circulating around Europe for some time now. Thus, after the ambivalent response of 18th-century Neoclassicism, in Spain, as in many other European nations, Shakespeare’s works secured their canonical status during the end of the eighteenth century and the first decades of the nineteenth century, thanks to the impulse of the Romantic movement and the Romantic appropriation of
7 Dated 29 June 1917 (García Lorca 1994b: 25-28).
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 33–52 ISSN 0210-6124 44 Juan F. Cerdá
Shakespeare and Calderón started by German critics and translators.8 Also, Lorca’s characterisation of Shakespeare as a Romantic author should not come as a surprise, since the neo-Romantic appropriation of Shakespeare and his work can be seen as an early sign of his artistic rupture against realism. In Comentarios a Omar Kayyam (Comments to Omar Kayyam), an article written only two months after Yo estaba triste frente a los sembrados, Lorca traces a number of literary and dramatic characters, establishing a line of metaphysical Romanticism that develops from Cervantes, to Calderón, to Shakespeare, to Goethe: “Los hombres tienen el gran defecto de considerarse superiores a las obras de los hombres grandes . . . Los personajes que rodearon a D. Quijote le compadecieron superiores. Y lo mismo pasó con Segismundo y con Hamlet y con Werther... Siempre lo grande produce en nosotros el abismo de la incomprensión momentánea” (García Lorca 1994a: III, 376).9 Also, in the misleadingly titled El poema de la carne (The Poem of Flesh), which most likely is Lorca’s first recorded Shakespearean prose reference, Othello is mentioned among a list of passionate ‘great lovers’: “El crepúsculo tiene en sus colores ardientes rayos de amor y de pasión. El crepúsculo oculta en sus nieblas los corazones de Paolo, de Othello, de Werther, de Don Juan y todos los grandes amantes. Las nubes rojizas que parecen ascuas de granates son la sangre derramada por los corazones que amaron y no fueron amados” (Maurer 1994: 245).10 By going back to Romantic themes and aesthetics, and recasting Shakespeare as a paradigmatically Romantic figure, Lorca advances his early rejection of Realist modes of feeling and representation, a rejection that will be consolidated and amplified through the Symbolist and Surrealist features of later poetic and dramatic production. In parallel to these direct references to Romantic literature, Lorca’s early poetry provides other instances that project a Romantic image of Shakespeare. This time the connection comes through Lorca’s early references to the circle of the English Pre- Raphaelite Brotherhood, a group of artists, poets and critics who dwelled equally between “a derivative and subordinate relation to that of the great Romantics” and the attempt to “revitalise an art that had become stale and stereotyped” in the Victorian period (Ford 1958: 356; Fredeman 1968: 259). In his early poems, Lorca seems to parallel “the use of . . . medievalism [and] an autumnal mood or habit of feeling, religiosity, and literariness” of Pre-Raphaelite poetry and painting (Ford 1958: 364). Reverting to Romantic paradigms, Lorca connects with Pre-Raphaelite sensibility in El bosque — ‘The soul of forests is a medieval creation’ — or in La muerte de Ofelia when
8 See Calvo 2002, Pujante 2005 and the first volume of Par 1935. For criticism that shows the transition from the Spanish Neoclassical rejection of Shakespeare to his gradual acceptance through the perspective of Romanticism, see Pujante and Campillo 2007. 9 ‘Men have the great defect of considering themselves superior to the works of great men . . . The characters that surrounded D. Quixote superiorly pitied him. And the same happened to Segismundo, Hamlet and Werther... Greatness always produces in us the abyss of momentary incomprehension’. 10 ‘The twilight has in its burning colours rays of love and passion. The twilight hides in its fogs the hearts of Paolo [from Dante’s Divine Comedy], of Othello, of Werther, of Don Juan and all the great lovers. The reddish clouds that look like ashes of garnet are the blood spilt by the hearts that loved and were not loved’.
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 33–52 ISSN 0210-6124 Shakespeare in García Lorca’s Early Poems 45 he produces a poetic picture that can arguably traced back to John Everett Millais’ painting Ophelia (1851). Together with the common features that link Lorca and the Pre-Raphaelites in their recuperation of Romantic values, Millais’ Ophelia can be seen in relation to the opening images in Lorca’s poem:
Fue sobre el agua verde. It happened over the green water. Un oculto remanso A hidden pool Entre las ondas claras de un río de Among the clear waves of a river of ilusión. illusion. El crepúsculo muerto puso en las ondas In the waves the dead twilight placed hojas leaves De luz que Ofelia enciende Of light that Ophelia lights up Con su carne de rosa With her flesh of pink rose, De oro blanco y de sol. Of white gold and sun.
(García Lorca 1994b: 420)
Both Millais and Lorca concentrate on Shakespeare by focalising and reconstructing the death of Ophelia, yet, while the connections between Pre-Raphaelite painting and Lorca partly reside in the pre-Raphaelites’ seminal influence on the Symbolist movement,11 Lorca — writing over sixty years after Millais’ painting was produced — moves away from pre-Raphaelite detail and stasis when his Ophelia ends up as an inkblot in Lorca’s poetic canvas:
No queda en el remanso sino la cabellera Nothing is left in the pool but the head of hair Que flota. ¡Un gran topacio! That floats. A great topaz! Deshecho por el ritmo Undone by the rhythm De eterna primavera Of eternal spring Que agita el dulce espacio That stirs the sweet space De las aguas serenas. Of calm waters.
(García Lorca 1994b: 420)
In this way, Lorca’s poetic appropriation of Shakespeare stands closer to the Symbolist aesthetics of the work carried out by Adrià Gual and his Teatre Intim (Cerdá Martínez 2010: 106-25), where in the sketches for his productions of Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream or Hamlet, the paintings are reduced to barely representational forms and colours, rejecting detail in favour of the symbolic creation of mood or atmosphere. In this way, La muerte de Ofelia can be seen to extend the Symbolist appropriation of Shakespeare established by Arthur Rimbaud in his poem
11 For the relationship between the pre-Raphaelites and Symbolism see Kotzin 1966 and Smith 1981. Then also, Huerta Calvo argues that, together with the influence of the pre- Raphaelites in the scenery of scene four in The Public, “La invocación al arte de los primitivos, los llamados pintores prerrafaelitas, es un recurso que ya Lorca emplea en Don Perlimplín: ‘La mesa con todos los objetos pintados como en una “Cena” primitiva’” (‘the primitive’s invocation of art, the so-called pre-Raphaelites, is a resource that Lorca uses already in Don Perlimplín: “The table with all the painted objects as in a primitive ‘Last Supper’”’ [Huerta Calvo 2006: 169]).
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 33–52 ISSN 0210-6124 46 Juan F. Cerdá
‘Ophélie’, another early poem written by the French Symbolist in 1870 around the age of sixteen, which has also been connected with Millais’ painting (Forestier 1984: 25):
Sur l’onde calme et noire où dorment les On the calm black water where the étoiles stars are sleeping La blanche Ophélia flotte comme un grand lys, White Ophelia floats like a great lily; Flotte très lentement, couchée en ses longs Floats very slowly, lying in her long voiles... veils... — On entend dans les bois lointains des — In the far-off woods you can hear hallalis them sound the death knell.
(Rimbaud 1972: 11) (Transl. from Rimbaud 1962: 81)
In Rimbaud’s poem, Hamlet also stands as mute witness of Ophelia’s drowning, rewriting, like Lorca, the Shakespearean source for his own poetic and later, in the case of Lorca, dramatic project.12 Thus, together with the tragic interest that attracted Lorca’s creative assimilation, in his early poetry Shakespeare is also cast as part of a wider intertextual network of references, which contributes to Lorca’s rejection of Realism and the search for alternative modes of expression. It is under these circumstances that Shakespeare is presented as inserted in the Romantic tradition, a characterisation that sheds light into Lorca’s own poetic project. Thus, at the same time that Lorca reacted against Realist modes of expression by going back and reclaiming Shakespeare among the names and works of several Romantic figures, Lorca can be described as seeking legitimacy in the works and figure of the English playwright as an upcoming literary figure in the making. As Pierre Bourdieu suggests, within the field of cultural production, “the new comers” — Lorca at this point was nineteen —
are not disposed to enter the cycle of simple reproduction, based on recognition of the ‘old’ by the ‘young’ . . . and recognition of the ‘young’ by the ‘old’ . . . but bring with them dispositions and position-takings which clash with the prevailing norms of production and the expectations of the [artistic] field”. “In fact, one never observes either a total submission . . . or an absolute break . . . — a break with the immediately preceding generation (fathers) is often supported by a return to the traditions of the next generation back (grandfathers). (Bourdieu 1993: 57-58)
Bourdieu’s ideas can be applied to Lorca’s early verses, by which Lorca can in this way be seen as formulating his own notion of Shakespeare within his contemporary cultural field. Yet, as Bourdieu adds, “returns to past styles . . . are never ‘the same thing’” (Bourdieu 1993: 60; emphasis in the original). Thus, I claim, through rewriting,
12 According to Valerie Minogue, Rimbaud identifies himself with Ophelia. In this “Romantic view of the poet-victim”, Ophelia and Hamlet “symbolise the frustration of the motherless child” and the poet’s “own aspirations and struggles” with poetic language at this early stage (Minogue 1989: 431). This poem has also been connected with Berthold Brecht’s ‘Ballad of the Drowned Girl’ (1919-1920), written shortly after Lorca’s, and also sharing the same Shakespearean point of departure (Nägele 2002).
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 33–52 ISSN 0210-6124 Shakespeare in García Lorca’s Early Poems 47
Lorca selected and manipulated a number of Shakespearean elements, both reinserting Shakespeare into the tradition of his early nineteenth-century European reception, while at the same time reformulating Shakespeare’s work within the interests of his early Symbolist agenda and as a reaction against Realist aesthetics, a move which will later crystallise in the adaptation of Shakespeare into Surreal aesthetics in the plays El público and Comedia sin título. Thus, Lorca’s juvenilia show the early mechanisms that will constitute his subsequent relation with Shakespeare, while at the same time they illustrate how Shakespeare, in conjunction with Romantic aesthetics, served Lorca to produce his own configuration of the field. On the one hand, the poems show the creative manipulation that will continue to characterise Lorca’s use of Shakespearean material while, at the same time, these Shakespearean elements connect Lorca with a range of cultural currents that helped construct the characteristics of Lorca’s early production. In these poems, the juxtaposition of decadent images and settings, the already hermetic narrative, the anti-mimetic landscaping and the metaphorical density of the poems anticipates Lorca’s consolidation as a Symbolist and, later, a Surrealist poet and playwright. It is through this stylistic and thematic positioning that Shakespeare is recast as a Romantic figure, even as a predecessor, father, or (in Bourdieu’s words) ‘grandfather’ to Symbolism. At this early stage, Lorca’s interest in Romantic and early Symbolist aesthetics, his rupture with Realism and the uses Shakespeare fulfils in this process connect Lorca’s juvenilia both back to the Romantic tradition and forward to a future of experimental aesthetics. This would summarise Lorca’s early poetic relation to Shakespearean drama. Yet, a relatively marginal instance of Shakespearean adaptation in these early verses anticipates later discussion, when Lorca’s experimental dramas are inspected in their relation to Shakespeare. In Balada (Ballad) — dated 31 October 1918 — Lorca includes another element from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Again, in Lorca’s ballad the speaker finds himself in despair, dwelling on the remembrance of past affection and concerned about future uncertainty:
Y el amor fue un engaño And love was a deception O un dolor imposible. Or an impossible pain. Y la aurora un momento And dawn was nothing De ilusión nada más. But a moment of illusion. Tengo el alma bordada My soul is embroidered Con puñales de noche With dark daggers. Y no sé a la ventura And, aimless , I know not Qué camino tomar. Which road to take.
(García Lorca 1994b: 427-28)
As in previous poems, Lorca resorts to the iconology of Shakespeare’s Dream to draw a landscape of disharmony. This time, Lorca presents pairs of opposing mythical figures to establish the mood of the speaker, where dystopian elements prevail over the symbols of concord and measure:
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 33–52 ISSN 0210-6124 48 Juan F. Cerdá
¡Ay de mí que no tengo Alas, I have neither Mediodía ni aurora! Midday nor dawn! (Venus y Apolo ceden (Venus and Apollo cede Su trono a Baco y Pan.) Their throne to Bacchus and Pan.) Mi corazón reposa . . . My heart rests En un gris sentimental. In a sentimental grey.
(García Lorca 1994b: 429)
Here, Lorca replaces the influence of Apollo and Venus — the male deity, “always young, beardless, . . . of harmonious beauty, the ideal ephebe and young athlete”, and the goddess associated with “charm” and “gracefulness” — with the accession of Bacchus and Pan — the Roman equivalent of Dionysus, whose “myths and cults are often violent and bizarre, a challenge to the established social order”, and the equivalent of Arcadia, which can “exercise a type of savage and violent possession” (Hornblower and Spawforth 1996: 122, 1587, 479, 1103). In the poem, the speaker’s despair is constructed through this replacement of mythological figures. It follows:
Los silfos se adormecen. The sylphs fall asleep. Oberón quita al niño Oberon takes away the child Cupido su carcaj. Cupid’s quiver. Y las frondas marchitas And the withered leaves Del bosque legendario Of the legendary forest Derraman sobre el césped Shed on the grass Su llanto milenario Their ancient lament Como un sueño de cuerdas Like a dream of strings En arpa de cristal. On a crystal harp.
(García Lorca 1994b: 429)
Here, Lorca is reusing images already articulated in previous poems, where the Dream’s forest serves as a site for the symbolic representation of emotional instability and decay. Yet, here Lorca is introducing Oberon as the symbolic replacement for Cupid, or Eros, the emblem of romantic and erotic love. In a way, the incorporation of Shakespeare’s Dream to the poem functions as in the previous poems although, in this ballad, Lorca’s treatment of Oberon — as part of or at least in juxtaposition to the body of Greek and Roman mythology — speaks of Lorca’s positioning of Shakespeare as a canonical figure. By contrast, much later, in his play El público, Lorca will address the implications of such a canonisation when Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is questioned as a legitimate or culturally acceptable dramatic work. In this way, Lorca’s early poetry provides yet another of the embryonic guidelines that will support the Spanish poet and playwright’s later appropriation of Shakespeare’s works. Thus, in parallel to this, in his early poetry Lorca provides an assessment of the English playwright himself. The repeated inclusion of the author’s name in these poems, and even some direct allusions, such as that in Yo estaba triste frente a los sembrados — “My friend William! / Are you listening? Yes?” (“¡Amigo William! / ¿Me escuchas? ¿Sí?” [García Lorca 1994b: 31]) — supports the idea that Lorca’s writing not
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 33–52 ISSN 0210-6124 Shakespeare in García Lorca’s Early Poems 49 only appropriates Shakespeare’s work creatively, but that these poems also rely on the image of the English playwright as a cultural symbol. In Lorca’s early poetry, Shakespeare appears as an already canonised author on a high cultural pedestal, with his characters aligned with those of classical mythology. This can be understood as an initial phase that will later on give way to Lorca’s questioning of Shakespearean drama, where the representation of Shakespeare and his work will prove more problematic. Thus, the tension between regarding Shakespeare as a cultural emblem and questioning his work as a valid model for contemporary artistic expression can already be detected, in embryonic form, in the second stanza of another of Lorca’s early ballads, La balada de las tres rosas (The Ballad of the Three Roses). In this poem, Lorca attempts a division of love into three kinds, each embodied by the distinct characteristics of the white, the pink and the red rose. In the neo-Romantic, early-Symbolist style that characterises these poems, Lorca arranges a number of images into three groups, each providing a network of allusions, descriptions and metaphors that gradually construct the characteristics of each of the roses. For the first stanza — the white rose — Lorca develops a language close to that in which Ophelia was described in La muerte de Ophelia. Again, the white rose can be distinguished through its religious overtones — “chaste thought”, “warm and sacred milk / Fallen from the breasts of motherly sky/heaven” (“Pensamiento casto”, “leche tibia y sagrada / Caída de los senos del cielo maternal” [García Lorca 1994b: 519, 521]) — or through its static attributes — “the white rose has the passion of eternity / And the calm of blank stares” (“la rosa blanca tiene pasión de eternidades / Y la tranquilidad de las miradas yertas” [García Lorca 1994b: 519]). Like Ophelia, the white rose — like the other two roses — is destined to die in the poem, and so Lorca provides tragic literary examples for each of the roses, profiting from the intertextual baggage of each of the characters alluded to in the poem. While describing the white rose, the speaker adds:
Otelo el gran Sombrío Othello the great Dark One A una de ellas segó. Cut down one of them. Crecen en los jardines igual que en los They grow in gardens just as in conventos. nunneries. Su luz es filtrada Their light is filtered De un antaño sin sol. By a sunless past.
(García Lorca 1994b: 520)
Thus, Lorca uses Desdemona to provide an example for his white rose, summoning the reader’s familiarity with the character to be added to the characterisation provided in the poem. So far, Shakespearean adaptation in this poem resembles earlier appropriation. Yet, in the second stanza, as it addresses the significance of the pink rose, the poem can be seen to contradict, and somehow challenge, Shakespeare’s initial source. In the poem, the pink rose stands as the symbol of youth and adolescent love:
Vemos la primavera We see the spring de los adolescentes. Of the adolescents.
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 33–52 ISSN 0210-6124 50 Juan F. Cerdá
El seno que se agita The breast that shakes Y el labio que suspira. And the lip that sighs. . . . Satán es bello y joven . . . Satan is beautiful and young Dios no ve los pecados. God sees no sins. La carne es dulce y rosa The flesh is sweet and pink Y canta juventud. And it sings of youth.
(García Lorca 1994b: 522)
Next, Lorca draws on a Shakespearean character to embody and complement the poem’s characterisation of the rose. This time the character is Juliet, yet Lorca here diverts from convention where the perhaps expected cliché of Juliet as a symbol of young and inexperienced love is rejected and reformulated into Lorca’s poetic vision:
La rosa rosa tiene The pink rose has La elegancia discreta The discreet elegance De amor apasionado Of passionate love Pero sin frenesí. Yet without frenzy. ¡Nunca la tomaría en sus dedos Julieta! Juliet would never hold it between her fingers! Ella lleva en sus manos la rosa carmesí. In her hands she holds the crimson rose.
(García Lorca 1994b: 522)
Midway through the poem’s second stanza, devoted to the pink rose, the lines lead the reader forward to the last part, that of the red rose, or the phase of passion, lust and physical contact, deferring Juliet’s characterisation. Thus, I suggest, Lorca’s appropriation of Shakespeare’s Juliet is two-fold. On the one hand, the poem partly assumes the resonances that Juliet might bring to the reader; yet on the other hand, it also modulates Juliet’s characterisation into the sexually active attributes put forward in the last part of the ballad. This last stanza and, extensively, Juliet become characterised by the explicit language of the passage — “the billy goat trembles with potent lust . . . / Rose of turbid water / Of a summer afternoon” (“El chivo se estremece de lujuria potente”, “Rosa de agua turbia / De tarde de verano” [García Lorca 1994b: 423, 424]). This characterisation of Juliet may seem contradictory to the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century conservative perception of Shakespeare’s Juliet, yet Lorca’s interest in the character precisely resides in reverting the recognisable features of the Shakespearean character to explore the outcome of alternative associations. Juliet will become a central character in his play El público (1930), where the playwright will develop some of the ideas and mechanisms only hinted at in this earlier poem (23 July 1919). It is only then that Lorca will question Shakespeare’s work. Still, this early trace should serve as marginal anticipation of a later and much more evident crossroads where Lorca’s work can be seen to oscillate between homage and admiration, and a similar necessity to depart from and radically transfigure Shakespearean drama.
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 33–52 ISSN 0210-6124 Shakespeare in García Lorca’s Early Poems 51
4. Conclusion These early poems already show some of the primary traits of Lorca’s creative assimilation of Shakespearean drama. In what can be seen as a line of continuity, Lorca will freely borrow, interpret and rewrite Shakespeare’s work at the same time as he produced his own oeuvre, where Shakespearean elements become both sporadic and central to Lorca’s poetic and dramatic landscape. Thus, the echo of Juliet and of Shakespeare’s ‘dark green forest’, presented for the first time in these early poems, will reverberate as far as El público (1930) and Comedia sin título (1936), some of Lorca’s last dramatic writings, in what constitutes the beginning and the end of Shakespeare’s expanded trajectory within Lorca’s production. Nonetheless, the appropriation of Shakespeare’s works in these early poems projects the image of the ‘new comer’, as described by Bourdieu. They project the image of the young aspiring Lorca as he started to arrange the hierarchical order of his subjective poetic field, in which Shakespeare held a privileged position which contrasts with Lorca’s later experimental rewriting of Shakespearean drama. In turn, from the perspective of Shakespeare’s reception, Lorca’s early poems open a window onto the early twentieth-century neo-romantic appropriation of the English playwright, who will witness a revaluation of his work by a number of cultural agents, from the British Pre-Raphaelites to the European symbolists, who borrowed Shakespeare as an antidote to the aesthetics of realism.
Works Cited Adani, Silvia 1999: La presenza di Shakespeare nell’opera di García Lorca. Bologna: Il Capitello del Sole. Anderson, Andrew A. 1985: ‘Some Shakespearean Reminiscences in García Lorca’s Drama’. Comparative Literary Studies 22.2: 187-209. Bourdieu, Pierre 1993: ‘The Field of Cultural Production, or: The Economic World Reversed’. Randal Johnson ed. The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature. Cambridge: Polity P. 29-73. Calvo, Clara 2002: ‘Románticos españoles y tragedia inglesa: el fracaso del Macbeth de José García de Villalta’. Francisco Lafarga, Concepción Palacios and Alfonso Saura, eds. Neoclásicos y Románticos ante la Traducción. Murcia: Universidad de Murcia. 59-72. Cerdá Martínez, Juan Francisco 2010: Shakespeare and the Renovation of Spanish Theatrical Culture (1898-1936). Unpublished PhD Thesis. Universidad de Murcia, Spain. Fischlin, Mark and Mark Fortier, eds. 2000: Adaptations of Shakespeare: A Critical Anthology of Plays from the Seventeenth Century to the Present. London and New York: Routledge. Ford, Boris 1958: Penguin Guide to Literature: 6. From Dickens to Hardy. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Forestier, Louis 1984: ‘Le regard pictural dans les premiers poèmes de Rimbaud’. Martine Bercot, ed. Minute d’Éveil Rimbaud maintenant. Paris: SEDES. 22-28. Fredeman, William E. 1968: ‘The Pre-Raphaelites’. E. M. Halliday, ed. The Victorian Poems: A Guide to Research. Cambridge: Harvard UP. 251-316. Frye, Northrop 1965: A Natural Perspective: The Development of Shakespearean Comedy and Romance. New York and London: Columbia UP. García Lorca, Federico 1994a: Obras completas. Ed. Arturo del Hoyo. Madrid: Aguilar. ––––– 1994b: Poesía inédita de juventud. Ed. Christian de Paepe. Madrid: Cátedra.
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 33–52 ISSN 0210-6124 52 Juan F. Cerdá
Herrero, Javier 1989: ‘La crisis juvenil de Lorca: el pulpo contra la estrella’. Actas del Congreso de la Asociación Internacional de Hispanistas 10: 1825-34. Hornblower, Simon and Antony Spawforth eds. 1996: The Oxford Classical Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford UP. Huerta Calvo, Javier 2006: Introduction to El público, by Federico García Lorca. Madrid: Espasa Calpe. Jareño, Ernesto 1970: ‘El Caballero de Olmedo, García Lorca y Albert Camus’. Papeles de Son Armandans 58: 219-42. Kotzin, Michael 1966: ‘Pre-Raphaelism, Ruskinism, and French Symbolism’. Art Journal 25.4: 347-50. Laffranque, María 1978: Introduction. El público y Comedia sin título: Dos obras póstumas. Barcelona: Seix Barral. Martín, Eutimio 1986: Federico García Lorca: heterodoxo y mártir. Análisis y proyección de la obra juvenil inédita. Madrid: Siglo XXI. ––––– 1988: Antología comentada de Federico García Lorca. Madrid: Ediciones De la Torre. Martínez Nadal, Rafael 1976: Introduction. El público. Facsimil del manuscrito. Oxford: The Dolphin Book. Maurer, Christopher, ed. 1994: Prosa inédita de juventud. Federico García Lorca. Madrid: Cátedra. Minogue, Valerie 1989: ‘Rimbaud’s Ophelia’. French Studies 43.4: 423-36. Nägele, Rainer 2002. ‘Phantom of a Corpse: Ophelia from Rimbaud to Brecht’. MLN 117.5: 1069-82. Par, Alfonso 1935: Shakespeare en la literatura española. Madrid and Barcelona: Librería general de Victoriano Suárez and Biblioteca Balmes. ––––– 1936: Representaciones shakespearianas en España. Madrid and Barcelona: Librería general de Victoriano Suárez and Biblioteca Balmes. Pujante, Ángel-Luis 2005: ‘Limando asperezas: Juan Andrés y Shakespeare’. Amica Verba. In honorem Prof. Antonio Roldán Pérez. Ricardo Escavy, ed. Murcia: Universidad de Murcia. 859-71. Pujante, Ángel-Luis and Laura Campillo, eds. 2007: Shakespeare en España: Textos 1764-1916. Granada and Murcia: Editorial Universidad de Granada and Ediciones de la Universidad de Murcia. Rimbaud, Arthur 1962: Collected Poems. Ed. Oliver Bernard. London: Penguin. ––––– 1972: Oeuvres complètes. Ed. Antoine Adam. Paris: Gallimard. Salinas, Pedro 1955-1956: ‘Lorca and the Poetry of Death’. The Carleton Drama Review 1.2: 14-21. Smith, Richard Langham 1981: ‘Debussy and the Pre-Raphaelites’. 19th-Century Music 5.2: 95-109. Wells, Stanley and Gary Taylor, eds. 2005: The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. Second Edition. Oxford: Oxford UP.
Received 27 September 2010 Revised version accepted 17 January 2011
Juan F. Cerdá (PhD University of Murcia, MA Shakespeare Institute/University of Birmingham) is Assistant Lecturer at ISEN/University of Murcia. His main area of research is Shakespeare’s reception in Spanish and European culture. He has published in Linguaculture and Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation.
Address: ISEN/Universidad de Murcia, C/Real, 68, 30201 Cartagena (Murcia), Spain. Tel.: +34 968 505 313. Fax: +34 968 523 605.
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 33–52 ISSN 0210-6124 ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 53–68 ISSN 0210-6124
Marketing Strategies, Consumerism and the Exercise of Democracy in W.H.H. Murray’s Adventures in the Wilderness; or, Camp-Life in the Adirondacks
Claudia Alonso Recarte Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha [email protected]
The aim of this paper is to explore the continuum between the discursive novelties in W.H.H. Murray’s Adventures in the Wilderness; or, Camp-Life in the Adirondacks (1869) and the social impact the book had, which marked the transition towards modern wilderness consumption. Adventures ignited a public debate between social classes, conveying an image of the Adirondacks as a space where democratic ideals competed with upper-class privileges. Through an analytical depiction of the primitive marketing and consumerist strategies arrayed in the text, this paper attempts to present the book’s booming impact (a sociological phenomenon traditionally referred to as ‘Murray’s Rush’) as a natural result of the text itself. Adventures should not be conceived as merely a conglomeration of exaggerations abusive of the naivety of the middle class, but as a carefully calculated text exhibiting the naturalized relationship between buyer and product that characterizes contemporary consumerist dynamics.
Keywords: wilderness; consumerism; marketing; democracy; citizen’s rights; Adirondacks
Estrategias de Marketing, Consumismo y el Ejercicio Democrático en Adventures in the Wilderness; or, Camp-Lfe in the Adirondacks de W.H.H. Murray
El objetivo de este artículo es explorar la relación entre las innovaciones discursivas de Adventures in the Wilderness;, or, Camp-Life in the Adirondacks (1869) de W.H.H. Murray y la impactante recepción de dicho libro en la esfera pública. Adventures dio lugar a una imagen de los Adirondacks como un polémico espacio en el que principios democráticos competían con los intereses de las clases privilegiadas. Por medio de un acercamiento analítico a las estrategias de marketing, se tratará de descubrir el fenómeno sociológico conocido como ‘Murray’s Rush’ como una reacción característica y representativa del mismo discurso textual. Frente a la acepción de Adventures como un conjunto de exageraciones que abusaron de la ignorancia de la clase media, se estudiará como texto minuciosamente calculado en tanto a su anticipo de la relación entre comprador y producto que caracteriza la sociedad de consumo contemporánea.
Palabras clave: espacio salvaje; sociedad de consumo; marketing; democracia; derechos del ciudadano; Adirondacks 54 Claudia Alonso Recarte
1. Introduction Although Adventures in the Wilderness; or, Camp-Life in the Adirondacks (1869) by William Henry Harrison Murray (1840-1904) is seldom approached by literary scholars today, its influence on American thought and leisure at the time of its publication raises a myriad of issues that reach beyond environmental considerations. Adventures was the first of its kind in that it broke with the romanticist wilderness aesthetic and presented the northern New York country as a product for consumerism. The object of this article is to deconstruct the type of discourse applied by Murray and its relation to marketing strategies in order to decipher the connections between textual claims and the social upheaval detonated by the book. Although critics have often focused on the impact the book had on the press and on the Adirondack landscape, the present article attempts to start off from an in-depth depiction of the text itself, so as to comprehend why the book created such a breach not only in the literary tradition, but in American culture as well. Exposing Murray’s discourse of consumerist strategies will enable readers of Adventures to better comprehend why the impact it had on the public was not an unexpected phenomenon, but a natural reaction to the text.
1.1. Adirondack literature before 1869 Regional writers and historians have termed the epoch prior to the publication of Adventures as ‘the golden years’ of the Adirondacks. Considering the overwhelming amount of literature about the North Country, it is fair to say that it is through romanticist writing that the region gains its traditional aesthetic identity, even before its official delimitations as a State Park and Forest Preserve.1 Widespread preoccupation for the proclamation of nationalistic features in the American territory was responsible for the quest for identity at a time when deism and transcendentalist creeds embraced proximity to God through the study and exaltation of his most visible work: nature. The initial scepticism and hostility with which artists had looked upon the American vastness eventually transformed into acts of eulogy through the mediums of literature and landscape painting. Indeed, America lacked European artistry, history and refinement; but instead the country accounted for one unique feature which could not be found in the old continent. In Nash’s words, “in the early nineteenth century American nationalists began to understand that it was in the wildness of their nature that their country was unmatched” (2001: 69). Through an exhaustive use of Burke’s categories of the sublime and the beautiful,2 writers ventured into wilderness areas and delivered texts celebrating America’s landscape grandeur.
1 Located in upstate New York, the Adirondack Park is comprised of almost six million acres of private and public lands. In 1894, New Yorkers voted to approve the State Constitution, where Article VII, Section 7 (today Article XIV, Section 1) declared that “the lands of the State, now owned or hereafter acquired, constituting the forest preserve as now fixed by law, shall be forever kept as wild forest lands”. 2 Burke’s Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful (1757) was acclaimed by romanticists as the ‘guidebook’ for the classification of natural features.
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 53–68 ISSN 0210-6124 Marketing Strategies, Consumerism and the Exercise of Democracy 55
The Adirondacks were certainly not an exception. Between 1836 and 1840, the geologist Ebenezer Emmons wrote detailed accounts of the Adirondack mountains and forests at the service of the Natural History Survey. Emmons’s task finally placed the Adirondacks on the map, which, surprisingly enough, still retained its frontier character at a time when the rest of the northeast of the United States was already considerably populated. Emmons just as much placed the Adirondacks inside the ideals of industry and progress, searching for promising soils for farming and prospective mining. As he recorded the sceneries before him, the aesthetics of the sublime and the beautiful germinated within his discourse. Describing the Adirondack Pass, for example, he applies the by then standard technique of comparisons with other regions to exalt the landscape beheld: “We look upon the falls of Niagara with awe, and a feeling of our insignificance; but much more are we impressed with the great and the sublime, in the view of the simple naked rock of the Adirondack Pass” (1842: 218). In terms of travel narratives, Charles Fenno Hoffman and Joel T. Headley continued to exploit the conventions of the sublime and the beautiful in their respective works, Wild Scenes in the Forest and the Prairie (1839) and The Adirondack; or, Life in the Woods (1849). In terms of popular fiction, Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans (1826), set in the Lake George region, launched Natty Bumppo as the heroic archetype of the Adirondack woodsman; a model that was to be sought by the growing number of sportsmen visiting the North Country during the 1840s and 1850s. Most notably it is Hoffman’s and Headley’s works which stand as the most representative texts of romanticist appreciations of the Adirondacks. Aside from their flaunting of picturesque sceneries, they are credited for the first portrayals of Adirondack guides as morally immaculate men leading primitive lives. Their innocence, their skills in woodsmanship and expertise in hunting and fishing reminded the writers of Cooper’s Leatherstocking, that mesmerizing character that had captivated their spirit of adventure during their youth. In a memorable passage, Hoffman casts out his imagination when describing the legendary guide John Cheney: “I could swear that Cooper took the character of Natty Bumppo, from my mountaineer friend, John Cheney. . . . The same shrewdness as a woodman, and gamesomeness of spirit as a hunter, are common to both” (2007: 35-36). On a similar note, Headley refers to him as “the mighty hunter, Cheney” (2006: 51), and alludes to the simplicity with which the guide turned to life in the woods as a young man, “became enamored of the forest life” and “with his rifle on his shoulder, plunged into this then unknown, untrodden wilderness” (2006: 75). The intertwinement between nationalistic endeavor, the cult of the sublime and the beautiful, and the mystifying pretences of popular fiction imploded into a conventional form of literature that presented the wilderness experience, on the one hand, as a highly
While the beholding of beauty aroused in the human mind a sense of tranquillity and harmony, and provided a continuation of traditional taste, the sublime seemed to awaken irrational passions in an instant. As Phillips summarizes, the sublime was “a way of thinking about excess as the key to a new kind of subjectivity” while beauty “was something more reassuringly tempered” (1990: ix).
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 53–68 ISSN 0210-6124 56 Claudia Alonso Recarte spiritual journey where transcendence through nature was achievable, and on the other, as the ideal space where true American Adams who tested their self-reliance could be encountered. The result was the ‘golden years’ of Adirondack writing, a body of literature that includes authors such as Samuel H. Hammond, Charles Lanman, William Redfield, Farrand Benedict, and even Emerson, who wrote a poem to commemorate his 1858 excursion to Follensby Pond in the company of other notable figures, such as the painter William James Stillman and the scientist Louis Agassiz. Indeed, it was the more privileged societal and intellectual groups who launched the Adirondacks as a vacation spot. In the company of his trusty guide, the upper-class sportsman delighted in the masculine tasks of hunting and fishing while nourishing his artistic sensibility. All in all, the Adirondacks were slowly developing as an attractive resort and camping-ground where New Yorkers with generous incomes could dedicate some time to leisure. This is not to say that middle-class people did not visit the region, for scattered working-class groups or individuals went to the mountains to practice sportsmanship or to seek their luck in farming, mining or local-town businesses. But the concept of vacation was bred in the upper classes, which began to organize themselves in small private clubs of elitist membership. On August 9, 1864, the New York Times editorial called the Adirondacks the “Central Park for the world” where “the jaded merchant or financer or litterateur or politician” could cater for “the old passion for nature” (1864: 72). With the publication of Adventures, the Adirondacks were finally conceived as a vacation destination that need not be confined to the custody of the wealthy, and the New York and New England middle class massively surged north into the wilderness, shattering the romanticist world that the Adirondacks had previously represented and offering the cult of consumerism as the titanic new method to experience nature.
2. Marketing the Adirondacks: Textual novelties in Adventures Considering the literary fashions described above and the type of visitors such writing brought into the Adirondacks, the impact caused by Adventures appears all the more extraordinary. The book was arranged as an organic system where every element constituting the wilderness (and the entirety of the wilderness itself) was displayed so as to offer the reader, who played the potential visitor, a perfected product. It is important to emphasize that consumerist terminology is, of course, absent from the text (the term ‘consumerism’ only emerged as late as the 1950s); nonetheless, there is a strategic intent on the part of the author that prophesizes marketing discourse. Murray’s piece marked the end of the ‘golden years’ of the Adirondacks, and reflected the national craze for the wilderness that developed as a reaction to urban landscapes and industrialism. In Bronski’s words, the book was responsible for the “tourists that flocked en masse to the Adirondacks, spurring the development of stagecoach lines and hotels throughout the region” (2008: 26). Murray had first started publishing short anecdotes of his experiences in the Adirondacks in 1867 in local newspapers. Two years later, the complete book, Adventures in the Wilderness; or, Camp-Life in the Adirondacks was published, and Murray attained national fame. The controversy surrounding Adventures has been given
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 53–68 ISSN 0210-6124 Marketing Strategies, Consumerism and the Exercise of Democracy 57 ample attention by local writers. William Chapman White (1954) and Paul Schneider (1997) described the reaction of the masses once they realized they had been deceived, and renowned historian Philip Terrie (1985, 2008) has analyzed the environmental impact of ‘Murray’s Rush’. Such historical records are crucial, and this article aims to contribute to the study of this chapter in American history through the deconstruction of the primary source, the text, so as to expose the dynamics between discourse, the ideology at the time of the book’s publication, and the consequences the text had over this ideology.
2.1. Finding a target audience A native of Connecticut and a Yale graduate, Murray was a minister of the Park Street Congregational Church of Boston. His dissident behavior and methods, especially during the years following the publication of Adventures, led him to abandon his calling, towards which he appeared to have never manifested absolute commitment. Strauss (1987) establishes the term muscular Christianity to describe the kind of pragmatist creed initiated in the 1850s by Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Edward Everett Hale; a creed which Murray elaborated on in his writing. Muscular Christianity was based on the notion that the body, which houses the soul, is to be kept as healthy and strong as possible. This belief responded to the growing industrialism and urban atmosphere in which the middle class was developing, and which not only caused stress and nervous breakdowns, but more importantly, was turning the city into a nucleus of epidemics and slums. Strauss concludes that it is within this context where Murray’s advocacy of wilderness was innovative: “His predecessors had already proposed city parks, vacations and gymnastics as healthy alternatives to existing amusements. To this list, Murray would add the wilderness vacation, a complex fusion of several current practices” (1987: 272).3 Romanticism and Transcendentalism had shifted the importance of the material world, which included nature and the body, to a more notable sphere than the one it had been confined to through strict biblical exegesis where the salvation of the soul held the prevalent position. For Hoffman and Headley, exercise of the body had been of chief importance as well (in fact, Headley’s first trip to the Adirondacks was on account of his doctor’s orders). So what was it exactly that made Murray’s book so different from Wild Scenes or The Adirondac? Undoubtedly Hoffman and Headley had disseminated the topography and the peoples of the northern wilderness to a great extent, and made it known that such a region existed.4 But in the post Civil War era,
3 Although Murray was a pioneer in promoting the wilderness for the middle class, early stages of consumerism had already presented themselves in the United States in the 1850s. By the 1870s, multiple advertising agencies were promoting their products with eye-catching techniques through the use of “colorful posters” and “alluring fashion poses” (Stearns 2001: 46); in other words, “the idea of consumption passed from the realm of political economy into popular culture” (Klingle 2003:96). 4 Some scholars have argued that the American romanticists of nationalist sentiments exercised a form of wilderness consumerism as well. Morton, for example, states that “to be a
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 53–68 ISSN 0210-6124 58 Claudia Alonso Recarte what Murray’s book provided was a mode of publicizing that was intended to open up the Adirondacks for the public to visit. According to Kotler et al. (2008: 701) there are six buyer-readiness-stages: awareness, knowledge, liking, preference, conviction and purchase. If we are to interpret this evolution at a trans-epochal level, one could conclude that Hoffman and Headley were successful in bringing potential consumers through the first three stages. Murray finished the task by explaining why the consumption of the product (the wilderness) was preferential (health restoration), and by convincingly ensuring comfort and illusion, leading consumers to the final stage of purchase. Instead of ambitious, repetitive accounts on the sublime and the beautiful, Murray opted for a clear, direct discourse. People were asked to take action, to follow the writer’s instructions and actually live the experience. In spite of the occasional allusion to picturesque scenery, the content of Adventures revolved around the theme of mental and physical restoration, not aesthetics or nationalist endeavors. Thus, while Hoffman and Headley appealed to a more refined group of readers, Murray’s target audience were the middle-class groups who suffered the hazards of industrialism. It was the beginning of a significant transformation in the understanding of what nature was good for. Until the late 1800s, nature had mostly been a space for the harvesting of goods, but the germination of consumerism within popular culture marked a shift from one form of utilitarianism to another, for now “one went to the wilderness not as a producer but as a consumer” (Cronon 1996: 78). Before the publication of Adventures, the sportsmen who visited the region were for the most part acknowledged members of society. In 1857, for example, the recreational club Brown’s Tract Association was founded with the purpose of organizing yearly camping trips for male-bonding activities. The club also established the contemplation of beautiful landscapes as one of its purposes, emphasizing the importance of beholding God’s natural creations. Clearly, it was publicized under the same terms that transcendentalists and nationalist romanticists had applied to depict the Adirondacks. Moreover, the club captivated people from the same upper class to which the members belonged to. In Grady’s words, “it attracted immediate attention among men who were then identified with important political, business, and professional affairs in and out of the state. . . . During the club’s sojourns in the woods, practically all the state’s important business, legislative excepted, could have been transacted on the shores of the Fulton Chain” (2002: 127). The target audience which Murray addressed was quite different from this description, and although, just like the objectives of the Association, recreation and rest were part of his proposal as well, religious relevance was based on muscular Christianity, not on focusing on the work of God. With this prime objective
consumerist, you don’t have to consume anything, just contemplate the idea of consuming. Consumerism raised to the highest power is free-floating identity, or identity-in process. This is a specifically Romantic consumerism” (2007: 111; emphasis in original). Undoubtedly, aesthetic exploitation of the wilderness involves a form of consumerism; but for the sake of simplification the present article applies the notion of consumerism as a collective activity aiming for the production of material benefits in exchange for commodiousness and pleasure.
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 53–68 ISSN 0210-6124 Marketing Strategies, Consumerism and the Exercise of Democracy 59 in mind, the wilderness is marketed in accordance with both the target audience and the assimilation of physicality in Christian doctrines.
2.2. Textual analysis Each of the chapters in Adventures consists of a series of recommendations regarding a specific topic about vacationing in the Adirondacks. These suggestions provide, on the one hand, an image of the Adirondacks where even the frailest of individuals can relax and enjoy a pleasurable journey, and on the other, a series of do-it-yourself steps to become a fit an adequate sportsman. These instructions induced the reader to believe that, because the wilderness was not as hostile nor camping as strenuous as they had thought, and because successful hunting and fishing seemed to mainly depend on using the best and the right kind of equipment, the visitor could passively enjoy his or her vacation. ‘Why I go to the Wilderness’ marks the tone of muscular Christianity most vividly. Murray presents wilderness as a healer and as a space that city men and women ought to visit temporarily and consistently. It is not a permanent space in which to settle, but a transitional sanatorium guaranteeing absolute improvements which will maintain the individual strong and healthy once he returns to urban life. It was Murray’s assertion that in the Adirondacks patients and victims of illnesses that were spreading in the cities could recuperate: “To such as are afflicted with that dire parent of ills, dyspepsia, or have lurking in their system consumptive tendencies, I most earnestly recommend a month’s experience among the pines” (2009a: 11). Murray added that he had actually witnessed a young man whose doctors had given him only a short time to live improve “with wonderful rapidity” (2009a: 13). According to the writer, “the wilderness received him almost a corpse”, but returned him to the city a “happy and healthy” (2009a: 14) man. It is important to notice that Murray often times stresses his position as an eye- witness so as to communicate to his readers that he is a reliable source. Muscular Christianity requires that the space offered be represented as one diametrically opposed to the hectic, corrupting and contaminated city. Murray contends that the forests make up a pristine wilderness where “no axe has sounded”, hence providing the perfect environment “away from all the businesses and cares of civilized life” (2009a: 17). He continues through inductive pretenses by claiming that the trip does not have to be strenuous if one does not desire it to be. In his case, he confesses to having “no special love for labor” and to abhor “tramping” (2009a: 18). But of course this does not cause him any troubles because no actual physical exercise is required if it is against the sportsman’s desires: “If you wish to go one or ten miles for a fish, your guide paddles you to the spot, and serves you while you handle the rod. This takes from recreation every trace of toil. You have all the excitement of sporting, without any attending physical weariness” (2009a: 18). First of all, the idea of commodiousness is used to tempt a potential consumer. The guide ‘serves’ the client so as to avoid any situation or activity that is either strenuous or boring. Secondly, Murray touches upon one of the most powerful baiting techniques for consumerism: the illusion of an experience becomes better than the actual version of it. Sporting is stripped from the more tiring, boring nuisances but retains all the excitement because it
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 53–68 ISSN 0210-6124 60 Claudia Alonso Recarte is molded so as to satisfy the client, who enjoys it just as much (or even more) than performing all the activities that such a sport entails. This symbiotic relationship between comfort and illusion sets the precedent to today’s general preference for the impression of nature rather than actually experiencing, or even contacting it (McKibben 1993). Another case argument used by Murray is the conception of the guide as a servant, that is, as a chief figure in ensuring comfort and complacency for the client. If Hoffman and Headley had attended to the mythical qualities of the Adirondack guide through Cheney, now Murray characterizes them not just as the safeguards for the client’s leisure but as an actual product in themselves. Murray enumerates the types of guides the consumer is likely to encounter: the ‘witty guide’, the ‘talkative guide’, or the ‘lazy guide’, depending on their personality traits, or the ‘independent guide’ and the ‘hotel guide’ depending on whether they work for themselves or for a business. As if exhibiting branded products, Murray concludes that the first three types are all faulty and are “hindrances to a party’s happiness” (2009a: 35). The witty guide is “forever talking” and “thrusting himself impertinently forward”, and therefore the client should “avoid him as [he] would the plague” (2009a: 33). The client should as well “beware” of the talkative guide because of his vice for “bragging” (2009a: 34). And finally, the lazy guide is “the most vexatious creature” because he is a malfunctioning product in the sense that he does not live up to the expectancies of the client, who bargained for a “quick, inventive, and energetic” (2009a: 34) man, just as Natty Bumppo was. Murray opts for the independent guides, who will remain true to what the client expects, for they are “models of skill, energy, and faithfulness” (2009a: 35). The Leatherstocking represented the mythical paradigm, the fixed image of national identity that remained a referent of conduct for Murray just as much as it had for Hoffman and Headley. The moral immaculateness of Cooper’s character was central to Murray’s muscular Christianity: there permeates an intrinsic belief that natural matter (the body) is ontologically bound to the spirit (the mind). A true primitive lifestyle, best exemplified by Natty Bumppo, guaranteed physical excellence and moral innocence. What is innovative about Murray’s approach is that, contrary to Hoffman’s and Headley’s aesthetically-grounded depictions of Cheney, Adventures endorsed independent guides as assistants at the disposal of the paying customer. This understanding has profound implications on the mythical status of the frontiersman: through an analysis of the trial in which Natty Bumppo is judged for his refusal to comply to game laws in The Pioneers, Slotkin argues that the scene “demonstrates that the two worlds are irreconcilable” (2000: 491). By the ‘two worlds’ he refers to the Eurocentric, eastern formalisms and the western, frontiersman code. The former prioritizes the interests of the mass over that of the individual, while the latter defends the individual’s needs. The trial ritually transforms itself into an act where Bumppo is “publicly humiliated for his pride in setting self above society” (Slotkin 2000: 491). This division evidences Murray’s inherent paradox in his exaltation of independent guides: independent guides should authenticate the principles of the frontiersman while simultaneously submitting to the interests of the paying public. The monetary transaction in which the guide seals a form of conduct as the core of his services does not, in his view, violate the frontiersman ethic. As Murray polarizes the types of guides
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 53–68 ISSN 0210-6124 Marketing Strategies, Consumerism and the Exercise of Democracy 61 through categories of behavior and the mediums of transaction, he suggests that not only does the relationship between customer and service reconcile those two worlds, but, moreover, it guarantees the satisfaction of the client. In the end, public interest prevails over the self without Murray perceiving any form of corruption in between. For Murray, the possibility of moral corruption is not one stemming from the monetary transaction itself but from the medium through which such a transaction is carried out. Contrary to the independent guide, the hotel guide is bound to displease the client because of the very circumstances of his job: as an employee, he loses a great part of the responsibility to satisfy the customer because he knows that he is only part of the product, not the complete package.5 Murray implies that this agreement between a business and an employee results in a downfall of the guide’s character: “The ‘hotel guide’ is often unemployed for weeks if the season is dull; and, hanging around a frontier hotel in daily proximity to the bar, is very liable to beget that greatest of all vices in a guide –drunkenness” (2009a: 36). Murray is sceptical of the corporative system; corrupted by interests and greed, the hotel broke the honest relationship between guide and sportsman. What is troubling for Murray is not exactly the downfall of the guide himself, but the fact that because of such vices, propounded by mediating hotel businesses, clients are irreparably deceived and miss their chance to hire and be assisted by an authentic backwoodsman. In this sense, Murray anticipated Service Marketing Theory, which assumes that “the outcome of the service, namely that the service delivers what is promised, is ultimately more important than the process” (Hart and Hogg 1998: 61). The independent guide is established as the preferential choice because, by the very nature of his character, he stays true to what is expected of him as a product. To ensure that the interests of the middle-class public are protected, Murray furthermore stresses that the client should conceive himself as a small but significant part inside a wider body of consumerists. Under the characteristic reasoning of commercialism, he claims that a faulty product should be avoided. In regards to the irremediably witty, talkative and lazy guides, he had previously advised the reader to “post [the guide] by name on your way out, at every camp and hotel, as an imposition and a pest” (2009a: 35). This would “make an example of one or two, and the rest would take the hint”, and would allow the client’s conscience to “have peace” (2009a: 35). Such action attests to Murray’s belief that a consumer has rights, and that these rights are measured by moral parameters. Consumers, as a homogeneous group, have the common objective and moral responsibility of improving a product, so that the next consumer in line will benefit from a better version of it. In this sense, Murray’s stance was somewhat inclined towards Relationship Marketing Theory, where “the process of managing the relationship [between business and client] is as important, or indeed more important, than the outcome” (Hart and Hogg 1998: 61).
5 As current histories show, Murray was not wrong in his distinction between independent and hotel guides in terms of their expertise and dedication to the party. In his history of Adirondack guides, Brumley states that hotel businesses often hired “young inexperienced guides” under the assumption that “a dissatisfied customer would be replaced the next day or week with a new unsuspecting one” (2004: 18).
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 53–68 ISSN 0210-6124 62 Claudia Alonso Recarte
Murray refused to limit the Adirondacks to the needs and desires of the rich and notable figures of society. The nature of his target audience constituted in itself an advocacy for a more democratic appreciation of the wilderness. His adversity towards upper-class privileges is made clear in his allusions to the ethics of sportsmanship. Murray claims that a true sportsman’s duty must answer to ethical judgment: no matter how much the sportsman may enjoy hunting or fishing, and no matter his socioeconomic background, he is “not to kill more than the camp can eat” (2009a: 20). However, he is of the opinion that the solution of game laws does not in any way benefit the middle class. Rather than a regulation favoring the upper class, he proposes fines that would be equally applied to all citizens: “I am not in favor of ‘game laws’, passed for the most part in the interest of the few and the rich, to the deprivation of the poor and the many, but I would that fine and imprisonment both might be the punishment of him who . . . directs a ball or hooks a fish when no necessity demands it” (2009a: 20-21). Friction between social classes was increasingly becoming a problem towards the end of the nineteenth century, and the North Country, that ‘Central Park for the world’, was effectively reflecting the threat that the middle class represented for the upper castes. Murray managed to market the Adirondacks not only by guaranteeing comfort, but also by stating that the vacationer could spend very little money on the trip. For example, he recommends stores in New York City and in Boston where the customer may buy good-quality gear as cheaply as possible; he informs the reader of estimative, reasonable prices for each of the expenses; he lists the names of several trustworthy independent guides that will ensure that the client receives his money’s worth; and he describes the advantages and disadvantages of certain routes. The following is an excerpt on a possible itinerary from the city to the Adirondacks by train and steamboat: “So perfect are the connections on this route, that, having engaged ‘John’ to meet me a year from a certain day, at 5 P.M., on the Lower Saranac, I have rolled up to ‘Martin’s’ and jumped from the coach as the faithful fellow, equally ‘on time’, was in the act of pulling his narrow boat up the beach. It is not only easy and quick, but the cheapest route also” (2009a: 42-43). In other words, what the route supplies is the best quality for the lowest price. Part of the nature of marketing also includes making sure that the consumer feels that he has control over the product. If Murray cites several options regarding stores or routes it is not only to afford the consumer the most convenient possibilities for him, but to imply that he is to choose from these lists of possibilities and that therefore he has control, and hence power, over the product. It is significant that he writes ‘John’ and ‘Martin’s’ between quotes. He is trying to give the impression that these names are actually blank spaces which the consumer has the right and the power to fill in. The idea of ‘this could be you’ is flexible to the extent that the consumer is the one who in the end determines the variables of the trip so that the vacation may be as fitting and as becoming to each separate individual. Thus, all suggestions and recommendations are based not only on ‘how to’ tips and instructions, but on ‘do-it-yourself’ guarantees as well. Adventures also opened up to another social sector: middle-class women. Until the success of Murray’s book, women for the most part did not benefit from wilderness excursions; much less from the activities of sportsmanship, deemed as masculine. No
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 53–68 ISSN 0210-6124 Marketing Strategies, Consumerism and the Exercise of Democracy 63 women had been included in Emerson’s and Stillman’s Adirondack Club, nor in Brown’s Tract Association. One of the members of the Northwoods Club, Alfred B. Street, stated in a celebrative note the following: “The Ladies: Barred out of the forest by vindictive crinoline. We miss their presence there, but we see their bright glances in the glowing sky of morning. We hear their voices in the music of the woodland bird, and inhale their sweet breath in the fragrant zephyrs of the silent woods” (Quoted in Grady 2002: 135). It is not surprising to find that in the age of Romanticism women were associated with the beautiful features of nature. As an aesthetic that aroused calmness, delicacy and harmony, beauty was deemed as effeminate as opposed to the powerful sense of astonishment and awe that the sublime entailed. Women, therefore, were barred out of sporting clubs which attended to the importance of male bonding, and the void of their absence was filled in by club members through the beauty of nature. Murray, however, proclaimed the Adirondacks as a vacation spot from which women had the right to benefit as well, and several references to the ‘ladies’ are meant to encourage them to participate. There is a limit to Murray’s ‘openness’, however, and although muscular Christianity was also to be exercised by the weaker sex, this had to be done at a much more docile level. The image of women as frail, delicate objects unable to overcome the arduous and demanding work that camp life required is still very much present in Adventures. In spite of his incentive to bring ladies to the Adirondacks, Murray maintains the association between beauty and women intact on the basis of their common delicateness: “In beauty of scenery, in health-giving qualities, in the easy and romantic manner of its sporting, it is a paradise. . . . It is this peculiarity also which makes an excursion to this section so easy and delightful to ladies. There is nothing in the trip which the most delicate and fragile need fear” (2009a: 19).
3. ‘Murray’s Fools’ and the quest for Americanness Adventures became an instant bestseller in the spring of 1869; it was on the shelves of sport stores and station shops everywhere and was continually reprinted throughout subsequent months. In some places it was distributed as a pamphlet, offering “a free copy of the book with the purchase of a round-trip ticket” (Horrell 1999: 129). Hundreds of tourists swarmed to the northern woods, book in hand, equipped as Murray had instructed and ready to follow his advice religiously. The sociological phenomenon was to be known as ‘Murray’s Rush’, and soon enough, when the gullible tourists found out that things were not as easy, nor as comfortable, nor as becoming as Murray had promised, journalists quickly dubbed them ‘Murray’s Fools’. The infamous writer was from then on to be known as ‘Adirondack Murray’, and the book backfired with tremendous hostility. Tuberculosis patients discovered that no miraculous recovery was to happen for them; black flies, which Murray had described as “the most harmless and the least vexatious of the insect family” (2009a: 56) were a continual pest; men looking for relaxation and minimum effort found themselves having to work harder and more strenuously than they had anticipated; the gear they had bought did not make them better sportsmen; and many were being cheated by some of the honest, independent guides that Murray had recommended. Needless to say, the paradisiacal sanatorium designed for the ladies generally did not please middle-class women. The
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 53–68 ISSN 0210-6124 64 Claudia Alonso Recarte summer following the book’s publication, Wachusett, a correspondent for the Boston Daily Advertiser wrote: “I think I have known ladies who would not enjoy, even in the same array, crossing a carry in a rain storm, face and hands dripping with tar and oil, mosquito bites smarting on wrists and temples, the boots soaked through and through, the reserve stockings in the carpet bag equally wet, guide and escort so loaded with boat and baggage as to be incapable of rendering assistance” (2009: 170). Murray was not without a few defenders, however. The same summer in which Wachusett parodied the back-to-nature craze that Adventures had caused, journalist Kate Field published an article in the Daily Tribune in which she criticized the exaggerated and extremist reaction that seekers of health were having against the bestselling author: “If consumptives with both legs in the grave visit the Adirondacks, and after a few days or weeks leave the woods somewhat less alive than when they entered, surely their friends display the most extraordinary absence of reason in attributing their decease to Murray’s book” (2009: 81). In spite of the disappointment that the readers felt once they reached the northern wilderness, floods of tourists did not cease to arrive in the Adirondacks, fomenting the construction of multiple hotels and a railroad from Saratoga Springs to North Creek. Nor did Murray ever back down or express any regrets even at the height of his ill-reputation as a liar. In 1890, he recalled how “the great, ignorant, stay-at-home, egotistic world laughed and jeered and tried to roar the book down”, and how these critics “called it a fraud and a hoax”. But with prideful determination he credited his book for “[carrying] the fame of the [Adirondack] woods over the continent” (2009b: 118). The author was also to be reprimanded for the democratic creed underlying Murray’s Rush. Along with the lumbering industry, the overwhelming number of visitors became a serious threat to the wilderness which Murray had so ardently defended, and “within a few years, critics were complaining of the denuded forests and the decline of fish and wildlife” (Strauss 1987: 282). Indeed, conservationist apprehensions ignited very heated attacks on Murray, especially by Thomas Bangs Thorpe and Charles Dudley Warner. The latter wrote several pieces for Harper’s Weekly and Atlantic Monthly, and was recurrently vocal about the hazards of Murray’s Fools even a decade after the publication. Warner overtly revealed the elitism implicit in many of the experienced sportsmen’s views: The instinct of barbarism that leads people periodically to throw aside the habits of civilization, and seek the freedom and discomfort of the woods, is explicable enough; but it is not so easy to understand why this passion should be strongest in those who are most refined, and most trained in intellectual and social fastidiousness. Philistinism and shoddy do not like the woods, unless it becomes fashionable to do so; and then, as speedily as possible, they introduce their artificial luxuries, and reduce the life in the wilderness to the vulgarity of a well-fed picnic. (2008: 66-67) Warner was nostalgically holding on to the romanticist convictions that had brought the most ‘refined’ and the most ‘civilized’ back to nature in the first place. Beneath polarizations of class taste lay a more unstoppable threat: Murray’s Fools prophesized the new devouring rhythms and labor-saving possibilities of technology. Early nineteenth-century devotion to the machine for production now found a new form of
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 53–68 ISSN 0210-6124 Marketing Strategies, Consumerism and the Exercise of Democracy 65 expression in the machine for recreation. Despite the fact that muscular Christianity offered the wilderness as a sanctuary from urban progress and alienation, vacationers were reluctant to leave behind their ‘artificial luxuries’ and became agents of the contagion of industry. The construction of multiple hotels and the railroad in the Adirondacks responded solely to tourists’ demands, turning Warner’s celebration of “the freedom and discomfort of the woods” to an adulation for abundance, minimum effort and immediacy. As Leo Marx argues, nineteenth-century middle-class infatuation with comfort bred a new ideological obsession, one that replaced the wilderness aesthetics of the sublime and the beautiful with “a rhetoric of the technological sublime” (1967: 195). Needless to say, Warner’s elitist proclamation in which the privileges of the few and the rich were being reinstated clashed deeply with Murray’s unyielding, democratic stance. Where Warner was convinced that middle-class tourists were exploitatively using and destroying nature, Murray and his advocates believed such an attitude was an outrageous assault on the founding principles of the nation. In Terrie’s words, “because of their patronizing tone, those horrified by Murray’s Fools were seen to be espousing an essentially un-American position” (1985: 76). However, the vehemence of Murray’s critics may also be conceived as a campaign to nurture yet another nationalistic axiom. Romanticism had launched the notion of wildness as the distinctive nationalistic feature through an exaltation of Burke’s categories and the mystification of the frontiersman as America’s fixed, androcentric referent. Developing as a social construct, wilderness had become the untouchable aesthetic essence of the United States. Vance claims that wilderness is “the part of our environment that is idealized as ‘perfect nature’, as, indeed, the highest or purest form of nature we have”, and that “nature is at its best when utterly separated from the human world” (1997: 62). The novelty of Murray’s approach was that it offered this romanticist image of the wilderness and its fundamental myths as a commodity, in the sense that wilderness went beyond being a mere ideological category and entered the capitalist market. Romantics had succeeded in making the wilderness a fetish with the inherent powers of sublimity, beauty and moral innocence. Muscular Christianity and mass vacationing now opened that fetish to commerce through hotel, transportation and sporting services. The wilderness became a commodity fetish in its full Marxist sense, where vacationers exchanged their money for the physical and mental invigoration promised by muscular Christianity. As Davidson argues, the commodity fetish appeals not so much to the “logical and the cognitive” as to the “emotional and affective” (1992: 169). Indeed, the alleged restorative powers of nature had more to do with romanticist mystification and Murray’s subsequent marketing than with actual evidence. Viewed in this light, Field’s defense of Murray can be interpreted as a recuperation of the logical and the cognitive to abate the hyperbolism to which fetishism leads. While Murray may have believed that romanticist values could be sustained within what would evolve into consumer culture, Warner and upper-class New Yorkers deemed this co-existence impossible. In their fetishist adulation of the wilderness, romanticists marked a distance between man and nature that could only be mediated aesthetically. But by conceiving the wilderness as a matrix of commodities that could be modified and improved in accordance to the needs and expectancies of the consuming
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 53–68 ISSN 0210-6124 66 Claudia Alonso Recarte public, connotative appreciations of nature being untouchable and untainted slowly faded. Klingle notes that “consumption is inherently spatial” and that “it shrinks the distance that separates us from nature and one another even as it effaces the same connections” (2003: 95). For many, the romanticist distance between the human and the wild, balanced aesthetically, was condemned to perish in the interest of the mainstream and technology. Hence, resistance to consumerism raised not merely the issue of which stance was more democratic, but also, which mode of action was essentially more American: was it to protect the integrity of the beauties, sublimities and myths that were the pillars of the nation’s identity; or was it to promote the interests of the middle class, the heart of democracy, even at the expense of damaging America’s pristine wilderness?
4. Conclusions Adventures represents a turning point towards a more modern conception of the wilderness in American culture, one that involves the institutionalized practice of vacationing. It anticipated consumer culture in terms of style, structure and content just as much as it did in terms of how it was received and reviewed. Also, because of the crisis it represented, Adventures positions itself not only as a text creating new formulaic conventions that would become a reference for twentieth-century wilderness propaganda and ecotourism, but as one that exposed the friction between social strata and their understanding of their rights over nature. The controversy surrounding the book is not without its ironies. First of all, the widespread hostility expressed by Murray’s Fools in the end did nothing to aggravate the image of the Adirondacks as the preferential vacationing spot for the northeastern middle class. Secondly, despite Murray’s proclamations of the wilderness as a space to exercise democratic rights, the period following the publication of the book would be known as the Gilded Age of the Adirondacks. By the end of the nineteenth century, cheap railroad fares and affordable hotels with a rustic appeal continued to attract the middle class, but these were very rudimentary and modest compared to what came to be known as the Adirondack great camps. Owned by plutocrats as a second or third home, these great camps were an exhibition of luxury, opulence and exquisite taste that promoted the wilderness experience that upper-class New Yorkers demanded. Only the most exclusive guests and their families were welcome – from Wall Street magnates to politicians, intellectuals and distinguished artists – while anti-Semitic and racist restrictions tainted the guest policies. The great camps were not the only way through which the more privileged of New York society could comfortably retreat to the wilderness. In the late 1800s, private clubs bought extensive tracts of lands for their members to exploit and manage collectively. Private land allowed members to maintain their social distance from the middle and working-class tourists seeking the Adirondacks as well. Thus, the tensions that had finally erupted into the public sphere due to Murray’s Rush would be far from resolved. As much as Murray had envisioned the wilderness as a space to erode economic differences through a homogeneous form of vacationing, the emergence of great camps and private clubs evidenced the unwillingness of the upper
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 53–68 ISSN 0210-6124 Marketing Strategies, Consumerism and the Exercise of Democracy 67 class to mingle with the middle class. The cycle would not long after repeat itself: during the first decades of the twentieth century the locals and the middle-class would clash with the game laws and stipulations maintained by private clubs. In only a few years and in a similar twist of irony, the automobile, which became the ultimate symbol of democracy, allowed the middle class to surge massively back to the Adirondacks, but in the process, destroyed and polluted the same wilderness which vacationers sought, thus desecrating the ‘integrity’ of nature that the conservationist movement, led by the more privileged groups, ardently fought to protect.
Works Cited Bronski, Peter 2008: At the Mercy of the Mountains. Guilford: Lyons. Brumley, Charles 2004: Guides of the Adirondacks: A History. Utica: North Country. Burke, Edmund 1990 (1757): A Philosophical Enquiry Into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful. Oxford: Oxford UP. Cronon, William 1996: ‘The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature’. William Cronon, ed. Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature. New York: W.W. Norton. 69-90. Davidson, Martin Peter 1992: The Consumerist Manifesto. London: Routledge. Emmons, Ebenezer 1842: Geology of New York, Part II. Survey of the Second Geological District. Albany: W. and A. White. Field, Kate. 2009 (1869): ‘Murray Vindicated’. Paul Jamieson and Neal Burdick, eds. The Adirondack Reader. New York: The Adirondack Mountain Club. 80-81. Grady, Joseph F. 2002 (1933): The Adirondacks, Fulton Chain-Big Moose Region: The Story of a Wilderness. Utica: North Country. Hart, Susan and Gillian Hogg 1998: ‘Relationship Marketing in Corporate Legal Services’. Gillian Hogg and Mark Gabbott, eds. Services Industry Marketing. London: Frank Cass. 55-69. Headley, Joel T. 2006 (1849): The Adirondack; or, Life in the Woods. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan Library. Hoffman, Charles Fenno 2007 (1839): Wild Scenes in the Forest and the Prairie. Vol. 1. Whitefish: Kessinger. Horrell, Jeffrey L. 1999: Seneca Ray Stoddard. Transforming the Adirondack Wilderness in Text and Image. New York: Syracuse UP. Klingle, Matthew W. 2003: ‘Spaces of Consumption in Environmental History’. History and Theory 42.4: 94-110. Kotler, Philip, Gary Armstrong, Veronica Wong and John Saunders 2008 (1996): Principles of Marketing. 5th ed. Essex: Pearson. Marx, Leo 1967: The Machine in the Garden. New York: Oxford UP. McKibben, Bill 1993: The Age of Missing Information. New York: Plume. Morton, Timothy 2007: Ecology Without Nature. Boston: Harvard UP. Murray, William Henry Harrison 2009a (1869): Adventures in the Wilderness, or, Camp-Life in the Adirondacks. Charleston: BiblioBazaar. ––––– 2009b (1890): Lake Champlain and Its Shores. Ithaca: Cornell U Library. Nash, Roderick Frazier 2001 (1967): Wilderness and the American Mind. New Haven: Yale UP. New York State Constitution: Article XIV. Conservation.
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 53–68 ISSN 0210-6124 68 Claudia Alonso Recarte
Phillips, Adam 1990: Introduction. A Philosophical Enquiry Into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful. By Edmund Burke. Oxford: Oxford UP. ix-xxiii. Schneider, Paul 1997: The Adirondacks. New York: Henry Holt. Slotkin, Richard 2000 (1973): Regeneration through Violence. Norman: Oklahoma UP. Stearns, Peter N. 2001: Consumerism in World History. New York: Routledge. Strauss, David 1987: ‘Toward a Consumer Culture: Adirondack Murray and the Wilderness Vacation’. American Quarterly 39.2: 270-86. Terrie, Philip G. 2008 (1997) : Contested Terrain. New York: Syracuse UP. ––––– 1985: Forever Wild: Environmental Aesthetics and the Adirondack Forest Preserve. Philadelphia: Temple UP. Vance, Linda 1997: ‘Ecofeminism and Wilderness’. NWSA 9.3: 60-76. Wachusett 2009 (1869): ‘Some Were Not Charmed’. Paul Jamieson and Neal Burdick, eds. The Adirondack Reader. New York: The Adirondack Mountain Club. 166-70. Warner, Charles Dudley 2008 (1878): The Complete Writings of Charles Dudley Warner. Vol. 3. Charleston: BiblioBazaar. White, William Chapman 1985 (1954): Adirondack Country. New York: Syracuse UP.
Received 5 May 2010 Revised version accepted 23 November 2010
Claudia Alonso Recarte is at the Faculty of Education of the University of Castilla-La Mancha. Her fields of research include ecocriticism and nature writing, and new jazz studies from the perspective of feminism and myth criticism.
Address: Departamento de Filología Moderna, Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, Facultad de Educación de Cuenca, Edificio Fray Luis de León, Avenida de los Alfares 42, 16071 Cuenca, Spain. Tel.: +34 96 9179100 // Extensión: 4700. Fax: +34 96 9179170.
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 53–68 ISSN 0210-6124 ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 69–84 ISSN 0210-6124
Testimony and the Representation of Trauma in Eva Figes’ Journey to Nowhere
Silvia Pellicer-Ortín University of Zaragoza [email protected]
The main aim of this study is to show that the triggering force for the contemporary destabilisation of traditional life-writing genres is trauma. In The Limits of Autobiography. Trauma and Testimony, Leigh Gilmore argues that the ‘limit case autobiography’ has been born out of the complicated relationship between trauma and testimony. I will prove that the autobiographical work of the British writer Eva Figes’ Journey to Nowhere belongs in this category. The mixture of elements of autobiography, biography, memoir, history and testimony aims at working through the author-narrator’s experiences of the Holocaust and denouncing the consequences of the creation of Israel after the Second World War. The analysis of the various testimonial levels and of the healing stages represented in the narration shows that it is the conflict between the representation of trauma and the self that has demanded the writing of this ‘limit case autobiography’. Figes’ testimonial project proves that the need to represent trauma has affected the production of fictional narratives and non-fictional testimonies, which has exposed the need to develop new critical approaches such as Trauma Studies.
Keywords: Eva Figes; testimony; Trauma Studies; Holocaust; limit-case autobiography; contemporary literature
Los Géneros Testiomoniales y la Representación del Trauma en Journey to Nowhere de Eva Figes
El principal objetivo de este artículo es exponer que el conflicto entre la representación del trauma y del yo ha introducido cambios considerables en los géneros autobiográficos. En el transcurso del artículo, intentaré demostrar que Journey to Nowhere, de la autora británica Eva Figes, pertenece al nuevo género designado por Leigh Gilmore como ‘autobiografía límite’. El análisis de los diferentes niveles testimoniales y de las fases de curación de los procesos traumáticos representados en el texto demostrará que la fusión de elementos de autobiografía, biografía, memorias, historia y testimonio responden a la necesidad de la autora-narradora de superar las experiencias traumáticas vividas durante y después del Holocausto y de denunciar las consecuencias de la creación de Israel después de la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Este estudio ayudará a comprender cómo el concepto de trauma ha cambiado la producción de narrativas de ficción y de testimonios no ficcionales y a su vez, ha mostrado la necesidad de crear nuevos enfoques críticos como los Estudios de Trauma. Palabras clave: Eva Figes; testimonio; Estudios de Trauma; Holocausto; autobiografía límite; literatura contemporánea 70 Silvia Pellicer-Ortín
1. “Stories about the past” I am a grandmother now and, like all grandmothers, I have a head full of stories about the past. But my stories are not like other people’s, which makes them more fascinating for my descendants, if not always easy to talk about. All of them are strange, in one way or another, but so were the times. (Figes 2008: 1)1 These words set up the autobiographical journey to the past that the German-Jewish born British writer Eva Figes will perform in her latest book, Journey to Nowhere. One Woman Looks for the Promised Land (2008). The story Eva Figes narrates in this book is set in 2008 when, already a recognised writer, she felt the necessity to tell her own memories of the time when she and her family had to leave Germany as a result of the outbreak of the Second World War and, more particularly, to tell the story of her family’s maid. Edith’s story can be read as an exemplary account of all those Jews who survived the Holocaust in Germany and were later attracted by the Zionist cause and moved to Palestine, where they were unable to find their place because of their German origins. Figes has declared that she decided to write this book because she felt angry about what Israel was doing to Palestinians; she has explained that, although she was afraid of revealing her political views, she felt this was the time to denounce the political decisions made by the European and American political institutions after the war (in Pellicer-Ortín 2009: 15). The connection between the creation of individual identities and writing has become increasingly important after structuralism. Already in 1977, Roland Barthes, in his famous essay ‘The Death of the Author’, argued that the self is the result of writing rather than its cause and thus the self can be constantly recreated through the process of writing. In recent decades we have observed a proliferation of life-writing in its different manifestations: autobiography, literary biography, biography, autofiction and memoir. Critics such as Alison Light (2004: 751) assert that literary biography has become the most successful literary form among the British readership since the 1960s. Roger Luckhurst considers that a “memoir boom” has invaded the literary panorama since the 1990s (2008: 117), while Leigh Gilmore asserts that “memoir has become the genre in the skittish period around the turn of the millennium” (2001: 1). Although most critics have read Journey to Nowhere as a memoir (Feigel 2008: 30; Karpf 2008: 7; Cross 2009: 26), focusing on the personal and traumatic component of the stories contained in the narration, it is my contention that this label is too narrow for such a complex work. In her article ‘Writing Lives’ (2004), Alison Light outlines the evolution of life- writing genres in Britain. As she explains, in the 1970s autobiographical genres attempted to assert collective identities, while ‘confessional’ poetry verbalised the internal suffering of many writers. In the 1980s, novelistic experimentation became the norm and fictional reports of true lives multiplied. In the 1990s, literary memoirs produced by well-known writers became the new trend, and the blurring of boundaries between fiction and reality has predominated in present-day life-writing genres (Light
1 The research carried out for the writing of this essay is part of a research project financed by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (MICINN) and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) (code: HUM2007-61035).
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 69–84 ISSN 0210-6124 Testimony and the Representation of Trauma in Eva Figes’ Journey to Nowhere 71
2004: 765). Light and Luckhurst are two of the many critics who believe that most of the autobiographical genres published in recent decades deal with problematic aspects concerning the narrativisation of what Figes refers to as the “strange” events and times of her childhood (Light 2004: 764). Journey to Nowhere will show that traumatic events cannot be incorporated into narratives in an easy way, since they are the product of the internal struggle between the needs to deny and to release the traumatic memories. Figes’ author-narrator defines this internal conflict as a complicated process when she asserts that “remembering brings problems” (Figes 2008: 139). Autobiographical works like Figes’ Journey to Nowhere respond to the double need to voice the collective and individual traumatic experiences triggered by the Holocaust and of providing a healing mechanism for the transformation of these traumatic memories into narrative memories. Certain contemporary critics, particularly those associated with Yale University in the 1990s, such as Cathy Caruth, Geoffrey Hartman or Shoshana Felman, adapted the medical ideas on psychic traumatic processes to the narrative analysis, thus inaugurating trauma studies (Whitehead 2004: 4). As Geoffrey Hartman explains, the task of the trauma critic is to discover the ‘psychic wounds’ in the words provided by literary and non–literary accounts dealing with traumatic experiences, since the effects of traumatic processes can be traced in the narrative devices employed by contemporary writers of different genres (2003: 257, 259). As literary critics, we have witnessed the proliferation of life-writing genres blurring the traditional boundaries between fiction and reality and between fictional narratives and autobiography, thus complicating the representation of the textual self. The main aim of this article will be to show that the triggering force for this destabilisation of traditional life-writing genres is trauma.2 Trauma begs for the representation of the unrepresentable and works against any coherent narrative representation of the self. Drawing on this, Leigh Gilmore (2001) argues that a new life- writing genre has been born out of the complicated relationship between trauma and testimony: the limit case autobiography. These liminal autobiographies blur the boundaries between “autobiography and fiction, autobiography and history, autobiography and legal testimony, autobiography and psychoanalysis, or autobiography and theory” (Gilmore 2001: 14). They are the product of the paradoxes resulting from the conflict created when the representation of the self and trauma overlap (2001: 19), a conflict that darkens the distinction between literature and testimony. As Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub (1992) argue, our societies have experienced a crisis of witnessing due to the traumatic historical events that took place in the 20th century and which required oral or written testimonies in order to be worked through. Freud and Breuer’s (1991a: 57, 68) talking cure and Carl Jung’s (1990: 117) conviction that the healing process begins when the traumatised person is able to transform traumatic events into a chronological narrative are classical examples of the view that the main step for the recovery of trauma is to verbalise the experience of suffering. In the same research line as Felman and Laub, Hartman equates the function of literature
2 Traditional autobiography is understood as a text in which the biographer offers a detailed and complex narrative of his mind and the events that took place during a great part of his or her life (Buell 1991: 47-69).
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 69–84 ISSN 0210-6124 72 Silvia Pellicer-Ortín to that of the talking cure (2003: 259). Drawing on this, Suzette A. Henke has defined the term scriptotherapy as “the process of writing out and writing through traumatic experience in the mode of therapeutic re-enactment” (1998: xii-xiii). Thus, one of the main aims of traumatic life writing would be to articulate some unbearable emotional crisis that has become unspeakable for the writer, so that what cannot be spoken may be written (1998: xviii). The narrativisation of traumatic experiences becomes even more problematic when the traumatic events refer to the Holocaust and the post-Holocaust years, as happens in Journey to Nowhere, given the ethical connotations of the Holocaust and the recent controversies surrounding its fictionalisation (Lang 1988: 38; Henke 1998: xiii). According to certain specialists in Holocaust Studies, one of the reasons this topic still generates so much debate is the human incapacity to confront the facts of the Nazi genocide (Langer 2000: xv). Another lies in the limitations imposed by history and the dangers of sensationalism that hover over any artistic representation of the singular events that took place in the Holocaust (Hartman 2002: 36). However, critics such as Hartman (1996: 133-72) and Felman and Laub (1992: 57-74) consider that oral and written, literary and non-literary testimonies are useful tools for the individual and collective working through trauma as well as for the preservation of historical memories for future generations. In Journey to Nowhere, Figes appears to have followed these premises, since she yielded to the power of stories to reveal truths about the Holocaust and to heal those who survived it. In keeping with this, her work should be studied in relation to the vast number of Holocaust narratives that have appeared in recent decades, from the early testimonial works of Primo Levi (1947) or Ellie Wiesel (1958) to the current explosion of autobiographical and fictional narratives targeted at representing the traumatic nature of these historical events (Whitehead 2004: 6; Schwarz 1999: 4; Lang 1988: 1-15). In particular, Figes’ autobiographical works are representative of the contemporary group of Anglo-Jewish writers such as Ronit Lentin, Dan Jacobson, Gabriel Josipovici and George Steiner, who have attempted to narrativise in their literary works their traumatic experiences and their identity conflicts during and after the Holocaust (Cheyette, 1998: xliii-liii). More concretely, Journey to Nowhere should be analysed in relation to preceding autobiographical works such as Anne Karpf’s The War After (1996), Leila Berg’s Flickerbook (1997), Jenny Diski’s Skating to Antarctica (1997) or Linda Grant’s Remind me Who I am, Again (1998). All were published by Anglo-Jewish female writers who, like Figes, tried to make sense of their own and their families’ traumatic experiences of immigration and the Holocaust in their autobiographical writings (Behlau 2004: 107-22). However, Figes’ earliest works, published between the late 1960s and 1970s, were not autobiographical; rather, they were inheritors of the Modernist stream-of-consciousness techniques and interest in the individual. It was not until 1978 that Figes published her first autobiographical work, Little Eden: A Child at War, in which she started to verbalise her traumatic experiences in the Second World War and abandoned her experimental style. In her following autobiographical work, Tales of Innocence and Experience (2003), she narrated the transmission of her childhood memories to her granddaughter through the act of story-telling. And finally, in Journey to Nowhere Figes succeeds in combining the narration of her and her family’s
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 69–84 ISSN 0210-6124 Testimony and the Representation of Trauma in Eva Figes’ Journey to Nowhere 73 traumatic experiences in post-Holocaust Great Britain with her opinions on the creation of Israel in 1947. Figes’ political and testimonial work demonstrates that trauma has influenced the production of fictional narratives and non-fictional testimonies by breaking the frame of traditional representation of the self. Thus, after analysing the mechanisms of trauma representation and the testimonial dimensions present in the narration, I will attempt to show that it is the conflict between self-representation and the representation of trauma that has driven the writing of this ‘limit case autobiography’.3 My initial hypothesis is that the mixture of elements of different literary genres is targeted at working through the author-narrator’s traumatic experiences of the Holocaust and denouncing the negative consequences brought about by the creation of Israel after the Second World War. Journey to Nowhere has a complex structure, since the main narrative layer combines the retrospective testimonial account of the author-narrator’s childhood memories with political and historical issues. Many of the aspects that turn this work into a limit-case autobiography are rooted in the testimonial nature of Figes’ text. Leigh Gilmore argues that limit cases are testimonial projects by nature because these narrations always require a listener, apart from a speaking subject. As one of the harms of trauma is the impossibility of saying “you” (Gilman 2001: 31), the subject needs to find another to whom the narration can be addressed in order to try to initiate the overcoming of trauma. In Figes’ work, the structure is complicated by the embedding of various testimonial acts, which start from the individual account of the author’s experiences and end with the collective voicing of the Jewish traumatic experiences represented by Edith’s story. Following Shoshana Felman’s definition of the testimonial act: To testify … is more than simply to report a fact or an event or to relate what has been lived, recorded and remembered. Memory is conjured here essentially in order to address another, to impress upon a listener, to appeal to a community. … To testify is thus not merely to narrate but to commit oneself, and to commit the narrative, to others. (1992: 204, emphasis in the original) It becomes clear that in any act of bearing testimony the speaker/writer commits an emotionally charged testimony to a listener/reader, who becomes the recipient of the truth lying at the core of the painfully transmitted shocking events. All these elements are represented in Journey to Nowhere. At the same time, I will try to show that the testimonial dimensions present in the narration run parallel to the stages in the overcoming of trauma represented in the text. As regards the healing of traumatic processes, Dominick LaCapra has had recourse to the Freudian notion that the original traumatic event must “find a way out through speech” in order to introduce it “into normal consciousness” (Freud and Breuer 1991a: 68) when he explains that the “working through” of trauma starts when the subject is able to arrange chronologically the fragmentary pieces that come to the conscious mind
3 Together with the works analysed by Gilmore (2001): Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina (1992), Mikal Gilmore’s Shot in the Heart (1994), Jamaica Kincaid’s The Autobiography of my Mother (1996) and Jeanette Winterson’s Written on the Body (1992).
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 69–84 ISSN 0210-6124 74 Silvia Pellicer-Ortín as nightmares or flashbacks (2001: 21-22). According to the psychiatrist Judith Lewis Herman (2001), there are three stages in the healing process: safety, remembrance or mourning and the reconnection with ordinary life, which are embodied in Figes’ work.
2. Safety In the first pages of Journey to Nowhere, readers confront the author-narrator’s statement that: “But the angle of vision changes with time, and at that moment, driving down Lisson Grove half a century later, Edith’s story suddenly seemed worth telling. Just because it went against the grain, the in-built prejudices of a lifetime” (2008: 3). These words bring to mind Gilmore’s contention that limit-case works usually begin in mourning when the narrator recognises that there is something absent in her life that needs to be sought (2001: 93). At the beginning of her book, Gilmore states that trauma is what “breaks the frame” (2001: 8, my emphasis) in contemporary narrative self-representations. It was not until the second half of the nineteenth century that medics started to broaden the notion of trauma to the psychical harm caused by an overwhelming event that the subject could not assimilate in rational terms. First applied to the victims of railway accidents (Charcot 1887) and then to the ‘shell-shocked’ soldiers of the First World War (Mott 1919; Freud 2001a; Myers 1940), the notion of psychic trauma came to public notice thanks to the works of Sigmund Freud, whose conceptualisation of traumatic neurosis is still present in contemporary trauma critics such as Cathy Caruth (1995, 1996) or Roger Luckurst, who has described psychical trauma as: Something that enters the psyche that is so unprecedented or overwhelming that it cannot be processed or assimilated by usual mental processes. We have, as it were, nowhere to put it and so it falls out of our conscious memory, yet is still present in the mind like an intruder or ghost. (Luckhurst 2006: 499) This definition focuses on the belatedness of the traumatic experience. This idea also has its basis in Freud and Breuer’s inaugural line of thought which explains that the original traumatic event takes place without the traumatised subject noticing it (Freud and Breuer 1991a: 53, 60). In their path-breaking works ‘On the Psychical Mechanism of Hysterical Phenomena’ (1991a) and Studies on Hysteria (1991b), they pointed to the repression and failed “abreaction” of this first shocking event as the origin of the posterior development of hysterical neurosis (Freud and Breuer 1991a:59). In Moses and Monotheism (1939), Freud developed this idea by defining the so-called period of latency as follows: “the time that elapsed between the accident and the first appearance of the symptoms is called the ‘incubation period’, a transparent allusion to the pathology of infectious disease . . . It is the feature one might term latency” (Freud 2001b: 67-68, original emphasis). These notions have become foundational for trauma studies, as Luckhurst remarks that “this two-stage theory of trauma, the first forgotten impact making a belated return after a hiatus, has been central to cultural trauma theory” (2008: 8), and Caruth has also drawn on Freud’s theories to explain the belatedness that characterises traumatic events: “the period during which the effects of the experience are not apparent, . . . the successive movement from an event to its repression to its return” (1995: 7).
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 69–84 ISSN 0210-6124 Testimony and the Representation of Trauma in Eva Figes’ Journey to Nowhere 75
This trauma-related belatedness typifies the narrative structure of Figes’ book, as the author-narrator starts admitting that there is something absent in her present life which she has to look for in her past and in Edith’s story in order to go on with her life. Thus, it will become evident that one of the main impulses behind this work is the author- narrator’s need to cope with the traumatic past experiences that were not fully assimilated at the time the initial shock took place and have continued to haunt her ever since. The fact that until 2008 Figes has not managed to address her personal story so directly or to tackle issues concerning the history of her homeland, Germany, and of the Jewish people who emigrated to Palestine, reinforces the Freudian theory that some time has to elapse in order for the trauma survivor to try to integrate the traumatic memories into her self. In Figes’ case, the sudden encounter with a place of the past activates the mental processes that make the author-narrator conscious of the unsolved traumas hidden in her soul. Her act of remembering corresponds to her need to understand the past and perform the process of transference of traumatic experiences (Gilmore 2001: 73). As Anne Whitehead clarifies, buried memories must be uncovered for the subject’s soul to heal and “the delayed action of remembering… allows the past to develop, to evolve along with changing circumstances over time” (2009: 91). This is the first testimonial dimension identified in Figes’ work. It corresponds to the prologue and the epilogue, where the I of the flesh-and-blood author becomes patent and Figes explains that this is a testimonial text motivated by her feeling that she owes Edith a debt that she cannot repay (Figes 2008:3). As she further explains, this work is also based on the research she carried out in order to understand the political events that took place after the Holocaust (Figes 2008: 3-4). She uses her own voice to dedicate “this story of survival, and the sorrow it so often brings. To Edith and thousands of others, who were betrayed by the victors of a terrible war, and who were expected to fight for a homeland most of them did not even want” (2008: 4). In this part, the identities of author and fictional narrator merge explicitly, the author bears witness to her self in order to arrange her thoughts and reflect on the political goals that motivated the writing of the book. This first testimonial dimension corresponds to the first healing stage described by Herman: ‘safety’ or the feeling experienced once the problem has been recognised and the subject tries to gain control over her life.
3. Remembrance and mourning In the second testimonial dimension readers become witnesses to Figes’ memories thanks to the “testimonial power of language” (Felman and Laub 1992: 29), which allows her to perform a writing-healing process of working through (Henke 1998: xii). However, at this stage we have to distinguish two different narrative strategies. On the one hand, the traumatic events that took place between 1939 and 1948 are often rendered by the adult narrator from her adult perspective, trying to impose a logical order on the fragmentary memories of her disturbing past. This quotation can clarify this point: “I knew he was smiling because of us, the children. I had begun to divide the human race into people who smiled at children, and those who did not… I was growing up, suddenly and very fast” (2008: 22). In this example, the adult Figes is both narrator and focaliser. She looks back at her childhood experiences and makes evaluative
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 69–84 ISSN 0210-6124 76 Silvia Pellicer-Ortín comments on the effects these events had on her maturation process. However, there are also some moments when the adult-narrator assumes the perspective of the child she was, as happens in episodes like this: The Gedachtniskirche already had its Christmas tree, lights sparkling. Why did we not have one? At the other end of the long corridor I could hear whispering: Edith and the nursemaid were discussing some sort of secret. Had my father done something wrong, was he in prison? (2008: 13) In these instances of child focalisation, the author-narrator can remember German words, the language of her childhood, and readers may grasp the way little Eva perceived all the changes in her family when the war broke out. On the other hand, when the narrator wishes to provide readers with information of the historical events, she focalises the episodes from her adult perspective, from which she has more historical knowledge to criticise the political decisions made in the post- war period. These historical passages appear especially at the end; they deal with the creation of Israel, the conflict in Gaza, the politicians who influenced the course of events and writers who, “like Primo Levy had started to voice their Holocaust experiences” (2008: 141). In general, Figes alternates historical with autobiographical remarks, introducing testimonial pieces containing the opinions of key socio-political figures of that moment. This is a fruitful device to lend credibility to the historical events narrated and to turn them into something tangible. As Ann Karpf argues in her review of Journey to Nowhere, the book is crowded with various individual and collective traumatic stories such as “the story of Israel’s birth, told here polemically, sometimes simplistically, but also courageously; the story of how Figes adapted to life in England; and, most problematic, the story of her troubled relationship with her mother” (2008: 7). In Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), Freud explains that, after the period of latency, the traumatised subject starts to repeat compulsively the original traumatic experience (2001a: 36-8). Dominick LaCapra takes up this idea by formulating various symptoms of this compulsion to repeat or “act out” (LaCapra 2001: 22), such as nightmares, a general state of anxiety and unknown fears that can lead to self- mutilation and other forms of self-punishment. During this phase, the subject’s sense of temporality becomes distorted, so that “in acting out, tenses implode, and it is as if one were back there in the past reliving the traumatic scene” (LaCapra 2001: 21). Echoing this, Figes’ autobiographical narrator is constantly haunted by the traumatic shock of her “young life” (Figes 2008: 18), when she was forced to emigrate to Great Britain, leaving behind her grandparents. As a result, she suffers from recurrent nightmares and intrusive memories that take her back to that moment, as she describes: “Always the same dream: the day of departure, a grey March morning, small figures waving from the edge of the airfield as we waited for the plane to take off” (2008: 10). These flashbacks create a narration full of digressions which interrupt the logical flux of the telling. This sort of convoluted narration evoking the stagnation of traumatic time is a key feature of limit cases. Journey to Nowhere constantly emphasises the separation between the present and the past, thus enhancing the importance of the passing of time to assimilate traumatic events, as in the following example: “A lifetime separates the events I have been
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 69–84 ISSN 0210-6124 Testimony and the Representation of Trauma in Eva Figes’ Journey to Nowhere 77 describing from the present day, a time of recollection” (2008: 139). Figes’ use of her childhood’s past is related to Gilmore’s (2001: 65) contention that liminal stories are often told from a child’s perspective or allude to traumatic episodes that occurred during the protagonist’s childhood. In this case, the original traumatic event is constantly re-enacted in Figes’ narration and became comprehensible to her when her mother sent the child to the cinema to watch a newsreel about Belsen. The horror of the images of the concentration camps marked Eva forever and she admits that she has never been the same person afterwards (2008: 40). Another aspect of the author-narrator’s trauma is the strained relationship with her mother due to her mother’s difficulty in “coping with” the horrible events the family had gone through (2008: 49). At the heart of this relationship lies the process of transgenerational transmission of trauma that her mother exercised on her when she mistreated and blamed her, as the author-narrator notes: “She became first depressed, then increasingly resentful of the whole situation, and she took it out on me” (2008: 45). 4 Readers also access the trauma undergone by other relatives; for instance, Figes explains that her father had constant nightmares about his experience in the concentration camp of Dachau and one of her mother’s cousins is described as suffering from PTSD, “living in a gilded cage, hating everybody” (2008: 111). All these characters experience a common reluctance to talk about these events ― “an unspoken rule in our household was silence” (2008: 7). Since these characters find themselves living an acting-out process, they are constantly struggling between remembering and forgetting the past (Whitehead 2009: 121). Nevertheless, as the author-narrator comments: “My need to know what had happened to my maternal grandfather and his wife was matched by my mother’s need not to know” (2008: 10). She needs to know her family past and the historical events that occurred during and after the Holocaust in order to work through her own trauma of separation, reinforced by the traumas of the other members of the family that had been transmitted to her. Finally, Edith’s individual trauma comes to the fore through Edith’s own narration of her exile from Germany to Israel after the Second World War and her eventual further exile to Britain in order to work for Figes’ family again. Like other traumatised characters, Edith shows great distress when she tries to render those horrible events (2008: 78); however, she is finally able to tell little Eva the unspeakable fact that she found herself totally displaced when she tried to live in the new Israel of 1947. Edith relates all the hardship she suffered during the Holocaust in Berlin, how she was marked as a Jew and forced to move from one place to another to avoid being found by the Nazis. Her story is full of images of decadence, as is shown in the following comment: “We [the Jews] must have been pretty smelly, but the whole city stank. Gas leaks, bodies under the rubble” (2008: 96). Her narration also makes reference to the feelings of loneliness she experienced when she decided to go to Israel, which even made her regret having survived the Holocaust,5 as the author-narrator records: “Edith
4 This is the trauma transmitted to posterior generations that did not live the traumatic events as such but have inherited the trauma from their family and experience traumatic symptoms in a direct or indirect way as if they had suffered the trauma themselves. 5 This is a feeling expressed in many other Jewish survivors’ works (Brauner 2001: 11-13).
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 69–84 ISSN 0210-6124 78 Silvia Pellicer-Ortín had never been so depressed. She had survived the war, the deportations, the relentless bombing of Berlin, but for what? . . . she was quite alone in the world” (2008: 119). Edith’s individual trauma mirrors the collective trauma undergone by many people who were not able to find a place to rebuild their lives after the Holocaust. 6 As Edith’s description illustrates, the actual experience of living in Israel ran contrary “to the smiling faces I had seen on the newsreels” (2008: 107). This fact would explain why Figes felt compelled to go back to Edith’s story as a way to give voice to the troubling burden of “collective responsibility” (2008: 82) that being a German-Jew meant for her. As the narrator explains, she made use of Edith’s story in the confidence that it “would help to expose the truth” (2008: 109) of the emigration of Jewish people after the Holocaust. She believes that recalling Edith’s memories “is not just a personal story, a memoir of private events; it involves what is now history, and our view of important events inevitably changes with the passing of time” (2008: 139). By telling the story of a common Jewish housemaid, readers are provided with a perspective on world history that casts light on aspects of the past that had previously been neglected on the grounds of unreliability. Her work thus proves that individual stories can show that the private formation and evolution of the traumatised self may be transferred to the public sphere, another instance of limit cases (Gilmore 2001: 13). At the same time, Journey to Nowhere confirms that limit-case autobiographies have a strong political orientation (Gilmore 2001: 147). Figes’ memoir aims to make a severe attack on U. S. policies after the Second World War. She argues that the creation of the new State of Israel was an error and that the U. S.’s international policy of immigration and its political interests were the main causes that encouraged so many Jews who survived the Holocaust to go to Palestine. She likewise criticises the violence exerted by Israel upon the Palestinians and, as a Jew, wishes to detach herself from the politics practised by Israel from that moment.7 Thus, the mature author-narrator reveals such harsh opinions as: “The true story of the creation of Israel is ugly, which is why it has, with time, been conveniently forgotten and replaced by the myth of global guilt at the murder of millions of innocent Jews” (Figes 2008: 149). Her book is targeted at revealing new versions of the history of Israel and replacing traditional myths by the real stories of those people who endured that troubled historical period. It is remarkable, then, that the political and collective dimension Figes gives to her testimonial work highlights the intertwining of individual, cultural and political traumatic experiences. This connection demonstrates that “trauma is never exclusively personal” (Gilmore 2001: 31). Rather, all the individual traumatic experiences represented in Figes’ work have a collective dimension that the writer does not want to
6 Kai Erikson has defined collective trauma as “a blow to the basic tissues of social life that damages the bonds attaching people together and impairs the prevailing sense of communality” (in Caruth 1995: 187). 7 Figes’ political views should be related to the group of British Jewish intellectuals who came together in February 2007 to sign the declaration of ‘Independent Jewish Voices’ in which they established some basic principles of their ideology, such as: “putting human rights first, rejecting all forms of racism, respecting international law, and treating as equally legitimate the Palestinian and Israeli quests for a better . . . future” (Karpf et al. 2007: ix).
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 69–84 ISSN 0210-6124 Testimony and the Representation of Trauma in Eva Figes’ Journey to Nowhere 79 ignore. In fact, these interactions between individual and collective processes can contribute to resilience and reconstruction after a group has gone through a traumatic experience (Alexander 2004; Robben and Suárez-Orozco 2000).8 This second testimonial dimension corresponds to the second stage described by Herman as “remembrance or mourning”: the subject explores her traumatic memories in order to turn them into an integrated coherent narrative, that is, the process whereby “the survivor tells the story of trauma” (2001: 175). This is present in this second testimonial act performed by the author-narrator of Journey to Nowhere when she decides to narrate all these experiences in order to “confront ghosts from the past” (Figes 2008: 139).
4. Reconnection with ordinary life Finally, the third dimension of testimony is placed at the heart of Figes’ narration where readers contemplate the true testimonial relationship established in 1948 between Edith, the witness-bearer, and Eva, the addressee of her traumatic narration. The reporting of Edith’s testimony is integrated into the narrator’s exercise of returning to her past memories. In order to carry out this difficult task, Figes combines different techniques. Direct speech reporting is used in the early representation of the conversations they held so many years before, as in: “It was my last job in service, she said finally” (Figes 2008: 75). On certain occasions, Edith’s story is interrupted by the author-narrator, who assumes the narrative role and gives information about the maid’s life and her feelings for her, as when she comments: “Edith was poor and single” or “Edith was family” (2008: 33, 59). Later, there are passages in which reported dialogue brings these past conversations to life, as in: “So you still went out, in spite of everything? Of course, said Edith, getting up to throw the peapods into the bin, then adding hot water to the teapot. It was the only way to keep sane” (2008: 92). On other occasions the I of the author-narrator blurs as the narrator adopts Edith’s position and fuses her own identity with that of the maid, rendering the maid’s own words in free indirect speech, with no clear transition between the herself and Edith. The following is one of the many passages in which the author-narrator starts narrating Edith’s account in the third person but then changes to the first, thus expressing her own troubled state of identity, as Edith’s speech now controls the narration, as in 1948. She was talking about Jews, I knew, who were legally obliged to employ only Jewish maids, if they lived in and were under the age of 45, to avoid the possibility of sex between master and servant, thus defiling the purity of Aryan womanhood. But I managed to get by for quite a while, doing unofficial jobs. . . . Once I even helped out in a family grocery shop. It had a room at the back where I could sleep. (2008: 76, emphasis added)
8 As has been explained, in Figes’ text the collective trauma is that of the Jews who were killed during the Holocaust, of the ones who had to emigrate leaving part of their families behind and of those who suffered the consequences of the wrong political decisions made at the time when they tried to find their place in the new state of Israel. Individual traumas are these of the writer herself, her relatives and Edith. For more information on the notion of cultural and collective trauma see Kirmayer Lemelson and Barad 2007 and Anzte and Lambek 1996.
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 69–84 ISSN 0210-6124 80 Silvia Pellicer-Ortín
This part of the book responds to Freud’s talking-cure, with the little child as the only possible witness to Edith’s testifying act. At the end of the book, the adult narrator explains the nature of this relationship as follows: “And there she sat, day after day, waiting for me to come home from school, telling me her story, which nobody wanted to hear, except an immature schoolgirl who had begun to learn, the hard way, that life has things to teach us that are seldom in the textbooks” (Figes 2008: 180-81). In this passage a contractual relationship between speaker and listener is established, based on the assumption that the speaker reports some event that is not easy to talk about while the hearer assumes the responsibility for that listening. Edith’s testimony is initiated by the innocent question that Eva poses about the situation in Berlin after she and her family emigrated. The bearer of witness usually finds it very difficult to release her feelings; however, after several conversations, and just as in the relationship between psychiatrist and patient, Edith feels more relaxed due to her growing intimacy with the child. Thus, she eventually manages to unveil her true opinions, for example, that in the new Israel everybody hated everybody else (2008: 107). As Felman (1992: 47) explains, the vital function of testimony is to liberate the self from pain. In this case, the greatest liberation occurs at the moment of intense crisis when the author-narrator describes how Edith collapsed during her narration: “Her voice petered out. For the first time since her arrival I looked up to see her crying” (Figes 2008: 132). It is at this moment that Edith’s pain is finally released. Eva’s reaction to this crisis is one of sheer bafflement: “What Edith told me about the newly created state of Israel left me puzzled and incredulous” (2008: 133); this exemplifies the interior crisis undergone by the addressee of testimonial narratives (Felman 1992: 47- 52). Theoretically, the addressee of a traumatic testimony should not identify with the victim or appropriate her experience; rather, she should empathise with her and feel the other’s suffering to some extent (Levinas 1996: 19). This reaction to the traumatic experience on behalf of the witness can be related to the Levinasian “face-to-face relationship” (1991:13) that takes place throughout the narration when the author- narrator witnesses Edith’s pain and assumes her responsibility by including the maid’s story in her own testimonial book. From this perspective, the blurring of first- and third- person voice may be said to echo at the narrative level the unsettlement experienced by the author-narrator as the addressee of Edith’s testimonial account. Both speaker and listener feel changed after the testimonial act. Edith transfers her painful recollections to Eva, who decides to tell this story for the sake of all those “countless faces without names who [like Edith] had been part of a vanished world” (2008: 100-01). Figes’ testimonial project succeeds in turning the unspeakable into the speakable and in voicing some silenced versions of the historical events of the Holocaust and its aftermath. The third phase of recovery, reconnection with ordinary life, the process whereby the survivor comes to terms with him or herself, with the others and with the external world by trying to find “a survivor mission” (Herman 2001: 207) materialises when Figes finds the mission of being a writer. This is the best means to denounce such terrible events as those endured by the collective that Edith represents. Although she felt afraid of the polemic her work might raise, Figes decided that she had to assume this task: “I did what I had to do, asked for and got the necessary information, but the tears,
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 69–84 ISSN 0210-6124 Testimony and the Representation of Trauma in Eva Figes’ Journey to Nowhere 81 kept back for so long, refused to stop. I decided I had no alternative other than to write a book, being a writer” (Figes 2008: 84). Finally, I would like to emphasise the self-conscious testimonial nature of Journey to Nowhere since it is full of references to traumatic processes themselves which echo Freud’s ideas and the discourse used by trauma studies. In one instance, the author- narrator describes her traumatic memories of the past as “a wound that would not heal”, or remarks that she had been told that “men are less deeply affected by the trauma of displacement and loss” (2008: 42, emphasis added). Here, Figes makes use of the language of trauma to represent her painful experiences, another trait shared by limit-case autobiographies (Gilmore 2001: 67). Furthermore, comments like “This is not just a personal story, a memoir of private events; it involves what is now history” (2008: 139), show the author’s s belief in the power of testimonies to address historical issues. In other words, Journey to Nowhere narrates and represents Figes’ and Edith’s testimonies and transmits them to the readers while, at the same time, bearing witness to the act of bearing witness itself. This second facet gives the text as a whole a performative function in unveiling the way in which testimonies are rendered and received. Therefore, it could be stated that the performative engagement of consciousness and history, characteristic of the literature of testimony, works at two levels in Figes’ work. At the most explicit level, it represents the oral communication between the two women, while less explicitly, it self-consciously mirrors and sets en abyme the testimonial project carried out by the work as a whole.
5. “Made my peace with the country” Taking all these aspects of Journey to Nowhere into account, some relevant conclusions might be derived from the analysis. Firstly, since the events the author-narrator needed to unveil were too horrible to be told in realistic terms, following traditional principles of autobiographical writings, she attempted to work through her traumatic experiences of the Holocaust by having recourse to the mixture of elements of autobiography, biography, memoir, history and testimony. Thus, trauma has proved, once again, to break the frame of self-representational writings. As regards the process of working through, there are certain points in the narration where readers can presume that the healing function of the narrative has been achieved, as in: “I have made my peace with the country in which I was born and acknowledge the fact that I was born there, without caveat” (Figes 2008: 82). Or in: “Perhaps that is their function [of the new generation], or part of it. Asking the difficult questions… What Grandmother remembers has become part of history, and it is, after all, their history too” (2008: 140), where the author-narrator makes reference to the transgenerational transmission of trauma as one of the main mechanisms for healing her soul. In fact, this transmission of history and trauma is not limited to the third generation embodied by Figes' granddaughters, since it is extended to all the people the book bears testimony to. However, although writing this limit-case autobiography has been essential to work through her past experiences, Figes admits that a complete overcoming of the traumatic experience is never possible: “now I am quite open about my past, and have to reassure a younger generation that, really, they have nothing to feel bad about… but even that is not
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 69–84 ISSN 0210-6124 82 Silvia Pellicer-Ortín always enough to heal old wounds” (2008: 84). It may be stated that the connection between healing trauma and bearing witness has been demonstrated: written and oral testimonies are able to transmit historical and political reflections; they can also be useful for unveiling individual and collective traumatic experiences. Furthermore, Henke’s theory of scriptotherapy is corroborated by Figes’ memoir, since this life-writing project brings into being a healing narrative that restores the fragmented self to an empowered position of psychological agency (Henke: 1998: xvi). Journey to Nowhere may be claimed to be a limit-case autobiography, since it is a testimonial project which offers new alternatives to the traditional autobiographical genres. That is, although neither traditional nor new autobiographical genres attempt to provide universal versions of history, limit cases are more concerned with the relation between history and individual stories. The fusion of various literary and non-literary genres makes Journey to Nowhere a perfect example of limit cases. This blend of genres has served as a tool to narrativise individual, familial and national stories at the same time (Gilmore 2001: 72) and to denounce the way trauma ruptures the boundaries of simple representations of the autobiographical I. Figes also makes use of other liminal features, such as autobiographical experimentation, the use of self-conscious comments on trauma and the construction of an embedded narrative made of the testifying acts which self-reflexively call attention to the testimonial nature of life writing itself. Also worth noting is the fact that, from Gilmore’s perspective, these self-representational projects may be “open ended, susceptible to repetition, extendible, even, perhaps, incapable of completion” (2001: 96). As Figes’ last words before the epilogue confirm, “She [Edith] continued on her journey, as we all must do, and I having listened to her story all those years ago, decided it was worth recording. Now, while there is still time” (2008: 181). These reflections express the need to continue transferring these individual stories of pain and survival so that they cannot be blotted out of our collective memory. The book, then, does not finish when readers reach its ending, as its message must continue to be spread generation after generation. Trauma has emerged as the main destabilising force in contemporary literature in general and, more concretely, in testimonial projects. Trauma has generated a new relationship between literature and testimony and has brought about the appearance of new life-writing genres, as happens in Journey to Nowhere. Figes’ concrete case can be extended to many other contemporary writers who have organised their autobiographical narrations around the exposure of a concealed trauma (Luckhurst 2008: 132). In short, Figes’ political and testimonial work confirms that the need to voice trauma has opened up new narrative possibilities that render these experiences speakable; hence, the explosion of narratives dealing with traumatised lives has increased the importance of studying trauma itself and its different manifestations in literature. The emergence of these new miscellaneous literary forms has fostered the development of the new critical and analytical tools provided by the school of trauma studies, which may allow literary critics to unveil the individual and collective conflicts present in these narrations.
Works Cited Alexander, Jeffrey C., Ron Eyerman, Bernhard Giesen, Neil J. Smelser and Piotr Sztompka, eds. 2004: Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: U of California P.
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 69–84 ISSN 0210-6124 Testimony and the Representation of Trauma in Eva Figes’ Journey to Nowhere 83
Allison, Dorothy 1993 (1992): Bastard Out of Carolina. New York: Plume. Antze, Paul and Michael Lambek 1996: Tense Past. Cultural Essays in Trauma and Memory. New York and London: Routledge. Barthes, Roland 1990 (1977): ‘The Death of the Author’ and ‘From Work to Text’. Stephen Heath, ed. and trans. Image-Music-Text. London: Fontana. 142-48 and 155-64, respectively. Behlau, Ulrike 2004: ‘Remembering Their Lives: Leila Berg, Linda Grant Anne Karpf, and Louise kehoe’. Ulrike Behlau and Bernhard Reitz, eds. Jewish Women’s Writing of the 1990s and beyond in Great Britain and the United States. Trier: WVT Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier. 107-22. Berg, Leila 1997: Flickerbook: An Autobiography. London: Granta Books. Brauner, David 2001: Post-war Jewish Fiction: Ambivalence, Self-Explanation and Transatlantic Connections. New York: Palgrave. Buell, Lawrence 1991: ‘Autobiography in the American Renaissance’. Paul John Eakin, ed. American Autobiography: Retrospect and Prospect. Madison: U of Wisconsin P. 47-70. Caruth, Cathy 1995: Trauma: Explorations in Memory. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins UP. ––––– 1996: Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins UP. Charcot, Jean Michele 1887 : Lecons sur les maladies du système nerveux. Vol. 3. Paris: A. Delahaye. Cheyette, Bryan, ed. 1998: Contemporary Jewish Writing in Britain and Ireland. An Anthology. London: U of Nebraska P. Cross, Stephanie 2009: Rev. of Journey to Nowhere, by Eva Figes. The Observer 8 Feb.: 26. Diski, Jenny 2005 (1997): Skating to Antarctica. London: Virago. Erikson, Kai 1995: ‘Notes on Trauma and Community’. Cathy Caruth, ed. Trauma: Explorations in Memory. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins UP. 183-99. Feigel, Lara 2008: ‘Zionism in the Dock: Eva Figes Launches a Vituperative Attack on Israel: Eva Figes’ Journey to Nowhere’. The Observer 6 July: 30. Felman, Shoshana and M. D. Dori Laub 1992: Testimony. Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History. New York: Routledge. Figes, Eva 1978: Little Eden. A Child at War. New York: Persea Books. ––––– 2003: Tales of Innocence and Experience. An Exploration. London: Bloomsbury. ––––– 2008: Journey to Nowhere. One Woman Looks for the Promised Land. London: Granta Books. Freud, Sigmund 2001a (1920): ‘Beyond the Pleasure Principle’. Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Group Psychology and Other Works. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Vol. 18. Ed. and trans. James Strachey. London: Vintage. 7-64. ––––– 2001b (1939): ‘Moses and Monotheism’. Moses and Monotheism, An Outline of Psycho- Analysis and Other Works. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Vol. 23. Ed. and trans. James Strachey. London: Vintage. 1-137. Freud, Sigmund and Josef Breuer. 1991a (1893): ‘On the Psychical Mechanism of Hysterical Phenomena: Preliminary Communication’, James and Alix Strachey, ed and trans. Studies on Hysteria. London: Penguin. 53-69. Freud, Sigmund and Josef Breuer. 1991b (1895): James and Alix Strachey, ed and trans. Studies on Hysteria. London: Penguin. Gilmore, Leigh 2001: The Limits of Autobiography. Trauma and Testimony. Ithaca and London: Cornell UP. Gilmore, Mikal 1994: Shot in the Heart. New York: Doubleday. Grant, Linda 1999 (1998): Remind Me Who I am, Again. London: Granta Books. Hartman, Geoffrey H. 2002 (1996): The Longest Shadow. In the Aftermath of the Holocaust. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ––––– 2003: ‘Trauma within the Limits of Literature’. European Journal of English Studies 7.3: 257-74. Henke, Suzette A. 1998: Shattered Subjects: Trauma and Testimony in Women’s Life-Writing. London: McMillan.
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 69–84 ISSN 0210-6124 84 Silvia Pellicer-Ortín
Herman, Judith Lewis 2001 (1992): Trauma and Recovery. From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror. London: Pandora. Jung, Carl G. 1990 (1959): The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. Vol. 9, part 1 of The Collected Works of Carl Jung. Ed. M. Fordham and G. Adler. Trans. R. C. Hull and H. Read. London: Routledge. Karpf, Anne 1997 (1996): The War After. London: Minerva. ––––– 2008: Rev. of Journey to Nowhere, by Eva Figes. The Guardian 12 July: 7. Karpf, Anne, Brian Klug, Jacqueline Rose and Barbara Rosenbaum, eds. 2007: Independent Jewish Voices on Israel, Zionism and Jewish Identity: A Time to Speak Out. London and New York: Verso. Kincaid, Jamaica 1996: The Autobiography of my Mother. New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux. Kirmayer, Laurence J., Robert Lemelson and Mark Barad, eds. 2007: Understanding Trauma. Integrating Biological, Clinical, and Cultural Perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. LaCapra, Dominick 2001: Writing History, Writing Trauma. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins UP. Lang, Berel, ed. 1988: Writing and the Holocaust. New York and London: Holmes & Meier. Langer, Lawrence L. 2000: Foreword. Joshua M. Greene and Shiva Kumar, eds. Witness: Voices from the Holocaust. New York: The Free Press. xi-xix. Levi, Primo 2000 (1947): If this is a Man; and The truce. London: Everyman. Levinas, Emmanuel 1991 (1961): Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. ––––– 1996: Basic Philosophical Writings. Ed. Adriaan T. Peperzak, Simon Critchley and Robert Bernasconi. Indiana: Indiana UP. Light, Alison 2004: ‘Writing Lives’. Laura Marcus and Peter Nicholls, eds. The Cambridge History of Twentieth Century Literature. Vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. 751-67. Luckhurst, Roger 2006: ‘Mixing Memory and Desire: Psychoanalysis, Psychology, and Trauma Theory’. Patricia Waugh, ed. Literary Theory and Criticism. An Oxford Guide. Oxford: Oxford UP. 497-507. ––––– 2008: The Trauma Question. London: Routledge. Mott, Frederick Walker 1919: War Neuroses and Shell Shock. London: Hodder & Stoughton. Myers, Charles S. 1940: Shell Shock in France. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Pellicer-Ortín, Silvia 2009: ‘Interview with Eva Figes’. Unpublished. Robben, Antonius C. G. M. and Marcelo M. Suárez-Orozco 2000: Cultures under Siege. Collective Violence and Trauma. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Schwartz, Daniel R. 1999: Imagining the Holocaust. New York: Library of Congress. Whitehead, Anne 2004: Trauma Fiction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP. ––––– 2009: Memory. London and New York: Routledge. Winterson, Jeanette 1992: Written on the Body. London: Jonathan Cape. Wiesel, Elie 2008 (1958): Night. London: Penguin Books.
Received 30 September 2010 Revised version accepted 28 January 2011
Silvia Pellicer-Ortín (BA and M. A. Zaragoza) is a Research Fellow at the University of Zaragoza (Spain). Her main research interests lie in contemporary British fiction, with a special focus on the ethical and traumatic component in the writings of sexual and ethnic minorities, the Holocaust and the question of Jewishness and feminism.
Address: Departamento de Filología Inglesa y Alemana, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad de Zaragoza, 50009 Zaragoza, Spain. Tel.: +34 976761535. Fax: +34 976761535.
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 69–84 ISSN 0210-6124 ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 85–103 ISSN 0210-6124
Reconstructing the Old English Cultural Model for Fear
Javier E. Díaz Vera Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha [email protected]
This paper explores cultural conceptualizations of ‘fear’ in Old English texts. My research is divided into the following steps: (i) definition and onomasiological arrangement of fear terms (based on their distribution in the corresponding semantic space); (ii) weighing of words and determining their relative relevance; and (iii) determining their degrees of literalness within the scale ‘literal meaning – metonymy – metaphor’. I am especially interested in the reconstruction and description of the cultural model of fear that can be detected through the fine-grained analysis of the set of fear-related words and expressions used in the bulk of surviving Anglo-Saxon texts.
Keywords: Old English; emotions; metaphor; fear; cultural models; conceptualization
Hacia una reconstrucción del modelo cultural del ‘miedo’ en inglés antiguo
En este artículo presento un análisis de las conceptualizaciones culturales del ‘miedo’ en textos en inglés antiguo. Mi investigación se divide en los siguientes pasos: (i) definición y ordenación onomasiológica del léxico del ‘miedo’ (según su distribución en el espacio semántico); (ii) peso de las palabras para determinar su relevancia relativa; y (iii) determinación de sus grados de literalidad dentro de la escala ‘significado literal – metonimia – metáfora’. Me interesa especialmente la reconstrucción y descripción del modelo cultural del ‘miedo’ que puede detectarse a través del análisis detallado de un conjunto de expresiones y términos de ‘miedo’ extraídos de un corpus de textos anglo-sajones. Palabras clave: Inglés antiguo; emociones; metáfora; miedo; modelos culturales; conceptualización 86 Javier E. Díaz Vera
1. Introduction In The Feeling of What Happens (1999), Damasio claims that we know that we feel an emotion by sensing that something happens in our organism. Indeed, Damasio defines emotion as “the representation of that transient change in organism state in terms of neural patterns and ensuing images. When those images are accompanied, one instant later, by a sense of self in the act of knowing, and when they are enhanced, they become conscious. They are, in the true sense, feelings of feelings” (1999:282). As to the verbalization of our emotional changes, Scherer argues that in the evolution of languages “certain types of distinctions between different types of emotional processes have been considered important enough for communication to generate different words or expressions” (2005: 707-08). In order to analyze the diachronic processes of creation of these new words and expressions, we need to propose dynamic mappings for the fuzzy and complex semantic fields of each emotion concept, trying to grasp the specificity of the processes referenced by the respective lexemes through different historical periods. The study of how metaphor and metonymy mediate our conceptualization of emotions is not new; it has been extensively approached by Conceptual Metaphor Theory (henceforth CMT; Feshmire 1994; Kövecses 1986, 1988, 1990; Lakoff 1987; Lakoff and Johnson 1980; Lakoff and Kövecses 1987). A central claim by CMT scholars is that human emotions are largely understood and expressed in metaphorical terms. Furthermore, metaphorical conceptualizations are described in these studies as universal, although most of the evidence supporting this claim is derived from Present- Day English varieties (especially from American English). The question remains as whether, and to what extent, the same claim could hold in other languages and linguistic varieties, present and past. In fact, recent studies by Yu (2009) and Geeraerts and Gevaert (2008) have questioned the universalistic view, showing that metaphors are not necessarily universal, and that variation in the metaphorical conceptualization of emotions may be sensitive to cultural and historical influences. Taking this claim as my starting point, in 1 this paper I propose a study of the lexical and conceptual field of FEAR in Old English (hence OE), as represented by the textual data collected from the Dictionary of Old English Corpus (diPaolo Healey et al. 2000). Special attention will be paid to the definition and weighing of OE fear-terms, which I will classify into different groups depending on their degree of literalness. I am especially interested in exploring how fear was construed in OE and the role of metaphor in that construal, as suggested by the fine-grained analysis of the set of ‘fear’-related words and expressions used in the textual corpus. Furthermore, following Sweetser (1990: 45-48), I will try to show that the system of interconnections between semantic fields is highly motivated, semantic innovations depending greatly on the mental and physical effects caused by this emotion.
1 Following Lyons (1977: 253), I will use the term conceptual field in order to refer to a structured conceptual area, whereas lexical field will be used to refer to the set of lexical items that covers a specific conceptual field.
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 85–103 ISSN 0210-6124 Reconstructing the Old English Cultural Model for Fear 87
Together with shedding further light to our knowledge of OE ‘fear’ words and concepts, this paper forms part of a more general project concerning the conceptualization of emotions in the history of different varieties of the English language. Through a combination of historical onomasiology and cognitive linguistics, my research will propose an analysis and description both of OE expressions literally meaning FEAR and expressions that do not literally refer to this concept (that is, metonyms and metaphors, both living and dead). Corpus linguistic methods (Stefanowitsch 2004; Deignan 2005) will be applied in order to measure the relative weight of each concept.
2. Methodology and data Studies of the conceptualization of emotions in present-day varieties of languages normally rely on data produced by native speakers. Linguists can easily reconstruct the conceptualizations that lie behind the expressions used by their informants. However, historical approaches to emotion terms and concepts are severely conditioned by the lack of native speakers and by the absence of reliable lexicographic tools, such as historical dictionaries and thesauruses. Consequently, a study of FEAR in past states of language will necessarily have to start from the analysis of the words and phrases that people actually produced when referring to ‘fear’ in surviving, written texts, i.e. from a reconstruction of the lexical field of FEAR in the corresponding historical period. In order to describe the set of lexical items that articulate the OE conceptual field of FEAR, I have used a series of lexicographic tools in which fear and its synonyms can be searched in the definitions. The list includes the Dictionary of Old English: A-G on CD- ROM, the Anglo-Saxon Dictionary by Bosworth and Toller: An Electronic Application on CR-ROM, and the Thesaurus of Old English Online. I have also used the Oxford English Dictionary on CD-ROM v4.0. Once the whole set of potential ‘fear’-words has been reconstructed, I have used the Dictionary of Old English Corpus on CD-ROM in order to find all the occurrences of each lexical unit in the bulk of OE texts. The resulting 2,772 quotations referring to FEAR were then grouped into conceptual fields and classified into literal and figurative meanings. Following Geeraerts and Gevaerts’ discussion on the expression of OE ‘anger’ (2008: 327), I will assume here that whenever the ‘fear’ reading is the dominant sense of the word, it can be considered literal, whereas words with secondary meanings related to this emotion are considered figurative expressions. Thereafter, I will try to show that, as in the case of ‘anger’ (Geeraerts and Gevaerts 2008: 340-1), figurative imagery occupies a minor role in the OE conceptualizations of ‘fear’.
3. The lexical field of fear in OE According to the historical dictionaries and thesauruses referred to above, the OE lexical field of FEAR consisted of, at least, 85 different lexical units, which includes nouns, strong verbs, weak verbs, adjectives and adverbs. Thereafter, these lexical units have been grouped into 33 expressions, a term I will use here in order to refer to a lexical root and all its morphological derivations (such as prefixed verbs or suffixed adverbs)
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 85–103 ISSN 0210-6124 88 Javier E. Díaz Vera and its orthographical, declensional and inflectional variants. For example, the expression ege ‘fear’ will be used in this paper in order to refer to the nouns ege and egesa, the adjectives egefull and egelic, the adverb egefullice and the verb egesian, among others (up to 16 different lexical units derived from the expression ege). In a second stage, these 33 OE expressions were classified into 19 etymological themes (in small caps) and grouped into literal and figurative expressions.2 What follows is a brief account of the findings of this analysis.
3.1. Fear as a strong emotion According to the Toronto dictionary, OE anda ‘envy, hatred, zeal, vexation, fear, resentment’ (derived from the Indo-European stem *ant- ‘breath’) was used in order to make reference to a wide variety of strong emotions, both positive and negative. The list of negative emotions includes ENVY, SPITE, PRIDE, MALICE, ANGER, HOSTILITY, RESENTMENT and FEAR, whereas the group of positive emotions includes FERVENT DEVOTION, GOOD ZEAL and RIGHTEOUS INDIGNATION. Consequently, the exact meaning of anda is rather general, and it can be considered a hyperonym for the whole lexical field of EMOTIONS in OE. OE anda occurs on seven occasions with a clear reference to fear in our corpus: up to five of these seven occurrences are glosses for Latin words for fear: tremor (one attestation), timor (three attestations) and formido (one attestation). The remaining two cases represent instances of the collocation on andan, meaning ‘as a terror to sb’, as in example (1):
(1) Ða se gæst ongan gledum spiwan, beorht hofu bærnan; bryneleoma stod eldum on andan. (Beo 2312) ‘Then the baleful fiend its fire belched out, and bright homes burned. The blaze stood high all landsfolk frighting’.
The dictionaries used in this research list three different expressions with the basic meaning ‘fear’ in OE: OE ege (derived from the Indo-European *agh- ‘fear’), OE forht (from Indo-European *perg- ‘fear’, a stem attested exclusively in the Germanic- speaking area and, perhaps, in Tocharian; cf. IEW: 820) and OE þracian (from the Indo-European root *tergu- ‘fear’). With up to 1,731 occurrences in the corpus3 (amounting to 65.08% of the total number of occurrences of fear-words in the corpus, i.e. 2,656), OE ege is by far the most frequently used fear-expression in the Toronto Corpus. Within this set of lexical roots, the noun ege (and its inflectional and orthographical variants) is found in a total of 1,052 occurrences distributed over hundreds of texts of different genres and, consequently, is the most neutral and most frequently used lexeme to indicate fear in OE texts.
2 The terms expression and etymological theme are taken from Gevaert (2002) and Geeraerts and Gevaert (2008). 3 See Appendix 1 for a whole list of OE ‘fear’-words and etymological themes, along with their derivates and number of occurrences.
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 85–103 ISSN 0210-6124 Reconstructing the Old English Cultural Model for Fear 89
Another difference between ege and the other expressions analyzed here has to do with its capacity to create new derived lexical units from the basic root, not only by prefixation (for example, OE geegesian) but also by suffixation (such as OE egesa), zero- derivation (as in the adjective OE ega) and word-composition (as in OE egefull). Table 1 shows a list of the 16 lexical units derived from the OE expression ege, their grammatical function, number of occurrences in the corpus and restrictions to their use in Anglo- Saxon texts (for example, words that occur only in poetic texts or in glosses).
OE LEXICAL UNIT GRAMMAR Nº OCCURRENCES FLAG ege n. 1,052 egesa n. 193 poetry egeslīc adj. 281 ōga n. 84 egesfull adj. 76 glosses egelīce adv. 60 egeslīce adv. 53 egefull adj. 33 egesian wk. 13 geegesian wk. 11 egefullīc adj. 7 egesfullīce adv. 5 glosses egesfullnes n. 3 egelīc adj. 2 egnes n. 1 egesig adj. 1 poetry
Table 1. Lexical units derived from OE ege
This derived vocabulary will be treated here as individual semantic specifications within the area of meaning expressed by the root expression. Functionally speaking, they act as determinants of the root, modifying its meaning in the same way as an adjective does to a noun or an adverb to a verb. The recurrent use by speakers of a language of a lexical root for the derivation of new lexemes – known as The Lexical Productivity Principle, or LPP (Díaz Vera 2002: 55-56) – is another clear indicator of the high degree of prototypicality of the OE noun ege within the lexical domain of FEAR. A third prototypicality marker has to do with the high degree of morphosyntactic variation of OE ege, understood as the wider range of syntactic constructions displayed by this OE noun in the corpus. This general idea has been formulated by Faber and Mairal (1997: 8) in terms of the Lexical Iconic Principle, which affirms that the greater the semantic coverage of a lexeme, the greater its syntactic variations. The noun ege can be followed by any of the following complements: i. a genitive complement, as in drihtnes ege ‘fear of the Lord’; ii. the preposition to plus a noun in the dative, as in ege to Gode ‘fear of God’; iii. the preposition for plus a noun in the dative, as in ege for þære anlycnisse ‘fear of their appearance’; iv. the preposition of plus a noun in the dative, as in ege of him ‘fear of them’.
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 85–103 ISSN 0210-6124 90 Javier E. Díaz Vera
v. the preposition fram plus a noun in the dative, as in ege fram Romanum ‘fear of the Romans’.
Unlike other OE words for FEAR, OE ege has a neutral axiological value, its positive or negative value exclusively depending on the situational context.4 The type of fear conveyed by the OE expression ege is, as indicated by Fabiszak, frequently desirable and commendable, as “[t]he fear of God in Heaven or the king on earth constituted important factors in the construction of social order” (2002: 265). Here are some illustrations of positive (2-3) and negative (4-5) fear in OE:
(2) Hwæt sind þa gastlican þearfan buton þa eadmodan þe Godes ege habbað. & nane toþundennysse nabbað. (ÆCHom I, 36 492.181) ‘That are not the poor in spirit but the humble that have fear of God and have no arrogance’.
(3) And sona swa ðeos geofu þurh Drihtnes miht on heora heortan alegd wes, hie wæron toðon frome & toðon anrode, þæt hie forhogodan ege ealra eorðlicra cyninga. (HomS 47, BlHom 12, 1272) ‘And as soon as the gift was put in their hearts through the power of the Lord, they were so firm and so steadfast that they despised the fear of all earthly kings’.
(4) Þa wearð hit arde hi gebringon sceolde. swa mycel æge fram þam here. þet man ne mihte geþeoncean ne asmægian hu man of e (ChronE 1006.32). ‘They were so much inspired by fear of the host that they were incapable of devising or drawing up a plan to get them out of the country’.
(5) He [Antecrist] deð þæt fyr cymð ufene ... ac se ðe for þæs fyres ege him to gebihð, he sceal aa on helle on ecan bryne wunian. (Whom 4 62) ‘He [the Antichrist] made that fire come from above… but those who bend their knees by fear of the fire will live forever in the eternal flames of hell’.
Unlike OE ege, the OE expression forhtu (424 attestations) encodes more negative aspects of fear, such as physical and mental paralysis and the need to escape away. The corpus shows very few occurrences of forhtu words with nouns referring to God, kings, or social superiors in general as sources of fear. On most occasions, the emotion of fear is provoked by death, as in examples (6) and (7):
(6) Wæs him ægweðer þæm eadigan were ge seo Godes lufu toðæs hat & toðæs beorht on his heortan, ðeah he for ðæm deaþe ne forhtode, ah hine ðæs heardost langode hwanne he of ðisse worlde moste (LS 17.1, MartinMor, 271). ‘Not only was the love of God so fervent and bright in his heart of this blessed man, but he also was not afraid of death, but longed very greatly for it when he might depart from this world’.
4 Following Dillard and Anderson, I will claim here “that negative emotions arise from the appraisal that the environment is incongruent with the individual’s goals and that positive emotions follow from appraisals of compatibility between goals and environment” (2004: 911-12).
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 85–103 ISSN 0210-6124 Reconstructing the Old English Cultural Model for Fear 91
(7) Ne forhta ðu ana for ðysum feondlican cwellere, ac underfoh þone deað swa swa ðine gebroðra dydon, þæt ic ðe eft underfo on eadignysse mid heom (ÆLS, Maccabees, 180). ‘And fear not only because of this fiendlike murderer, but receive the death, even as your brothers did, that I may again receive you in blessedness with them’.
Less frequently, fear is provoked by the urgent need to carry out an order (as in 8) or by the risk of committing sin (as in 9):
(8) Þa he ða se biscop ðas word ... mid mycelre inbryrdnesse heortan & swylce eac forhtigendre tungan gefylde, ða dydon ða broðor swa he het, ond þone lichoman gegyredon mid neowum hrægle (Bede 4 31.376.25). ‘When the bishop had said this … with great penance of the heart and their tongues full of fear, the brothers did as he had commanded and dressed the body in new garments’.
(9) Ondræde man domdæg & for helle agrise, & ecre reste earnie man georne, & æghwylce dæge a manna gehwylc forhtige for synnum (WHom 10c 182). ‘Man shall fear Doomsday and tremble at the thought of hell, and man shall eagerly earn eternal rest and on each day always each man shall be frightened on account of his sins’.
Similarly, OE þracian and its derivates āþracian and onþracian (31 attestations in all) are used in OE texts in order to refer to extreme fear or dismay, normally in relation with someone’s inability to cope with peril or calamity (glossing or translating Latin horrens and terribilis), as illustrated by (10):
(10) Hi anðraciað to gefarenne lifes wegas. and swa ðeah ne wandiað to licgenne on stuntnysse heora asolcennysse (ÆCHom II, 43 321.104). ‘They dread to travel the ways of life, and yet do not shrink from lying in the folly of their sloth’.
Taking all this into consideration, one could confidently affirm that OE ege is the most prototypical lexeme within the dimension of FEAR and, as a consequence, has the widest semantic coverage within its semantic space. The remaining lexical units within this space can thus be treated as hyponyms of OE ege, that is, versions of qualitatively the same emotion expressing different degrees of intensity, rapidity or duration. This is the case of OE forht and its causative cognate fyrhtu, as well as OE þracian and its derivates, which encode a clearly negative axiological value in most of the examples analyzed here.
3.2. Fear and related emotions According to our analysis of OE words for fear, the emotions that seem more similar to FEAR are ANGER, DISGUST and SADNESS. The connection between FEAR and ANGER is not new. According to Kövecses (2000: 21-24), Present-Day English conceptual metaphors for these two emotions have six different source domains in common, that is, they are drawn from the same six conceptual fields: HOT FLUID, OPPONENT, INSANITY, BURDEN, NATURAL FORCE and SOCIAL SUPERIOR. Furthermore, in his statistical approach to
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 85–103 ISSN 0210-6124 92 Javier E. Díaz Vera emotion metaphors, Stefanowitsch (2006: 71-82) identifies up to fourteen common source domains, including LIQUID, COLD, HEAT, LIGHT and DARKNESS. According to his analysis of a sample from the British National Corpus, up to 282 occurrences of ANGER metaphors (out of 388, i.e. 73.06%) illustrate source domains that are shared with FEAR metaphors, whereas up to 138 occurrences of FEAR metaphors (out of 172, i.e. 80.23%) represent source domains that are shared with ANGER metaphors. It is hard to justify this relationship between fear and anger in terms of similar physical responses. According to Ungerer and Schmid (2006: 134), these two emotions have completely different physiological effects, namely drop vs. increase in body temperature; paleness vs. redness in face and neck; dryness of mouth vs. crying and tears; lapses of heartbeat vs increased pulse rate. From a sociological perspective, Stets and Turner (2008: 35-36) argue that anger is caused by fear, especially in those cases where individuals attribute their fear not to their own, personal shortcomings but to external factors: “Fear comes from a lack of power, and if individuals attribute this fear to their own shortcomings, then fear leads to withdrawal and flight responses; if individuals make external attributions, fear turns into anger, aggression, and fight response” (Stets and Turner 2008: 36). From an etymological point of view, the existence of an ancient link between these two emotions is illustrated by the presence in our lexical list of OE ācol (16 attestations), a term exclusively used in poetic texts. Derived from the Indo-European root *aig- (originally meaning ‘angry’), this adjective has kept its original primary meaning of Old Norse eikinn ‘angry, fierce’, whereas its OE cognate ācol has changed its original meaning of ‘anger’ to ‘fear’, as in (11):
(11) No on gewitte blon, acol for þy egesan, þæs þe he ær ongann, þæt he a domlicost dryhten herede, weorðade wordum (And 1265). ‘Never did he cease, stricken by fear, from what he had formerly began, but he ever most gloriously praised his Lord, honoured Him with words’.
On a more synchronic level, the OE polysemic expression lāđ (from Indo-European *leit- ‘to hate’) can be used to refer either to the act of showing anger (as in 12) or to the act of showing terror (as in 13). However, this second meaning (which is a diachronic derivation from the original one and, consequently, chronologically later), is restricted in our OE texts to glosses and translations of Latin horroscere (two single attestations in the whole corpus):
(12) No þy ær in gescod halan lice; hring utan ymbbearh, þæt heo þone fyrdhom ðurhfon ne mihte, locene
(13) horrescit alaþode (AldV 13.1; from ALDH. Pros.virg. 47, 301.11 verumtamen mens Deo dedita ... olidos ergastulorum squalores horrescit).
Stefanowitsch (2006: 88-90) refers to up to nine different source domains that link Present-Day metaphors of FEAR and DISGUST. The list includes not only very general
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 85–103 ISSN 0210-6124 Reconstructing the Old English Cultural Model for Fear 93 emotion metaphors (such as SUBSTANCE IN A CONTAINER, OPPONENT, LIQUID), but also more specific patterns (as in the case of ORGANISM, SHARP OBJECT). Up to 93 occurrences of DISGUST metaphors (out of 120, i.e. 77.50%) illustrate source domains shared with FEAR, but only 111 occurrences of FEAR metaphors (out of 386, i.e. 28.76%) correspond to source domains shared with DISGUST metaphors. In fact, our physical responses are very different, the existence of a link between these fear and disgust being justified by the fact that both emotions are aroused when we perceive a threat from an object. The OE verb þracian (described in 3.1) represents this link from a diachronic onomasiological point of view. In fact, from the original meaning ‘fear’ inherited from Indo-European, OE speakers developed a secondary meaning ‘to regard with disgust, abhor’, as in (14):
(14) Þu to alysenne þu onfenge menn þu ne aðracodest mædenu innoðes (PsCaF 14(10).16). ‘When you took upon yourself to deliver man, thou did not shun the Virgin's womb’.
Similarly, the OE noun atol (from the Indo-European root *od- ‘hate’) and its derivates are used in order to refer to something that produces either fear (as in 15; 121 attestations in the corpus) or revulsion (as in 16, translating Latin deformis), illustrating the semantic connection between ANGER, FEAR and DISGUST:
(15) Grap þa togeanes, guðrinc gefeng atolan clommum (Beo 1501). ‘She groped towards him, seized the warrior, in horrid grasp’.
(16) Deformem atole (ClGl 3 1616; prob. from ALDH. Carm.virg. 597 matronae rugosae ... figuram vidit ... deformem).
As for SADNESS, Stefanowitsch (2006: 84-88) identifies seven different source domains shared with FEAR in Present-Day English: CAPTIVE ANIMAL, NATURAL FORCE, PAIN, HEAT/COLD, DARKNESS, DESEASE and LIQUID. The degree of overlap is much lower here than in the cases of ANGER and DISGUST described above. In fact, only 102 occurrences of SADNESS metaphors (out of 238, i.e. 42.86%) illustrate source domains that are shared with FEAR metaphors, whereas just 59 occurrences of FEAR metaphors (out of 386, i.e. 15.28%) represent source domains that are shared with SADNESS metaphors. The link between FEAR and SADNESS is illustrated by the OE adjective frēorig, used by Anglo-Saxon speakers in order to refer to ‘sad’ (two attestations) and to ‘scared’ (one single attestation), a synaesthetic expression of the sensation of cold that frequently accompanies these two emotions, as illustrated by (17):
(17) Ongon ða hygegeomor, freorig ond ferðwerig, fusne gretan (GuthB 1156). ‘He, mournful, sad and weary of soul, resolved to greet the departing’.
3.3. Bodily reactions 1: Fear as uncontrolled movement In many cases, bodily reactions to fear are metonymically used to refer to the emotion. This is the case of OE eargian ‘to turn coward, to grow timid’ (14 attestations in the corpus), derived from an Indo-European root *ergh- ‘to tremble, shake’, which is also present in Greek òρχέω ‘to dance’. Significantly, OE earge is sometimes used to gloss
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 85–103 ISSN 0210-6124 94 Javier E. Díaz Vera
Latin adulter, peccatrix, luxuriosus and other words for socially inappropriate behaviours, fear being one of the immediate consequences of such acts.
(18)
Similarly, OE drædan (from Indo-European *ter- ‘to turn around’) and its derivates (163 attestations in the whole corpus) referred originally to the instinctive reaction of moving away from the source of fear, turning the face in another direction in order to avoid seeing it. The semantic change from the original ‘to turn around’ to the metonymic ‘to fear’ was already completed in OE times, as can be seen in example (19):
(19) Ondræde man domdæg & for helle agrise, & ecre reste earnie man georne, & æghwylce dæge a manna gehwylc forhtige for synnum (WHom 10c 182). ‘Man shall fear Doomsday and tremble at the thought of hell, and man shall eagerly earn eternal rest and on each day always each man shall be frightened on account of his sins’.
Whereas this OE verb, which is frequently used without an expressed object, has fear as its basic meaning, other Anglo-Saxon predicates have kept their original meanings related to motion, but are frequently used to refer to the instinctive reactions and movements produced by fear. This is the case of OE wandian ‘to turn away from something’ (from Indo-European *wendh- ‘to wind’; 10 attestations), OE feallan ‘to fall down’ (from Indo-European *phol- ‘to fall’; three attestations) and OE creopan ‘to creep’ (from Indo-European *ger- ‘to turn’; three attestations). Examples with these verbs can be seen in (20-22):
(20) Sien gesciende & forwandian ł scunian fiend mine þa ðæ sęcæð sæule mine (PsGlE 69.3). ‘Let my enemies be confounded and scared, who seek my soul’.
(21) And þa eode he lythwon from him, & feoll ða ofer his anwlitan, & gebæd (HomS 19 64). ‘And he went a little farther from him and fell on his face and prayed’.
(22) & þa wreccan munecas lagon onbuton þam weofode. & sume crupon under. & gyrne cleopedon to Gode his miltse biddende. þa þa hi ne mihton nane miltse æt mannum begytan (ChronE 1083.20). ‘And the wretched monks lay about the altar, and some crept under, and earnestly called upon God, imploring his mercy, since they could not obtain any at the hands of men’.
Downward inclination of the body or the head is also considered a sign of veneration, submission and reverence in the Anglo-Saxon world. In fact, OE writers use the predicates feallan and creopan in order to refer to the physical expression of these feelings, showing the existence of a close connection between them and fear. These
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 85–103 ISSN 0210-6124 Reconstructing the Old English Cultural Model for Fear 95 predicates indicate that fear was conceptualized as A NATURAL FORCE (as in OE wandian) and as A SUPERIOR (as in OE feallan and creopan) by speakers of OE. Another kind of behaviour that is typically associated with fear is PARALYSIS, as someone who is scared tends to keep still in order to remain unnoticed. In this group of predicates we find OE bidan ‘to wait’ (15 attestations as fear-word) and OE sittan ‘to sit’ (eight attestations as fear-word), both of which have the secondary meaning ‘to fear’ in OE, as can be seen in (23) and (24), respectively:
(23) Ewit bad heorte min & ermðu (PsGlA 68.20). ‘My heart feared affront and disgrace’.
(24) Fela we mihton ymbe þissum þingum maðelian, ac we asittað þæt þa boceras ascunion þæt we ymbe heora digolnyssa þus rumlice sprecað (ByrM 1 3.3.120). ‘Many of us might tell about these things, but we feared that the scholars would regard us with disfavour if spoke at length about their secrets’.
Similarly, the OE expression blycgan ‘to frighten’ (derived from the Indo-European root *bhlēu- ‘weak’; 28 attestations) refers to the impossibility to move caused by fear, as can be seen in example (25):
(25) His magas þa & necheburas wurdon þearle þurh ða dæde ablicgede. & heora nan ne dorste þam fearre genealæcan (ÆCHom I, 34 466.19). ‘His relatives and his neighbours were struck with fear by these deeds and dared not approach nearer to them’.
3.4. Bodily reactions 2: Fear as change in volume, colour or flexibility The OE fear-domain also finds a source of metonymic expressions in the field of physical change, as fear is experienced as becoming small, pale or rigid. Change in volume is expressed in the OE predicate scrincan ‘to shrink’ (from Indo-European *sker- ‘to lean’; seven attestations in all). Similarly to other OE fear-words metonymically derived from verbs expressing paralysis, OE scrincan refers to the need to remain unnoticed by the cause of fear (an enemy, a danger, etc), as (26) illustrates:
(26) Þa wearð se cyng to þan swyðe afyrht þæt he eall ascranc & man him lædde to þone wytege Daniel (ÆCHom II, 33( G) 253.142). ‘The king shrank with fear and they took him to Daniel the Wise’.
OE blācian ‘to turn pale’ (derived from the Indo-European root *bhleg- ‘shine’; 3 occurrences as fear-word, e.g. 27) and æhīw ‘paleness, lack of colour’ (privative form of the Indo-European root *kei- ‘dark’, i.e. ‘not dark’; two attestations in translations such as 28) can also be used to express fear in OE. From a biological point of view, becoming pale can be seen either as a direct consequence of the blood pressure decrease that normally accompanies the sensation of fear or, as in the case of the preceding predicates of change of volume, as a mimetic mechanism of self-defense.
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 85–103 ISSN 0210-6124 96 Javier E. Díaz Vera
(27) Þa strentstan [-] heold oga ł ege ablacodon ealle eardigende (PsCaJ 5(4).15). ‘Trembling seized on the stout men (of Moab) and all the inhabitants (of Chanaan) became white with fear’. (28) meticulosis
Finally, fear is conceptualized as rigidity of the body or the limbs by OE speakers. The expressions OE stīþian ‘to become hard’ (from the Indo-European root *sten- ‘narrow’; one attestation) and stīfian ‘to become rigid’ (from the Indo-European root *stīp- ‘stick’; four attestations) are used with reference to fear in examples (29) and (30):
(29) Þa wurdon gedrefede synd fromringas ł ealdras [-]; þa strencgstan [-] heold bifung;
(30) Ne mæg þær æni man be
3.5. Bodily sensations and the container metaphor Lakoff (1987: 380-415) analyzes the conceptualisation of certain emotions and feelings in terms of metaphors and metonymies dealing with the temperature domain. In his account, many of our everyday words for emotions stem from a combination of two ontological metaphors: THE BODY IS A CONTAINER FOR EMOTIONS and EMOTIONS ARE TEMPERATURE CHANGES. It is difficult to know where these metaphors originated; in any case, they are highly consistent with the general belief that emotions “must be released or they will cause damage, either by being held in or by exploding out of control” (Planalp 1999: 107). The idea of the body container is expressed in the corpus by the OE predicate fyllan ‘to fill’ (22 attestations in relation to fear, one of them illustrated by 31):
(31) Forþan þe ... he us fylled mid Godes ege (ÆCHom I, 22( B) 363.228). ‘So that he will fill us with fear of God’.
The use of the concepts of HEAT and COLD as source domains for a wide variety of emotions is well attested in many world languages (Kövecses 2005: 39). According to Stefanowitsch (2006), HEAT is used in Present-Day in order to refer to ANGER, FEAR, HAPPINESS and DISGUST, whereas COLD is used for ANGER, FEAR, SADNESS and DISGUST. These synaesthetic conceptualizations are expressed in the OE vocabulary by the expressions blysian ‘to blaze’ (one single attestation: example 32) and frēosan ‘to freeze’ (two attestations, one of which is 33). Furthermore, fear is conceptualized as trembling in the OE verbs cwacian (from *cwac-, a typically Anglo-Saxon root expressing agitation or instability; 11 attestations, e.g. 34) and bifian (from Indo-European *bhōi- ‘to fear’; 22 attestations, e.g. 35):
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 85–103 ISSN 0210-6124 Reconstructing the Old English Cultural Model for Fear 97
(32) Syn gescynde & anþracian samod þa þe secað sawle mine ... gecyrran on bæcling & anþracian ł & ablysian þa þe wilniað ł willaþ me yfelu (PsGlI 39.15). ‘Are both confused and frightened those who seek my soul… repented and frightened and blazing those who want me badly’.
(33) Warað hine wræclast, nales wunden gold, ferðloca freorig, nalæs foldan blæd (Wan 32). ‘The path of exile holds him, not at all twisted gold, a frozen spirit, not the bounty of the earth’.
(34) Swa Dauid cwæþ, þa eaðmodan heortan & þa forhtgendan & þa bifigendan & þa cwacigendan & þa ondrædendan heora Scyppend, ne forhogaþ þa næfre God ne ne forsyhþ (HomU 20 9). ‘As David said, the humble and fearing and trembling and quaking hearts and those fearing their Creator, God will never despise nor disregard’.
(35) On þan twelften dæige eorneð mænn geond eall middeneard byfigende & drædende Cristes tocyme to demene cwican & deaden (Notes 22 38). ‘On the twelfth day men ran through all the earth shivering and dreading Christ’s coming to judge the living and the dead’.
These two concepts imply that fear (and emotions in general) is a fluid that flows within the body producing changes in its temperature. Furthermore, this fluid can dissipate or become a vapor once the emotion has come to its end, as in OE dwīnan ‘to disperse’ (one single attestation, shown in 36):
(36) Witodlice mannes ege is smice gelic & hrædlice þonne he astyred bið fordwinð (ÆCHom I, 38 515.242). ‘Human fear is similar to smoke in that it dissipates quickly when excitation goes away’.
3.6. Fear is an opponent
The need to fight fear is represented by the metaphor FEAR IS AN OPPONENT, as illustrated by the co-occurrence of many OE predicates related to war and fight. According to the data extracted from the OE corpus, the following verbs could be used in reference to fear: OE fōn ‘to take hold of’ (two attestations), OE grīpan ‘to seize’ (one attestation), cuman ‘to come’ (three attestations) and flygan ‘to put away’ (1 attestation). In some cases the reference to fear is rather vague and only contextual information reveals whether they refer to fear or not. OE fōn is used as a fear-word in the asyndetic parataxis forht, afongen (i.e. ‘scared and seized by fear’), as in example (37):
(37) [heo þæt deofol genom;] hyre se aglæca ageaf ondsware, forht, afongen, friþes orwena: hwæt, mec min fæder on þas fore to þe, hellwarena cyning, hider onsende of þam engan ham (Jul 319). ‘[The wretched monster] gave answer to her, scared, seized by fear, hopeless of peace: Listen, my father, the king of hell-citizens sent me on this journey here to you, from that narrow home’.
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 85–103 ISSN 0210-6124 98 Javier E. Díaz Vera
Similarly, OE grīpan is used with reference to fear (i.e. ‘to grip somebody with fear’) in example (38), translating Latin apprehendo ‘to seize’:
(38)
As for OE cuman, it is used to translate Latin consternatus ‘seized with fear, astonished’ in (39):
(39) & aworden wæs miððy ðohte gelegeno ł forcumeno woeron of ðisum heono tuoege wæras gestodon æt ł neh ðæm in gegerelo lixende (LkGl (Li) 24.4). ‘While they were scared about this, two men in clothes that were as bright as lightning suddenly stood beside them’.
Finally, OE flygan is used to gloss Latin concutere ‘to strike with fear’ on one single occasion, shown in (40):
(40) Witodlice nu mid þiwracum nu mid witum nu mid onwrigenessum sume flyhð þæt þa þe sylfwilles beon gecyrrede (LibSc 11.44). ‘Certainly now with e stricken with fear until their wills threats and now with torments and now with revelations some of them werwere changed’.
4. OE fear weighed The overall result of this onomasiological analysis is represented in Table 2. The table, based on the model proposed by Geeraerts and Gevaert (2008: 339), mentions the etymological themes used for this research, the actual OE expressions, the semantic mechanisms they illustrate and their total number of attestations in the OE corpus. Following Radden (2003), who argues that the distinction literal-metonymy-metaphor is scalar, three different degrees of literalness will be distinguished here. The table is divided into three parts: one for literal meanings (upper half of the table) and one for figurative ones (lower half of the table), which is at its time divided into two subparts: metonymy and synaesthesia on the one side (upper half) and metaphor on the other (lower half). As can be seen form this table, literal denominations (such as ege and forhtu) clearly dominate in the corpus, whereas figurative expressions represent less than 18% of the total number of occurrences of fear-words.5 Furthermore, metaphors represent but a very small part of the whole set of figurative expressions (30 attestations in all), with an overwhelming preference for metonymy (401 attestations) and, less frequently, synaesthesia (36 attestations).
5 This estimate of literalness is undoubtedly conservative, as some of the expressions listed here, marked with (*) in Table 2, have completely lost their original meanings and become literal fear-words in Old English.
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 85–103 ISSN 0210-6124 Reconstructing the Old English Cultural Model for Fear 99
THEME OE EXPRESSION SEMANTICS Nº
STRONG EMOTION ege literal 1731 NEGATIVE EMOTION forhtu, þracian literal 455 EMOTION (GENERAL) anda hyperonymy 7 2193
ANGER ācol*, lāþ metonymy 18 GRIEF atol metonymy 121 SADNESS frēorig metonymy 1 MOVEMENT BACK eargian*, drædan*, wandian metonymy 181 MOVEMENT DOWN feallan, creopan metonymy 6 LACK OF MOVEMENT bidan, sittan, blycgan metonymy 51 CHANGE scrincan, blācian, æhīw, metonymy 16 stīþian, stīfian HEAT/COLD blysian, frēosan, cwacian, synaesthesia 37 431 bifian SUBSTANCE IN fyllan, dwīnan metaphor 23 CONTAINER OPPONENT fōn, grīpan, cuman, flygan metaphor 7 30
Table 2. Literal and figurative fear-expressions.
5. Conclusions
In the present paper I have presented a list of OE terms for FEAR and their distribution in the semantic space. Thereafter, these terms have been classified into etymological themes and degrees of literalness (literal-metonymy-metaphor). The relative importance of each expression has then been determined using corpus linguistic methods. The data shown here makes clear that the OE vocabulary for FEAR derives from a wide variety of etymological themes or motifs, from the more literal ones (i.e. fear- words directly inherited from Indo-European) to the more figurative ones (as in the case of the metaphor FEAR IS A SUBSTANCE). However, this analysis has shown a clear preference for literal expressions for this emotion, whereas non-literal ones are normally derived through processes of metonymy (as in FEAR IS TURNING BACK or FEAR IS BECOMING PALE) or synaesthesia (as in FEAR IS COLD). As can be seen here, metonymy is a pervasive factor of semantic change in OE, given its contribution to the development of this lexical domain. Up to 17 different Indo- European expressions from different domains (such as EMOTIONS, MOVEMENT or CHANGE) changed their original meanings and developed new senses related to FEAR in OE, losing their original meanings in some cases (for example OE drædan). However, the metaphoric expressions analyzed here are limited to very broad conceptualizations for emotions in general, such as THE BODY IS A CONTAINER and EMOTIONS ARE SUBSTANCES. Finally, this article shows that the system of interconnections between semantic fields is highly motivated (semantic innovations depending greatly on the mental and physical effects caused by this emotion) and enormously consistent over long periods of time (as in the case of the semantic paths ANGER > FEAR or TURNING BACK > FEAR described above).
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 85–103 ISSN 0210-6124 100 Javier E. Díaz Vera
Works Cited
Damasio, Antonio R. 1999: The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness. New York: Harcourt. Deignan, Alice 2005: Metaphor and Corpus Linguistics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Díaz Vera, Javier E. 2002: ‘The Semantic Architecture of the Old English Verbal Lexicon: A Historical-lexicographical Proposal’. Javier E. Díaz Vera, ed. A Changing World of Words: Studies in English Historical Lexicology, Lexicography and Semantics. Amsterdam: Rodopi. 47-77. Dillard, James P. and Jason W. Anderson 2004: ‘The Role of Fear in Persuasion’. Psychology and Marketing 21: 909-26. Faber, Pamela and Ricardo Mairal 1997: ‘The Paradigmatic and Syntagmatic Structure of the Lexical Field of Feeling’. Cuadernos de Investigación Filológica 23/24: 35-60. Fabiszak, Małgorzata 2002: ‘A Semantic Analysis of FEAR, GRIEF and ANGER Words in Old English’. Javier E. Díaz Vera, ed. A Changing World of Words: Studies in English Historical Lexicology, Lexicography and Semantics. Amsterdam: Rodopi. 255-74. Fesmire, Steven A. 1994: ‘Aerating the Mind: The Metaphor of Mental Functioning as Bodily Functioning’. Metaphor and Symbolic Activity 9: 31-44. Geeraerts, Dirk and Caroline Gevaert 2008: ‘Hearts and (Angry) Minds in Old English’. Farzad Sharifian, René Dirven and Ning Yu, eds. Culture, Body, and Language: Conceptualizations of Internal Body Organs Across Cultures and Languages. Berlin: Mouton. 319-47. Gevaert, Caroline 2002: ‘The Evolution of the Lexical and Conceptual Field of ANGER in Old and Middle English’. Javier E. Díaz Vera, ed. A Changing World of Words: Studies in English Historical Lexicology, Lexicography and Semantics. Amsterdam: Rodopi. 275-99. Kövecses, Zoltan 1986: ‘A Figure of Thought’. Metaphor and Symbolic Activity 6: 29-46. ––––– 1988: The Language of Love: The Semantics of Passion in Conversational English. Lewisburg: Bucknell UP. ––––– 1990: Emotion Concepts. New York: Springer-Verlag. ––––– 2000: Metaphor and Emotion. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. ––––– 2005: Metaphor in Culture: Universality and Variation. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Lakoff, George 1987: Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind. Chicago: The U of Chicago P. Lakoff, George and Mark Johnson 1980: Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: U of Chicago P. Lakoff, George and Zoltan Kövecses 1987: ‘The Cognitive Model of Anger Inherent in American English’. Dorothy Holland and Naomi Quinn, eds., Cultural Models in Language and Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. 195-221. Lyons, J. 1977. Semantics. vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge U P. Planalp, Sally 1999: Communication Emotion: Social, Moral and Cultural Processes. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Radden, Günter 2003: ‘How Metonymic are Metaphors?’ René Dirven and Ralf Pörings, eds., Metaphor and Metonymy in Comparison and Contrast. Berlin/New York: Mouton. 407-34. Scherer, Klaus R. 2005: ‘What are Emotions? And How Can they be Measured?’ Social Science Information 44.4: 695-729. Stefanowitsch, Anatol 2004: ‘HAPPINESS in English and German: A Metaphorical-pattern Analysis’. Kemmer Achard and Susanne Kemmer, eds. Language, Culture, and Mind. Stanford: CSLI. 137-49. ––––– 2006: ‘Words and their Metaphors: A Corpus-based Approach’. Anatol Stefanowitsch and Stephan Th. Gries, eds. Corpus-based Approaches to Metaphor and Metonymy. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. 63-105.
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 85–103 ISSN 0210-6124 Reconstructing the Old English Cultural Model for Fear 101
Stets, Jan E. and Jonathan H. Turner 2008: ‘The Sociology of Emotions’. Michael Lewis, Jeannette M. Haviland-Jones and Lisa Feldman Barrett, eds., Handbook of Emotions. New York: Guiford P. 32-46. Sweetser, Eve 1990: From Etymology to Pragmatics: Metaphorical and Cultural Aspects of Semantic Structure. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Ungerer, Friedrich and Hans-Jörg Schmid 2006: An Introduction to Cognitive Linguistics. London: Longman. Yu, Ning 2009: From Body to Meaning in Culture. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Indo-European and Old English Corpora and Dictionaries B&T = 2007: An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary by Bosworth and Toller on CD-ROM (v0.2b). Sean Crist and Ondrej Tichy ,eds.
APPENDIX 1: OE expressions of ‘fear’.
ETYMOLOGICAL Nº EXPRESSIONS SEMANTICS LEXICAL UNITS TOTAL THEMES OCCURRENCES ācol WORRY literal or ācol n. 9 hyponymy *(ge)āclian wk. 3 ācol-mōd adj. 3 ge·ācolmōdian wk. 2 17 anda STRONG EMOTION hyperonymy anda n. 7 7 atol PHYSICAL metaphor atol n. 7 DEFORMATION atol adj. 60 atollic adj. 50 atolian wk. 3 ge·atol-hīwian wk. 1 121 æ-hīw PALENESS synaesthesia æ-hīw n. 2 2 bīdan ANTICIPATION metonymy bīdan str. 1 ā-bīdan str. 10 ge·bīdan str. 1 an-bigund n. 3 15 bifian SHAKING metaphor bifian wk. 22 22 blācian RIGIDITY synesthesia āblācian wk. 1 1 blycgan INMOBILITY metaphor āblycgan 28 28 blysian HEAT metaphor āblysian 1 1 crēopan REVERENCE metaphor crēopan str. 3 3 cuman ENEMY metaphor for-cuman str. 3 3 cwacian SHAKING metaphor cwacian wk. 4 gecwacian 9 13
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 85–103 ISSN 0210-6124 102 Javier E. Díaz Vera
drædan VENERATION metonymy drædan str. 30 ā-drædan str. 85 on-drædan str. 48 163 dwīnan VAPOUR metaphor for-dwīnan wk. 1 1 eargian TIMIDITY literal or eargian wk. 1 hyperonymy earglīce adv. 13 14 ege FEAR literal ege n. 1052 ege-full adj. 33 ege-fullīc adj. 7 eges-full adj. 76 eges-fullīce adv. 5 eges-fullnes n. 3 ege-līce adj. 2 egnes n. 1 egesa n. 193 egesig adj. 1 egesian wk. 13 ge·egesian wk. 11 eges-līc adj. 281 eges-līce adv. 53 1731 feallan REVERENCE metonymy ā-feallan str. 3 3 flygan WEAPON metaphor flygan wk. 1 1 fōn ENEMY metaphor ā-fōn str. 2 2 forhtian FEAR literal forhtian wk. 251 ā-forhtian wk. 28 be-forhtian wk. 1 ge·forhtian wk. 4 ge·āforhtian wk. 1 ā-forht adj. 1 forhtiendlic adj 3 (ge)forht adj 117 foht-ferþ adj 2 forht-full adj 1 forht-ig adj 3 forht-lic adj 5 forht-lic adv 7 424 fræppigan REVERENCE metonymy fræppigan wk. 1 ge·fræppigan wk. 1 2 frēosan COLD synaesthesia frēorig adj. 1 1 frēosan SAD metonymy frēorig adj. 1 1 fyllan CONTAINER metaphor fyllan wk. 11 ge·fyllan wk. 11 22 grīpan ENEMY metaphor be-grīpan str. 1 1 lāđ GRIEF literal or ā-lāđian, wk. 1 hyperonymy 1 scrincan SHRINKING metaphor scrincan str. 5 ā-scrincan str. 1 for-scrincan str. 1 ge-scrincan str. 1 8
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 85–103 ISSN 0210-6124 Reconstructing the Old English Cultural Model for Fear 103
sittan ANTICIPATION metonymy sittan str. 5 ā-sittan str. 3 8 stīfian RIGIDITY metaphor stīfian wk. 2 ā-stīfian wk. 2 4 stīþian HARDNESS synaesthesia ā-stīþian wk. 1 1 þracian VIOLENCE literal or ā-þracian wk. 12 hyperonymy on-þracian wk. 14 on-þræc adj. 5 31 wandian VENERATION metonymy wandian wk. 2 ā-wandian wk. 2 4 2656
Received 9 November 2010 Revised version accepted 1 March 2011
Javier E. Díaz Vera is a lecturer in English and Linguistics in the Department of Modern Languages at the University of Castilla-La Mancha (Spain). His research interests focus on historical sociolinguistics and language change in the history of English, with special attention to diachronic metaphor and the expression of emotions in different diachronic and dialectal varieties of English.
Address: Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, Facultad de Letras, Departamento de Filología Moderna, 13071 Ciudad Real, Spain. Tel.: +34 926 295300. Fax: +34 026 295312.
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 85–103 ISSN 0210-6124
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 105–126 ISSN 0210-6124
The Language of British Teenagers. A Preliminary Study of its Main Grammatical Features
Ignacio M. Palacios Martínez Universidad de Santiago de Compostela [email protected]
The language of teenagers has been the subject of extensive study in recent years due to its highly innovative nature and richness of expression. Most attention has been paid to the phonological and lexico-semantic levels of analysis; grammar and, more particularly, syntax have been addressed less frequently. In this study I focus on some of the most distinctive features of the lexico-grammar of this language, using data mainly from COLT (Bergen Corpus of London Teenage Language) and from the SCOSE corpus (Saarbrücken Corpus of Spoken English) plus other supplementary materials. At times, comparisons are made with a comparable sample of adult language extracted from the DCPSE (Diachronic Corpus of Present-Day Spoken English). The analysis here examines those lexico-grammatical properties which distinguish teenagers’ language from the language of adults. Under discussion will be, among others, the following grammatical features: the verbal and pronoun systems, the use of non-canonical tags, the system of negation, quotatives, the expression of vague language, ways of intensifying language and the use of abuse and insult words as vocatives.
Keywords: teenagers’ language; vague language; quotatives; intensification; negation; non-canonical tags
El lenguaje de los jóvenes británicos. Estudio preliminar de los rasgos gramaticales de mayor relevancia
El lenguaje de los jóvenes ha sido objeto de numerosos estudios en los últimos años debido a su carácter innovador y riqueza de expresión. La mayoría de estas investigaciones se han centrado en los niveles fonológico y léxico-semántico. Su gramática y, más en particular, su sintaxis han sido estudiadas en menor grado. Este artículo se centra en algunos de los rasgos más característicos de la léxico-gramática de este lenguaje. Para ello se utilizarán datos de los corpus COLT (Bergen Corpus of London Teenage Language) y SCOSE (Saarbrücken Corpus of Spoken English), además de otro material complementario. En ocasiones se establecerán contrastes con el lenguaje adulto con datos seleccionados del DCPSE (Diachronic Corpus of Present-Day Spoken English). Este análisis servirá para examinar aquellos aspectos gramaticales que distinguen al lenguaje de los adolescentes del propio de los adultos. Se estudiarán, entre otros, los siguientes: el sistema verbal y pronominal, las coletillas no canónicas, la polaridad negativa, los verbos citativos, la expresión de la vaguedad, modos de intensificación y el uso de insultos como vocativos.
Palabras clave: lenguaje juvenil; vaguedad; citativos; intensificación; negación; coletillas no canónicas 106 Ignacio M. Palacios Martínez
1. Introduction It is generally acknowledged that the language of teenagers is of particular interest because of the important innovations and changes in language use adolescent and young speakers make compared to the stability typical of adulthood (Labov 1972; Romaine 1984; Eckert 1988; Andersen 2001; Rodríguez 2002; Stenström, Andersen and Hasund 2002; Cheshire 2005, Breivik and Martínez Insua 2008).1 Indeed, teenagers are frequently responsible for linguistic innovations and changes, some of which are incorporated into the general structure of the language over time. This applies especially to the lexical level as teenagers are generally creative in their use of the language and are fond of borrowing new items from other languages and even from other jargons. Moreover, teenagers constitute an important sector of society in their own right that certainly deserves attention; the study of their language, then, is a key component in understanding this social group. When characterising teenagers’ language, I am considering this variety as the product of a series of linguistic features typical of the written and oral productions of teenagers in informal and colloquial interactions. In this respect, we may assume that the language used does not differ entirely from other varieties in similar contexts. However, the age factor together with other sociological constraints (gender, social class, cultural level, ethnic background) do exert significant influence, conditioning the nature of language production here. Hence, teenagers’ language should not be regarded as completely homogeneous but rather as evolving according to geographical and contextual factors, age being the most distinctive feature. If this is so, it follows that the variety of English used by London teenagers should be expected to have certain elements in common with that of young people in New York or Toronto, for example; however, important differences will also arise due to a wide range of personal, ethnic and social factors. From this, we can conclude that under the general umbrella term of teenagers’ language can be found a large number of varieties, each one differing from the other according to personal, social, geographical and situational variables, the age factor being the common denominator. Attention in the past has been focused mainly on phonological and lexico-semantic elements (Romaine 1984; Horvath 1985; Kerswill and Williams 1997; Stenström 1995); grammar and, particularly, syntax, however, have been discussed to a much lesser extent. This is perhaps due to the fact that external aspects of language are generally easier to characterise and describe than grammatical features, the latter being more abstract and internal and, consequently, more difficult to analyse (Herrero 2002). Chambers and Trudgill also refer to this phenomenon:
1 A preliminary version of this study was presented in the 34th 2010 AEDEAN conference held at the University of Almería. I would like to express my gratitude to the members of the audience for their suggestions as well as to the referees and the General Editor. The research reported in this article was funded by the Galician Ministry of Innovation and Industry (INCITE grant no. 08PXIB204033PRC-TT-206 and HU2006/14-0). This grant is hereby gratefully acknowledged.
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 105–126 ISSN 0210-6124 The Language of British Teenagers 107
Dialect grammar has been much less studied than phonology and vocabulary. The most common reason proffered by dialectologists to explain the discrepancy is the relative infrequency of syntactic and morphological variants as compared to phonological or vocabulary variants. In other words, it is harder to gather examples of the former for study. (1991: 291) The literature on the grammar of English teenagers points to general trends typical of this variety: simplified language, avoidance of complex syntactic structures, such as passives, relatives and cleft constructions, incomplete sentences justified by speakers’ shared knowledge. A number of studies have been concerned with specific features, such as the use of GO as a reporting verb (Butters 1980), like as a marker of reported speech (Romaine and Lange 1991; Tagliamonte and Hudson 1999; Tagliamonte and D’Arcy 2004), the omission of the primary verbs BE and HAVE (Andersen 1995), was/were variation (Cheshire and Fox 2009), just as emphasiser (Erman 1997, 1998), well and enough as intensifiers (Stenström 2000), cos as an invariant starting point for further talk (Stenström and Andersen 1996), innit as a non-canonical question tag (Erman 1998; Stenström, Andersen and Hasund 2002), and the function and meaning of the discourse markers so who? like how? just what? in conversations (Tagliamonte 2005). In spite of this, there is still room for further analysis and discussion of other elements that are idiosyncratic of this variety and which still require a more detailed account.
2. Aims In this study I will focus on some of the most distinctive grammatical features of teenagers’ language, using data extracted mainly from the COLT corpus (Bergen Corpus of London Teenage Language) with additional material from the Saarbrücken Corpus of Spoken English (SCOSE) and from other written and oral sources. The language object of study will be that produced by adolescents and teenagers between the ages of 13 and 18. Analysis will focus on those lexico-grammatical properties that characterise this sociolect and identify it as different from other varieties of English. Specific elements considered will be: the syntactic structure of the clause, the verbal and the pronoun systems, the use of tags, the system of polarity with particular reference to negation, quotatives, the expression of vague language, the use of abuse and insult words as vocatives and ways to intensify language. Some of these features and tendencies could be regarded as common to other non-standard varieties of English although in the case of the language used by teenagers, these seem to be either much more frequent or they are directly or indirectly conditioned by the age factor. For reasons of time and space, I will deal relatively briefly with some of these elements, although most would justify more detailed, individual studies.
3. Materials This study forms part of a broader study of the spoken language used by young people in Britain. In addition to data from the two corpora, I have also used written and oral materials related to British teenagers’ culture and lifestyles: magazines (Sugar, Bliss, Shout, Mizz, It’s Hot, Alternative Press, Seventeen, Cosmo Girl, Oh Boy, Teen now, etc.), web-based glossaries and dictionaries of teenagers’ language (see reference section) and
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 105–126 ISSN 0210-6124 108 Ignacio M. Palacios Martínez materials selected from the British Library Archival sound recordings. The COLT corpus, which is part of the British National Corpus (BNC), was compiled in 1993 and consists of 431,528 words from a total of 377 spontaneous conversations produced by teenagers from 13 to 17 in the London area. These conversations together represent roughly 55 hours of recorded speech. Although most of the informants can be classified as middle adolescents, teachers and relatives of some of the informants also make some contributions, although their participation is very limited. During this study, I will draw a comparison between the teenagers’ production with a comparable sample of adult language, composed of informal face-to-face conversations (403,844 words) and assorted spontaneous speech (21,675 words), extracted from the Diachronic Corpus of Present-Day Spoken English (DCPSE). This will allow us to identify the features which are typical of the language of teenagers. Although COLT was compiled in an attempt to represent language produced by British adolescents, all the speakers are from the London area, with its own geographical, social and ethnic variables. The London boroughs represented in the corpus also have substantial numbers of children from ethnic minorities and this itself could have a bearing on the type of English used. Such a corpus should not be regarded as fully representative of general adolescent British English, but rather of London teenager speech. Nevertheless, some of the tendencies observed in the analysis here, especially in the area of syntax and discourse, could be understood as characteristic of general teenage British English and even of adolescents’ language. Several studies have shown common features in the expression of adolescents across different languages. Furthermore, features of London English, pronunciation in particular, seem to be spreading throughout the country (Williams and Kerswill 1999; Foulkes and Docherty 1999), so taking London as a starting-point might be a useful means of assessing aspects of teenagers’ language in British English more generally. In addition to the COLT corpus, I have in particular, a subcorpus from SCOSE of about 12,000 words, compiled in the London area by researchers from the University of Saarbrücken (Germany) in 2008 and which contains data from London teenagers’ speech. All the subjects were students and native speakers of English between the ages of fifteen and eighteen.This data has the advantage over COLT of being more recent, although its limitations are its small size, the low number of participants and the fact that the conversations were all recorded on school premises rather than in daily situations. All this conditions somewhat the spontaneity of the interactions, which is reflected in the language used. Finally, the DCPSE is sampled from both the London Lund corpus and the International Corpus of English. Great Britain (ICE-GB). In the case of the data selected for the present study, 75 percent is from ICE-GB, which was recorded in the early 1990s, that is, at a similar time as COLT. ICE-GB was designed primarily as a resource for syntactic studies, and it can be regarded as representative of the general English variety spoken and written in Britain. Although the component of this corpus selected does not contain data taken only from London speakers as is the case of COLT, it can be regarded as comparable to it in terms of its size, general design and the characteristics of the particular samples considered for the analysis: face-to-face and spontaneous conversations and verbal interactions.
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 105–126 ISSN 0210-6124 The Language of British Teenagers 109
4. Findings
4.1. Verbal system Significant reduction and simplification of the verbal system is common. This might include: use of the base form instead of the present (1), auxiliary omission in questions (2) and (3), and replacement of one past form (the past tense did ) by another (the past participle done) (4)
(1) My sister went to Cambridge. She hate the course (SCO2/491)2 (2) Hey, you feeling better? (COB1132503/1) (3) Where you gonna go? (SCO1/465) (4) I love the way he done that (COB132901/129)
The lack of agreement between subject and verb is particularly noticeable in the variation between do/does (5) and was/were (6) forms,3 although it also applies to the regular third present form, as in (7).
(5) He don’t, don’t give it to you twice (COB132402/27) (6) They was like “what’s what’s he doing with you then?”(SCO6/58-59) (7) but he just go like – he’s really think he was in love (SCO5/24-25)
It is also very common with existential there expressions. A total of 674 instances of these constructions were recorded in COLT and in 100 cases (almost 15%) there was lack of agreement. In the sample of SCOSE considered, only 12 cases of existentials were identified and in three of them lack of agreement was found. There’s is used most of the times as an invariant form, that is, both for the singular and the plural. Looking at the data, there seem to be a number of elements within the NPs following there-constructions that favour this lack of agreement: the adverb only and the presence of demonstratives, possessives, numerals, quantifiers (some, any, many, a lot) and particular nouns (men, people).This feature, however, should not be regarded as completely characteristic of the language of teenagers as it is also frequent in adult speech.4
2 All the examples included in the study have been transcribed following the corpus conventions or the way they appear in the magazines and websites considered. Each example will be followed by an identification code indicating the corpus or source from which it was taken (CO for COLT, SCO for Saarbrücken Corpus of Spoken English), the code number from which it was extracted and the conversation turn reference given. Thus, for instance, in this particular case, the example provided was selected from the Saarbrücken Corpus of Spoken English (SCOSE), document number 2 and the corresponding conversation turn was 491. This system clearly facilitates the tracing and retrieving of the original, if necessary. 3 For further information on the was/were variation in young speakers and in non-standard English, see Tagliamonte (1998), Anderwald (2001) and Cheshire and Fox (2009). 4 For a close study of the lack of concord in existential-there sentences, see Martínez Insua and Palacios (2003) and Breivik and Martínez Insua (2008).
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 105–126 ISSN 0210-6124 110 Ignacio M. Palacios Martínez
(8) I could but, there’s certain problems (COB132503/163) (9) There’s these mad people, they don’t indicate they just go brrrrrr (COB134103/76) (10) There’s some drums on it that just sound exactly the same (COB134103/267)
4.2. Negatives A high frequency of negatives is observed in the production of teenagers, certainly higher than in spoken adult mainstream English. For the analysis, I considered as negative those grammatical items that are fully negative forms from both a syntactic and a semantic perspective such as the particle not, including forms of operators (ain’t, isn’t, aren’t, hasn’t, haven’t, don’t, doesn’t, didn’t), modal verbs (can’t, won’t, shan’t, shouldn’t, wouldn’t, mightn’t, etc) and the vernacular form dunno, which represents in writing the particular pronunciation of don’t know by some of the speakers, not as a modifier to several determinatives (much, many, enough), never, none, nobody, no as a determiner in a NP structure or modifier in the structure of comparative ADjPs and AdvPs, nowhere, neither, nor, nothing/nuffink and No as a negative response to a previous sentence. Apart from all the previous items, I also included lexical words with an inherent negative meaning (fail, refuse, deny) and cases of incomplete negation (few, barely, seldom, rarely, etc.). A total of 1,322 examples were discarded from COLT and 1,392 from DCPSE. These included examples of subclause, local or constituent negation; unclear cases and cases difficult to classify for technical reasons (either because the corpus did not provide enough information or because the context was insufficient); and question tags and repetitions, the latter being mainly structures where no as a response word to a previous statement was repeated twice or more, a phenomenon that is typical of speech and which is part of the normal interaction between speakers. Table 1 summarises my findings. As table 1 shows, the general count was 14,305 in COLT versus 9,722 in DCPSE. The frequency of negatives per 10,000 words is 331.49 in COLT versus 228.47 in DCPSE. The difference is statistically significant (x2 = 788.72, df = 1, p<0.0001). This can be explained partly by the design of the corpus itself, but also in terms of cognitive and psychological features typical of teenagers. In their conversation, adolescents tend to make their points clearly, directly and categorically as a strategy for self-reinforcement. Furthermore, the data in both corpora suggest that spoken interaction is especially propitious for the expression of negation. Negatives with ain’t are common in the everyday speech of teenagers, despite being long stigmatised (Palacios Martínez 2010). Ain’t stands out for its multiple functions since it can be equivalent to forms of BE and HAVE. The results obtained show that in declarative and interrogative clauses ain’t is more common as the equivalent of negativised forms of BE (11) than it is of HAVE (12), whereas in question tags the opposite tendency is true, and the proportion of ain’t as the negative of HAVE is noticeably higher (13).
(11) There ain’t no laws (COB132503/570) (12) Considering you ain’t got your glasses on (COB152601/94) (13) Well you got a book ain’t you? (COB132408/82)
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 105–126 ISSN 0210-6124 The Language of British Teenagers 111
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 105–126 ISSN 0210-6124 112 Ignacio M. Palacios Martínez
Moreover, ain’t is more commonly used as BE copular verb (14) than as an auxiliary (15).
(14) Are you sure it ain’t a girl? (COB132803/72) (15) But I ain’t gonna be there long anyway (COB132612/111)
In the case of HAVE, it mainly occurs as auxiliary in collocation with got (12) while the number of occurrences recorded with HAVE expressing perfect aspect is much more limited (16).
(16) It hasn’t, hey it’s not, well I ain’t even finished this side (COB132611/24)
Ain’t is also very frequent in negative concord structures, that is, clauses in which we find two or more negatives, as in (17) and (18), which do not cancel each other out (Huddleston and Pullum 2002: 845). Ain’t occurs in over half of the negative concord structures identified in COLT. In all cases, ain’t occupies first position and is found together with no, nothing, no more, no one and nobody. No instances are recorded of ain’t together with never. As regards the pragmatics of ain’t, it can be observed that its occurrence is not always casual; at times there are some pragmatic motivations associated with it. Thus, some speakers of the COLT corpus opt for this negative when they intend to strengthen a negative statement (17) or they want to make a story they are telling more realistic and convincing (18).
(17) I know your mother ain’t got no lips (COB135001/27) (18) He goes up to the, he goes up to the bartender, he says excuse me, why is there a bear sitting over there? And he goes, this joke changes a little bit every time I tell you, I thought I’d warn you though. Right, he goes h= excuse me, why is there a bear sitting there? He goes well, you know, we erm, well, don’t ask okay, but just don’t touch him, okay, cos he’s dangerous ……He goes if you don’t touch that bear you’re scared of it. He goes
Finally, extracts of the corpus are registered where some of the speakers use the ain’t form to adapt to the discourse of other speakers who generally use this negative in their speech. As far as negative types are concerned, affixal negation is observed to be little used in teenagers’ conversations, since their speech is characterised by its informality and colloquial nature and affixal negation tends to be more closely associated with more formal registers. Also noted is the adolescents’ strong tendency to intensify language. Negative intensification is achieved through the use of three main mechanisms: certain expressions of negative import, no way being the most common (especially as compared with the language of adults) (19); negative concord structures (20) and some negative polarity idioms (21), (22), (23). In addition to this, it is common to find certain swear words, such as bloody and f***ing, inserted close to the negatives for heightened effect (20) and (24).
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 105–126 ISSN 0210-6124 The Language of British Teenagers 113
(19)
The abundance of negative concord constructions is also noteworthy since these were found in 23 percent of the cases where variation occurred between this type of negative and the single clausal negative. In the case of adults, the number of negative concord constructions was restricted to only 14 percent. Geographical factors, social class and style may play a more important role here than the age of the speakers. Finally, the high frequency of never as a single negator in the past (25), and the non-existent variation between never and not … ever structures in the data, are both notable findings.5
(25) V.xx. and
4.3. Quotatives Constructed dialogue is common among teenagers in general, for whom telling stories, anecdotes and recounting personal experiences is highly characteristic (Tannen 1984). Furthermore, it has been attested that their range of quotative markers is much wider than that of other age groups and that they are rapidly changing and developing (Tagliamonte and Hudson 1999; Macaulay, 2001; Stenström, Andersen and Hasund 2002: 107; Winter 2002; Tagliamonte and D’Arcy 2004; Rickford et al. 2007; Hansen- Thomas 2008). In the data analysed, GO under different forms (he goes, I goes, they goes, etc.) is often used as a verb form to introduce direct speech instead of SAY. It is also the preferred form for the historic present while SAY and TELL are more frequent in the past, as shown by (26). This general tendency applies similarly to the two corpora of adolescents’ language studied.
(26)
On many occasions, like, together with BE or GO or even on its own, is also used as a quotative (27), (28). The use of like as a form of reporting not only in the past but also in the present is found in the magazines addressed to teenagers (29). This means that this use is fully established in the language in both speech and writing.
5 For further information about the expression of negation by British teenagers, see Cheshire (1999) and Palacios Martínez (2011a).
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 105–126 ISSN 0210-6124 114 Ignacio M. Palacios Martínez
(27) First there’s Shelley, cos first of all I didn't want to talk in it, you know, I just went like yeah, yeah, yeah. Now it’s sort of like yes! I wanna talk down it all the time, I want them to hear my voice!
The use of this is + subject has also been reported by Cheshire and Fox (2007) as a quotative in the area of London. They provide the following example:
(30) I walked over to him and this is me, “What are you doing?”
4.4. Pronominal system The form youse is very frequently used for the second person plural in its subject (31) or object form (32). It sometimes collocates with lot (32) and two (33).
(31) Why didn’t youse come out? (COB135306/110) (32) I’ll see youse lot later. (COB134602/977) (33) Why don’t youse two work together? (COB140701/52)
Moreover, man may function as an indefinite pronoun equivalent to one (34).
(34) ah man’s gonna starve. (COB135703/138)
It is also common to find possessives followed by one, as in the following:
(35) My Dad one was called Rhino and the other was called Elephant and their one died (COB132707/101) (36) I told him she could have my one cos it only had that much ink in it (COB132803/225) (37) your’s one is quite solid (COB136701/195)
Demonstratives are sometimes replaced by object personal pro-forms. This happens very often with them, instead of those.
(38) Cos she’s got one of them voices (COB132701/177) (39) Where’d you get them boots? (COB/134901/263)
4.5. Common use of abuse and insult words as vocatives There are a large number of words used as vocatives, including certain insult and swear words generally placed after the pronoun you. The following are the most commonly found: fool, bastard, c*nt, bitch, w**ker, chiefer, d*ck, d**khead, peanuthead, dirty cat, tosser, prat, idiot, (stupid) cow, plonker.
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 105–126 ISSN 0210-6124 The Language of British Teenagers 115
(40) Shut up you fool (COB132614/179) (41) She goes no it ain’t
In general, boys’ production shows a higher frequency of these terms than that of girls’.6 Some of these terms, such as d**k, chiefer, d**khead, are favoured by boys whereas cow, bitch, whore, are more common in girls’ language, which is explained by the fact that this use of verbal abusives is particularly frequent between members of the same sex, be it, boys to boys or girls to girls; very few cases are recorded of girls to boys and no single case of boys to girls. It is also interesting that some of these words have lost their original abusive and pejorative meaning, and are now used as indicators of familiarity and comradeship, hence functioning as solidarity in-group markers (Fraser 1996). Other common vocatives exist in the data which are not necessarily abusive. Such is the case with man and boy, for example.7Alternatively, boy may be an interjection in (44).
(43) look the pictures ain’t clear man. (COB135004/180) (44) the Indian place … it stinks, man, when you go in there, boy, it blow up your nostrils. (COB132705/7)
4.6. Vague language Teenagers’ talk is also characterised by the high frequency of a number of vague words and expressions, especially when compared with the language typical of adults. Existing studies have not demonstrated conclusively whether teenagers are, broadly speaking, more prone to using vague language than adults (Stenström, Andersen and Hasund 2002). However, it has been shown that teenagers express vagueness differently from adults by resorting very often to expressions which are far less common in the language of adults (Palacios Martínez 2011b). Although the general term of vague language includes a wide variety of categories (Channell 1994), in this study I will consider only placeholders (thingy), quantifiers (loads of, a bit of) and general extenders or set marking tags (and stuff, or something). Placeholders are used when speakers cannot remember the name of a person or thing and include words which replace names, item names or both. They can have different pragmatic values. They may be used when it is not considered appropriate to mention the person’s name, when a suitable word the speaker intends to refer to does not exist in the language or even sometimes when the speaker does not want to sound too pretentious (Channell 1994: 157-59). By far the most common placeholder identified in COLT is
6 On a first analysis of COLA, a similar tendency is found in Spanish. Thus, Madrid teenagers refer to their peers as cabrón/a, puta, hijo/a de puta, tío/a, colega, flipado/a, chaval, maricón/a, gilipollas, capullo, jodido, tronco/a, pibe/o/a, nena, etc. From all these tronco, gilipollas and pibe seem to be the most common. Contrary to what is the case in COLT, in this corpus we do find the use of abuse terms between members of the different sex. Thus, boys refer quite often to girls as putas, for example. 7 For more about this particular use of vocatives, as well as on appellatives, see Stenström and Jørgensen (2008).
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 105–126 ISSN 0210-6124 116 Ignacio M. Palacios Martínez thing(s), followed by thingy/thingie, whatist and thingamajig. The forms thingummybob, thingybob and whatsisname are only found once each in this corpus. However, thingy/thingie is recorded on 37 occasions to mean something indefinite and indeterminate. It is used as a noun modified by the article, whether definite or indefinite (45), or even a demonstrative or a possessive (46). Although it very often occurs with reference to an object, the speaker may also denote a person’s name (47). Two cases were also found in which it appears to be used as an adjective (48).
(45) There’s a thingy on it (COB136301/10) (46) you know I told you that thingy (COB132503/32) (47) Go up to Miss thingy (COB132503/14) (48) how do you know? it’s thingy how do you know? (COB136301/24)
In DCPSE thing is also the most frequent while only five cases of thingie are recorded. The language used by teenagers here also reveals a relatively large number of certain non-numerical vague approximators (Channel 1994: 95), that is, words and expressions that serve to quantify without providing any specific quantity; examples include bags of, loads of, lots of, masses of, oodles of, a bit of, a load of, a lot of. However, table 2 shows that adults resort to these expressions more than twice as more than teenagers, 723 versus 337 tokens: general normalised frequencies per 10,000 words are 16.99 versus 7.8, respectively. The differences are statistically significant (x2= 145.11, df = 1, p<0.0001). Both among adults and teenagers, a lot of and a bit of are the most frequent, adults using them four and one and a half times more, respectively, than teenagers. In COLT, the most common, as compared with adults’ language, is loads of, recorded on 75 occasions. Loads of is frequent both in COLT and in teenagers’ magazines (49). It can be used with both countable (50) and uncountable nouns (51) and often collocates with people (52), sport, friends and work.
(49) Check out for the chance to win loads of cool prizes (Mizz website, accessed March 26, 2010) (50) I’ve been asked loads of questions (COB140504/113) (51) he goes inside gets a drink, eats some food cos there’s loads of food cos you know… (COB132701/40) (52) Cos I used to look up to her cos she was older than me. So I don’t think her Nan really knows that Kelly does it to loads of people, do you know, (COB B132707/193)
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 105–126 ISSN 0210-6124 The Language of British Teenagers 117
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 105–126 ISSN 0210-6124 118 Ignacio M. Palacios Martínez
The third group of words and expressions that serve to express vague language are the so-called general extenders.8 These elements generally take the form of a conjunction (and, or) plus a noun phrase and occupy final position.9 Members of this category are, to mention just a few, and stuff, and things, and everything, and all, or something, or whatever, or so, etc. They usually refer to the preceding item, which in most cases will be a noun phrase. Apart from functioning as set-marking or classifying tags, they may express other conversational values, such as summarising, creating rapport, establishing common ground and hedging (Aijmer 1985; Overstreet and Yule 1997; Overstreet 1999, 2005; Cheshire 2007; Tagliamonte and Denis 2010; Palacios Martinez 2011b). In the data analysed here, the general extenders and stuff (like this/that), and everything (like that/else) and and that (sort of thing, sort of sh*t, type, kind, lot, sh*t) are commonly used by teenagers, far more so than by adults. The first of these general extenders occurs in COLT on 53 occasions with a frequency per 10,000 words of 1.2 while 66 examples of the second are found with a frequency per 10,000 words of 1.5 and 82 of the third with a frequency per 10,000 words of 1.9.
(53) That stupid awards like biggest ( ) and stuff like that (SCO1/95) (54) You can shut all the doors and everything (COB135602/255) (55) I haven’t learned my Highway Code and all that sort of sh*t (COB142504/118)
When compared with a sample of adult language of similar size and characteristics extracted from DCPSE (Diachronic Corpus of Present-Day Spoken English), the general frequencies obtained per 10,000 words for these three general extenders, once they were normalised, are 0.44 for and stuff, 1 for and everything and 0.75 for and that, respectively. The differences in use between adults and teenagers can be clearly seen in table 3. In both corpora, and that is the most common of the three general extenders, followed by and everything and and stuff. The figures shown in the second and fifth columns of the table above indicate the percentage that corresponds to each of these three extenders with respect to the total number of general extenders recorded in the two samples of data analysed. This included, apart from the three here mentioned, others such as and things, and all, or something, or whatever, or anything.
8 The terminology used in the literature to define these items varies considerably from set marking tags (Dines 1980; Ward and Birner 1993; Stubbe and Holmes 1995; Winter and Norrby 2000), discourse particle extensions (Dubois 1992), utterance final tags (Aijmer 1985), terminal tags (Macaulay 1985), generalised list completers (Jefferson 1990), post-noun hedges (Meyerhoff 1992), generalisers (Simpson 2004) to vague category identifiers (Channell 1994), final coordination tags (Biber et al. 1999) and general extenders (Overstreet 1999, 2005; Overstreet and Yule 2002; Cheshire 2007; Carroll 2007, 2008; Tagliamonte and Denis 2010; Palacios Martínez 2011b). The latter is precisely the most neutral and the most widely-used in recent studies. 9 The conjunctions and or or are mostly present in these constructions although we find more examples where this conjunction is missing. Thus in the SCOSE corpus we find examples like the following: (i) I might ask a few people who are working on the stock market things like that. (SCO1/190)
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 105–126 ISSN 0210-6124 The Language of British Teenagers 119
General extenders in the teenagers’ language often have the purpose of expressing solidarity, self-connection and the assumption of a shared experience. For these subjects it is important to belong to a closed group and community in order to reaffirm themselves, and this use of language clearly helps them in that direction. Some of these general extenders become linguistic resources used by teenagers to construct their own personality and identity as individuals and as a group. Thus, these general extenders tend to lose their original set-marking and classifying function by assuming new pragmatic and discursive roles.
4.7. Non canonical tags (innit, yeah, right, eh, okay) Non canonical tags here mean those items which differ completely from ordinary tags as in John is a friend of yours, isn’t he? and which can perform functions which are typically attributed to tags, such as checking that the interlocutor is following the narrative or to keep the listener’s attention, a subjective function to reduce the speaker’s commitment to what is being said, and even a textual function to organise pieces of information in chunks and to contribute to the coherence and cohesion of the narrative (Stenström, Andersen and Hasund 2002: 166-67). All these tags are then used as discourse interactive markers. For reasons of space, I will focus here on the invariant tag innit, the most common of all and particularly characteristic in the language of British adolescents. All previous studies have drawn attention to the grammaticalised nature of this lexical item since it began as a standard tag to become later an invariant tag with multiple pragmatic values (Stenström and Andersen (1996), Andersen (1997), Stenström, Andersen and Hasund (2002), Stenström (2005), and in general English by Erman (1998), Algeo (1988) and Krug (1998)). Consider the following examples:
(56) Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. She dropped over, innit? (COB134803/51) (57) He’s gone home, innit? (COB13660173259 (58) It’s good, innit? (COB/132503/527) (59) Saira, you’re in my class, innit? (COB132804/171) (60) Sam and Fern weren’t there innit? (COB132708/21) (61) It’s not too bad innit? (COB135201/67) (62) That was ages ago though, wunnit? (COB140602/45) (63) just shows your ignorance dunnit really? (COB142103/452)
From the examples above, it is clear that this tag may be used to represent any operator HAVE (57), BE (58, 59, 60, 61), or DO (56, 63) or even any modal auxiliary (will, would, must, should, can, could, might) (62). Furthermore, it does not necessarily agree with the subject of the main sentence in gender (56), person (57), or number (60), although it tends to agree with 3rd person singular it, followed by you, he, they, she, I and we. Apart from this, it does not necessarily agree with the tense of the verb of the main sentence (56) and it does not even follow the ordinary reversal of polarity pattern (60). In fact, in only 10 cases in COLT does this not happen. Finally, it normally occurs at the end of a speaker’s turn, but may appear at the beginning or in the middle. The occurrence of wunnit (62) and dunnit (63) may also indicate that this tag has not become fully grammaticalised as the only form used in all syntactic environments.
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 105–126 ISSN 0210-6124 120 Ignacio M. Palacios Martínez these are recorded in the whole COLT corpus. As regards its pragmatic values, it may function as an empathiser, expecting a verbal response serving much the same function as right. Consider the following:
(64) That sounds like a bad move, innit? (COB133203/423)
In turn-initial position it may be used as a simple response or as a response expressing reinforcement, being equivalent to certainly, definitely, absolutely and even sure, as in the following:
(65) A: Doesn’t he look spastic with that pencil behind his ear B: Innit? It looks so dumb. It looks like he’s got cancer growing behind his ear (COB132911/8)
It can also have a intensifying effect as equivalent to indeed (66).
(66) A: Annie gets into fights with everybody though B: Mm. Pro= probably true innit (COB133704/270)
Finally, it can also express surprise as in (67).
(67) A: I’ve never, I’ve never ever heard Jim’s voice before B: Innit? A: Never (COB132707/302)
4.8. Particular ways of intensifying language Teenagers use intensifiers very differently from adults. Some linguists such as Stenström, Andersen and Hasund (2002: 140) have shown that adults use intensifiers twice as much as teenagers. This is explained by the fact that teenagers tend to use other forms of intensification such as taboo and swear words as, for instance, bloody and f***ing (Paradis 2000: 154). This is partially confirmed in our analysis where the total number of intensifiers for adults is 2,124 versus 1,179 tokens in the case of teenagers. The general frequencies obtained per 10,000 words, once they were normalised, are 49.9 for adults and 27.32 for teenagers. The figures are statistically significant (x2 = 282.12, df = 1, p<0.0001).
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 105–126 ISSN 0210-6124 The Language of British Teenagers 121
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 105–126 ISSN 0210-6124 122 Ignacio M. Palacios Martínez
As Table 4 above shows, really is the most frequent in the language of teenagers while very is the most popular for adults.10 It is also curious to see how right11 and well may have an intensifying function in teenagers’ language and can be used to intensify any item in the language. It is also curious to see how some teenagers in COLT often place enough before the item it modifies (71). This means that in these cases enough has a premodifying position instead of the standard postmodifying one. In SCOSE, however, we do not find any examples of the kind. Note the following:
(68) I’ll be nice and pleased, all my, all my parents’ mates have a right good laugh (COB142106/36) (69) they’ve been right bastards to you (COB140601/111) (70) I think you be a well good mate and everything (SCO5/23) (71) It’s enough funny man I’m telling ya! (COB135602/38) (72) it was just stupid really (SCO1/173)
According to Stenström, Andersen and Hasund (2002: 143), females tend to use these intensifying elements more often than males. Moreover, while girls opt for using really, boys prefer absolutely, completely, bloody and f***ing. Superlative forms are also very often intensified.
(73) She had the f***ing funniest voice ever (SCO1/393)
5. Conclusion Some of the grammatical features listed above could also be regarded as typical of other types of spoken discourse, particularly of informal, spontaneous and non-standard varieties. This is the case, to mention just a few, of the simplification of the verbal paradigm, the lack of agreement between verb and subject, especially in the case of existential-there constructions, the avoidance of complex syntactic structures (passives, relatives, clefts), incoherent discourse with lack of cohesion and several other aspects of the pronominal system. However, our results clearly indicate that the language of British teenagers is characterised by a number of distinctive lexico-grammatical features which make it different from the language of adults and which are worth considering: a common use of abuse and insult words as vocatives (silly cow, d*ck, peanuthead, prat, idiot, dirty cat, etc.) that in most cases have lost their original pejorative meaning, being used as expressions of familiarity and comradeship; a particular quotative system in which the verb GO and the multifunctional form like play a prominent role together with new emerging markers of reported speech, such as this is plus subject; a characteristic way of conveying vague language through the use of placeholders (thingie in particular), approximators (loads of most often) and some general extenders (and that, and stuff and and everything); a tendency to intensify language which also includes a characteristic use of some adjectives and adverbs (well, right, bloody, enough, really,
10 For further information about the use of the adverb really in teenagers’ language, see Paradis and Bergmark (2003). 11 Macaulay (2005) has also recorded this frequent use of right as intensifier in the language of the Glasgow teenagers. The use by adults is also reported although not so often.
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 105–126 ISSN 0210-6124 The Language of British Teenagers 123 absolutely, f***ing), clearly in keeping with the personality and cognitive development of the individuals of this age group; the use of non-canonical tags, such as right, yeah, eh, okay, innit, which in most cases have grammaticalised, losing their original meaning and function by adopting new discursive roles, this applying very distinctively to innit; and, finally, a negative polarity system of its own, which is characterised by a high number of negatives, the use of never as a single negator in the past, the high occurrence of certain vernacular negative forms (ain’t, nope, dunno, nuffink) and an elevated percentage of negative concord structures. A more exhaustive study of these syntactic features would provide a more comprehensive view of the discourse used by British teenagers, thus contributing more deeply to the understanding of this age group and to forming a more complete picture of recent developments and innovations in the English language.
Corpora and other materials Archival Sound Recordings. British Library. London
Works Cited Aijmer, Karin 1985: ‘What Happens at the End of our Utterances? The Use of Utterance Final Introduced by “and” and “or”’. Ole Togeby, ed. Papers from the Eighth Scandinavian Conference of Linguistics. Institut for Nordisk Filologi Københavns Universitet: Copenhagen. 66-89. Algeo, John 1988: ‘The Tag Questions in British English: it’s different, i’n’it?’. English World-Wide 9.2: 171-91. Andersen, Gisle 1995: Omission of the Primary Verbs BE and HAVE in London Teenage Speech. A Sociolinguistic Study. Unpublished MA thesis. University of Bergen, Norway. ––––– 1997: ‘“I goes you hang it up in your shower innit? He goes yeah”. The Use and Development of Invariant Tags and Follow-ups in London Teenage Speech’. Paper presented at the 1st UK Language Variation Workshop. Reading. ––––– 2001: Pragmatic Markers and Sociolinguistic Variation. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Anderwald, Lieselotte 2001: ‘Was/Were Variation in Non-Standard British English Today’. English World-Wide 22.1: 1-21. Biber, Douglas, Stig Johansson, Geoffrey Leech, Susan Conrad and Edward Finegan 1999: Longman Grammar of Written and Spoken English. London: Longman. Breivik, Leiv Egil and Ana E. Martínez Insua 2008: ‘Grammaticalization, Subjectification and Non-concord in English Existential Sentences’. English Studies 89.3: 351-62. Butters, Ronald R. 1980: ‘Narrative Go “say”’. American Speech 55.1: 304-07.
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 105–126 ISSN 0210-6124 124 Ignacio M. Palacios Martínez
Carroll, Ruth 2007: ‘Lists in Letters: Elided NP-lists and General Extenders in Early English Correspondence’. Isabel Moskowich-Spiegel and Begoña Crespo-García, eds. Bells Chiming from the Past: Cultural and Linguistic Studies on Early English. Amsterdam: Rodopi. 37-53. ––––– 2008: ‘Historical English Phraseology and the Extender Tag’. Selim 15: 7-37. Chambers, Jack K. and Peter Trudgill 1991: Dialects of English: Studies in Grammatical Variation. Harlow: Longman. Channell, Joanna 1994: Vague Language. Oxford: Oxford UP. Cheshire, Jenny 1999: ‘English Negation from an Interactional Perspective’. Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Gunnel Tottie and Wim van der Wurff, eds. Negation in the History of English. Berlin: Mouton. 29-53. _____2005: ‘Age and Generation-Specific Use of Language’. Ulrich Ammon, Norbert Dittmar, Klaus J. Mattheier and Peter Trudgill, eds. Sociolinguistics: An Introductory Handbook of the Science of Language and Society. Berlin: Mouton. 1552-63. ––––– 2007: ‘Discourse Variation, Grammaticalisation and “stuff like that”’. Journal of Sociolinguistics 11.2: 155-93. _____ and Susan Fox 2007: ‘Innovation in the Quotative System of London Adolescents’. Paper presented at NWAV 36, University of Pennsylvania. _____ and Susan Fox 2009: ‘Was/were Variation: A Perspective from London’. Language Variation and Change 21: 1-23. Dines, Elisabeth R. 1980: ‘Variation in Discourse and “stuff like that”’. Language in Society 9.1: 13-33. Dubois, Sylvie 1992: ‘Extension Particles, etc’. Language Variation and Change 4.2: 163-203. Eckert, Penelope 1988: ‘Adolescent Social Structure and the Spread of Linguistic Change’. Language in Society 17: 183-207. Erman, Britt 1997: ‘“Guy’s such a dickhead”: The Context and Function of just in Teenage Talk’. Ulla-Britt Kotsinas, Anna-Malin Karlsson and Anna-Britta Stenström, eds. Ungdomsspråk i Norden. Stockholm: MINS. 96-110. ––––– 1998: ‘“Just wear the wig innit!” From Identifying and Proposition-oriented to Intensifying and Speaker-oriented: Grammaticalization in Progress’. Haukioja Timo, ed. Papers from the 16th Scandinavian Conference of Linguistics. Turku: Department of Finnish and General Linguistics of the University of Turku. 87-110. Foulkes, Paul and Gerard Docherty, eds. 1999: Urban Voices: Accent Studies in the British Isles. London: Arnold. Fraser, Bruce 1996: ‘Pragmatic Markers’. Pragmatics 6.2: 167-90. Hansen-Thomas, Holly 2008: ‘An Investigation of Innovative Quotatives in Adolescent Chicana English in Texas’. Intercultural Pragmatics 5.1: 19-39. Herrero, Gemma 2002: ‘Aspectos sintácticos del lenguaje juvenil’. Félix Rodríguez, ed. El lenguaje de los jóvenes. Barcelona: Ariel. 67-95. Horvath, Barbara M. 1985: Variation in Australian English: The Sociolects of Sidney. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Huddleston, Rodney and Geoffrey Pullum 2002: The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Jefferson, Gail 1990: ‘List-construction as a Task and Resource’. George Psathas, ed. Interaction Competence. Lanham: UP of America. 63-92. Kerswill, Paul and Ann Williams 1997: ‘Investigating Social and Linguistic Identity in Three British Schools’. Ulla-Britt Kotsinas, Anna-Malin Karlsson and Anna-Britta Stenström, eds. Ungdomsspråk i Norden. Stockholm: MINS. 159-76. Krug, Manfred 1998: ‘British English is Developing a New Discourse Marker, innit? A Study in Lexicalisation Based on Social, Regional and Stylistic Variation’. Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik 23: 145-97. Labov, William 1972: Sociolinguistic Patterns. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P.
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 105–126 ISSN 0210-6124 The Language of British Teenagers 125
Macaulay, Ronald K. 1985: ‘The Narrative Skills of a Scottish Coal Miner’. Manfred Görlach, ed. Varieties of English Around the World: Focus on Scotland. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 101-24. ––––– 2001: ‘“You’re like why not?” The Quotative Expressions of Glasgow Adolescents’. Journal of Sociolinguistics 5.1: 3-21. ––––– 2005: Talk that Counts. Age, Gender and Social Class Differences in Discourse, Oxford: Oxford UP. Martínez Insua, Ana E. and Ignacio M. Palacios Martínez 2003: ‘A Corpus-based Approach to Non- concord in Present Day English Existential there-constructions’. English Studies 2003.3: 262-83. Meyerhoff, Miriam 1992: ‘“A sort of something”. Hedging Strategies on Nouns’. Working Papers on Language, Gender and Sexism 2: 59-73. Overstreet, Maryann 1999: Whales, Candlelight, and “stuff like that”: General Extenders in English Discourse. New York: Oxford UP. ––––– 2005: ‘“And stuff” and “und so”: Investigating Pragmatic Expressions in English and German’. Journal of Pragmatics 37: 1845-64. ––––– and George Yule 1997: ‘On Being Inexplicit and Stuff in Contemporary American English’. Journal of English Linguistics 25: 250-58. ––––– and George Yule 2002: ‘The Metapragmatics of and everything’. Journal of Pragmatics 34: 785-94. Palacios Martínez, Ignacio M. 2010: ‘“It ain't nothing to do with my school”. Variation and Pragmatic Uses of ain't in the Language of British English Teenagers’. English Studies 91.5: 548-66. _____ 2011a: ‘The Expression of Negation in British Teenagers’ Language. A Preliminary Study’. Journal of English Linguistics 39.1: 4-35. ––––– 2011b: ‘“I might, I might go I mean it depends on money things and stuff”. A Preliminary Analysis of General Extenders in British Teenagers’ Discourse’. Journal of Pragmatics. Prepublished February 22, 2011 as DOI. 10.1016/ j.pragma.2011.02.011. Paradis, Carita 2000: ‘“It’s well weird”. Degree Modifiers of Adjectives Revisited: The Nineties’. John M. Kirk, ed. Corpora Galore: Analyses and Techniques in Describing English. Amsterdam, Atlanta: Rodopi. 147-60. _____ and Nina Bergmark 2003: ‘“Am I really really mature or something”: really in Teentalk’. Karin Aijmer and Britta Olinder, eds. Proceedings from the 8th Conference on English Studies. Göteburg: Acta Universitatis Gothenburghensis. 71-86. Rickford, John R., Thomas Wasow, Arnold Zwicky and Isabelle Buchstaller 2007: ‘Intensive and Quotative all: Something Old, Something New’. American Speech 82.1: 3-31. Rodríguez, Félix, ed. 2002: El lenguaje de los jóvenes. Barcelona: Ariel. Romaine, Suzanne 1984: The Language of Children and Adolescents. Oxford: Blackwell. ––––– and Deborah Lange 1991: ‘The Use of like as a Marker of Reported Speech and Thought: A Case of Grammaticalization in Progress’. American Speech 66.3: 227-79. Simpsom, Rita C. 2004: ‘Stylistic Features of Academic Speech: The Role of Formulaic Expressions’. Ulla Connor and Thomas A. Upton, eds. Discourse in the Professions: Perspectives from Corpus Linguistics. Studies in Corpus Linguistics 16. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 37-64. Stenström, Anna-Brita 1995: ‘Taboos in Teenage Talk’. Gunnel Melchers and Beatrice Warren, eds. Studies in Anglistics. Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell. 71-79. _____ 2000: ‘It’s enough funny man: Intensifiers in Teenage Talk’. John M. Kirk, ed. Corpora Galore: Analyses and Techniques in Describing English. Papers from the Nineteenth International Conference on English Language Research on Computerised Corpora. Amsterdam: Rodopi. 177-90. ––––– 2005: ‘“It is very good eh . Está muy bien eh”. Teenagers’ Use of Tags. London and Madrid Compared’. Kevin Mc Cafferty, Tove Bull and Kristin Killie, eds. Contexts. Historical, Social, Linguistic. Studies in Celebration of Toril Swan. Pieterlen: Peter Lang AG. 279-91.
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 105–126 ISSN 0210-6124 126 Ignacio M. Palacios Martínez
––––– and Gisle Andersen. 1996: ‘More Trends in Teenage Talk: A Corpus-based Investigation of the Discourse Items cos and innit’. Carol Percy, Charles F. Neyer and Ian Lancashire, eds. Synchronic Corpus Linguistics. Amsterdam: Rodopi. 189-203. –––––, Gisle Andersen and Ingrid Kristine Hasund 2002: Trends in Teenage Talk: Corpus Compilation, Analysis and Findings. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins. _____ and Annette Myre Jørgensen 2008: ‘A Matter of Politeness? A Constrastive Study of Phatic Language in Teenage Conversation’. Pragmatics 18.4: 635-57. Stubbe, Maria and Janet Holmes 1995: ‘“You know”, “eh” and other “exasperating expressions”: An Analysis of Social and Stylistic Variation in the Use of Pragmatic Devices in a Sample of New Zealand English’. Language and Communication 15: 63-88. Tagliamonte, Sali 1998: ‘Was/Were Variation across the Generations. Views from the City of York’. Language Variation and Change 10: 153-91. _____ 2005: ‘“So who? Like how? Just what?” Discourse Markers in the Conversations of English Speaking Youth’. Journal of Pragmatics 37.11: 1896-915. _____ and Rachel Hudson 1999: ‘Be like et al. beyond America: The Quotative System in British and Canadian Youth’. Journal of Sociolinguistics 3.2: 147-72. _____ and Alexandra D’Arcy 2004: ‘“He’s like, she’s like”: The Quotative System in Canadian Youth’. Journal of Sociolinguistics 8.4: 493-514. ––––– and Derek Denis 2010: ‘The “stuff” of Change: General Extenders in Toronto, Canada’. Journal of English Linguistics 38.4: 335-68. Tannen, Deborah 1984: Conversational Styles. Analyzing Talk among Friends. Oxford: Oxford UP. Ward, Gregory and Betty Birner 1993: ‘The Semantics and Pragmatics of “and everything”’. Journal of Pragmatics 19: 205-14. Williams, Ann and Paul Kerswill 1999: ‘Dialect Levelling: Change and Continuity in Milton Keynes, Reading and Hull’. Paul Foulkes and Gerard Docherty, eds. Urban Voices: Accent Studies in the British Isles. London: Arnold. 141-162. Winter, Joanne and Catrin Norrby 2000: ‘Set Marking Tags “and stuff”’. John Henderson, ed. Proceedings of the 1999 Conference of the Australian Linguistic Society
Received 17 November 2010 Revised version accepted 1 April 2011
Ignacio .M. Palacios Martínez is Senior Lecturer of English in the Department of English and German of the University of Santiago. His current interests focus on the description of spoken English according to text type and from the perspective of teaching and learning.
Address: Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, Departamento de Filoloxía Inglesa e Alemá, Facultade de Filoloxía. Avda. de Castelao, s/n. Campus Norte. 15782 Santiago de Compostela, A Coruña, Spain. Tel.: +34 881811890. Fax:+34 981574646.
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 105–126 ISSN 0210-6124 ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 127–146 ISSN 0210-6124
The Morphological Structure of Old English Complex Nouns
Roberto Torre Alonso Universidad de La Rioja [email protected]
This journal article takes issue with the morphological structure of complex nouns in Old English. This stage of the language is characterised by a rich morphology and, with most of its lexemes being morphologically complex, Old English provides a fertile field of study for the kind of analysis here undertaken. The present study analyses the interaction between affixation, compounding, zero-derivation and inflection in terms of the feeding of the morphological processes, that is, the successive order in which they appear, thus allowing for the establishment of regular patterns of noun formation and generalizations on lexical creation. Overall, 119 different word structures have been identified, depending on the type and number of morphological processes involved. The conclusion is reached that non-basic nouns in Old English contain up to six levels of complexity, with the bulk of the formations consisting of three and four levels, that is, with three or four derivational steps taking place.
Keywords: Old English; morphology; word-formation; word structure; process feeding; nouns
La estructura morfológica de los nombres complejos en el inglés antiguo
Este artículo se ocupa de la estructura de los nombres complejos del inglés antiguo. Este estadio de la lengua se caracteriza por su rica morfología, y dado que la mayor parte del léxico de este periodo es morfológicamente complejo, el inglés antiguo se muestra como un campo de estudio adecuado para el tipo de análisis que aquí se presenta. El presente estudio analiza la interacción entre los procesos derivativos de afijación, composición, derivación cero y flexión en términos de alimentación de procesos, es decir, el orden sucesivo en el que éstos aparecen, lo que permite establecer patrones en la formación de sustantivos y generalizaciones respecto de la creación léxica. En total se han identificado 119 estructuras diferentes, que se distribuyen en seis niveles de complejidad morfológica. La mayor parte de los predicados estudiados, no obstante, contienen tres o cuatro niveles de complejidad, esto es, su derivación requiere tres o cuatro pasos.
Palabras clave: Inglés antiguo; morfología; formación de palabras; estructura de la palabra; alimentación de procesos; nombres 128 Roberto Torre Alonso
1. Aims and data
This journal article engages in the morphological structure of Old English complex nouns.1 By complex I mean nouns that have been derived lexically by means of word- formation processes, such as those in example (1):
(1) a. gang ‘journey’ (gangan) b. bīnama ‘pronoun’ (nama) c. dēorling ‘favourite’ (dēore) d. wīgmann ‘warrior’ (wīg, mann)
These examples illustrate the derivational processes that turn out the complex nouns under scrutiny in this work: gang ‘journey’ is a zero-derivative of gangan ‘to go’, bīnama ‘pronoun’ constitutes a prefixation on nama ‘name’, dēorling ‘favourite’ results from the attachment of a suffix to the base dēore ‘dear’ and, finally, the compound wīgmann ‘warrior’ combines wīg ‘fight’ and mann ‘man’. Whereas the input to the derivational processes in (1) consists of basic (underived) terms exclusively, the input to the process offered by (2) is complex (already derived):
(2) a. ungesibsumnes ‘quarrelsomeness’ (ungesibsum) b. dyrneforlegernes ‘fornication’ (dyrneforleger) c. eftācennednes ‘regeneration’ (ācennednes)
In effect, the bases to which the noun-forming suffix -nes is attached constitute the output of previous word-formation processes. For instance, ungesibsum, the base of derivation of ungesibsumnes ‘quarrelsomeness’, results from the previous derivation of gesib from sib, gesibsum from gesib and ungesibsum from gesibsum, that is, the formation of the derivative requires four derivational steps. In the light of these examples, the analysis of complex nouns that is carried out in this article focuses on the interaction of morphological processes in recursive formations such as those in (2). The aim of the analysis is to ascertain the degree of complexity displayed by Old English nouns as well as the interaction of morphological processes that causes such complexity. In this respect, this article takes its starting point from Martín Arista’s (2008) analysis of the relative ordering of morphological processes in Old English word-formation, which demonstrates that there is no lexical integrity in this stage of the English language. The evidence gathered in this research has been retrieved from the lexical database of Old English Nerthus (www.nerthusproject.com). Nerthus is mainly based on Clark Hall’s (1996) A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary and, regarding specific questions, on Bosworth and Toller’s (1973) An Anglo-Saxon dictionary as well as Sweet’s (1976) The student’s dictionary of Anglo-Saxon. It includes 13,670 non-basic nouns. Of these, 4,084 are affixed (1,025 by prefixation and 3,059 by suffixation), and 8,347 are compounds,
1 This research has been funded through the project FFI2008-04448/FILO.
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 127–146 ISSN 0210-6124 The Morphological Structure of Old English Complex Nouns 129 while 1,239 nouns have been created by means of zero-derivation. I have also identified a total of 167 nouns that are the result of productive inflection. Given these aims and data, the article is organised as follows. Section 2 sets the terminological question of recursivity proper vs. process feeding and deals with some further methodological aspects of this research. Section 3 focuses on the feeding of morphological processes and the explanation of the different levels of morphological complexity that arise in the derived nouns of Old English. Section 4 presents the main conclusions of the study and, to round off, the appendix includes each of the structures identified, along with a sample word and the formal notation of its internal structure.
2. Research methodology
According to Martín Arista (2009), the defining properties of derivational morphology in a structural-functional framework include the possibility of applying derivational rules to previously derived inputs (recursivity) and the change in lexical category of some outputs of derivational processes with respect to the inputs (recategorization). Recursivity and recategorization, in this view, draw a distinction between inflectional morphology, which cannot apply recursively or change the category of the input to inflectional processes and derivational morphology. In this article I am concerned with the latter property, which deserves some attention in this methodological section. In general, recursivity means rule repetition. More technically, a recursive rule reduces complex instances to basic instances of a phenomenon, in such a way that the rule is applied inside the rule. Considered from the perspective of the process for which the recursive rule accounts, a process is recursive if a step of the process requires the repetition of the step in question so that the required output of the process is turned out. In morphology, compounding illustrates the concept of recursive process neatly: by root compounding we get bank employee out of bank and employee and, by means of repeated application of the rule of root compounding, we produce bank employee payroll from bank employee and payroll. In affixation, happy plus -ness yield happiness, which, by prefixation of un-, produces unhappiness. These examples raise a question central to the study of morphological recursivity that can be stated in the following terms: how restrictive must the definition of morphological process be in order to speak of recursivity proper? In other words, does unhappiness involve recursivity? If recursivity is understood as repetition of a rule, unhappiness is not recursive because prefixation and suffixation are not governed by the same rules, neither are they subject to the same restrictions. Moreover, how are instances of affixed compounds such as anti-spyware to be handled? What is at stake here is whether the term morphological recursivity is understood in a wide sense, in terms of which any non-basic input to a derivational process represents an instance of recursivity, or in a narrow sense, which requires that a given process feeds the same process, as in instances of compounding feeding compounding such as bank employee payroll and affixation feeding affixation such as unhappiness, but not in affixation feeding compounding, for instance in anti- spyware. To solve this question I align myself with the functional school of linguistics regarding the functional identity of affixation and compounding as far as the lexeme
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 127–146 ISSN 0210-6124 130 Roberto Torre Alonso status of derivational affixes (Mairal Usón and Cortés Rodríguez 2000-2001) and the functional equivalence of derivation and compounding (Martín Arista 2008) are concerned. The solution that is advanced here is based on a distinction between general processes and specific processes. There is just one general process, namely lexical creation. The major specific processes of word-formation in Old English include zero- derivation, affixation and compounding. Affixation, in turn, can be broken down into prefixation and suffixation. At this point, the concept of zero-derivation also requires some explanation. As I see it, zero-derivation operating on stems is probably an even more generalised phenomenon in Old English than Kastovsky (1968) suggests. Zero-derivation is an integral part of any analysis of Old English word-formation. In this respect, González Torres (2009, 2010) excludes zero-derivation proper from her study and leaves aside the instances of what she calls derivation by inflectional means, as in drinca ‘drinker’ from drincan ‘drink’. The analysis of zero-derivation offered by Pesquera Fernández (2009) focuses on the phonological motivation of morphosyntactic alternations thus taking a different line than is pursued here. Martín Arista (forthcoming a) offers a typology of zero-derivation phenomena in Old English that includes: (i) zero derivation with explicit inflectional morphemes and without explicit derivational morphemes, as in rīdan ‘to ride’ > rīda ‘rider’; (ii) zero derivation without explicit or implicit morphemes, either inflectional or derivational, as in bīdan ‘to delay’ > bīd ‘delay’; (iii) zero derivation without inflectional or derivational morphemes but displaying ablaut, as in drīfan ‘to drive’ > drāf ‘action of driving’; and (iv) zero derivation with ablaut and formatives that can no longer be considered productive affixes, such as -m in flēon ‘to fly’ > flēam ‘flight’. In general, there is consensus regarding the fact that the change from stem-formation to word-formation is over by the end of the Old English period. Zero-derivation is of paramount importance in the period of stem-formation but loses weight and ultimately disappears. In this sense, Kastovsky (2006: 165) states that nominal and adjectival inflection as well as denominal and deadjectival derivation in Old English were predominantly word-based, but González Torres (2009) has shown convincingly that the existence of more than one base available for the formation of a significant number of nouns goes in the direction of variable bases produced by inflectional processes and made ready for derivation. In other words, Kastovsky (2006) might overestimate the importance of word-formation with the corresponding underestimation of stem-formation in the period. For all the reasons just given, zero-derivation will be considered along with the other specific processes of word- formation in this work, the whole inventory including zero-derivation, affixation and compounding. Specific processes of derivation are accounted for by rules, which can be broken down into word-formation rules and redundancy rules. While this typology is generally accepted in the fields of lexicology and word-formation, it is adapted to the study of a historical language in the following way (Caballero González et al. 2004-2005; Torre Alonso et al. 2008; Martín Arista 2010a, forthcoming c, d): word-formation rules are fully operational in a synchronic analysis whereas redundancy rules capture morphological relations no longer accountable for by word-formation rules. In Stark’s (1982) terminology, word-formation rules explain what is productive in synchronic analysis and redundancy rules, on the other hand, explain what is recoverable in diachronic analysis.
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 127–146 ISSN 0210-6124 The Morphological Structure of Old English Complex Nouns 131
An important difference between redundancy rules and word-formation rules is that the latter apply gradually, whereas the former do not. This distinction raises the issue of graduality. The transformational school has assumed some sort of graduality understood as "one affix, one rule" (Aronoff 1976: 89) in a parallel with the binarity principle governing X´-syntax. In a similar vein, the Adjacency Condition (Siegel 1979) stipulates that in determining whether an affix can be attached to a complex word, the only relevant information is provided by the most recently attached element by means of a morphological rule. Williams (1981), as Spencer (1991: 187) notes, replaces the Adjacency Condition with the Atom Condition, which predicts that affixation processes can be sensitive only to the most recently attached morpheme. Although in a more indirect way than Aronoff (1976), Siegel (1979) and Williams (1981) also impose a graduality constraint on word-formation processes. In the specific area of Old English word-formation, Martín Arista (forthcoming b) has demonstrated that the derivation is gradual except in some instances of parasynthesis that basically comprise frequent affixes such as ge- and un- and, above all, adjectival derivatives.2 Consequently, theoretical and descriptive reasons advise a gradual analysis of the processes that turn out morphologically complex nouns in Old English. A gradual analysis of the formation of complex nouns calls for the following steps. All predicates (lexemes) must be ascribed to a lexical category and classified as basic or non-basic. Basic predicates do not undergo any derivational processes. Within non- basic predicates, a further distinction has to be made between non-recursive predicates (those which undergo a single derivational process of affixation, compounding or zero- derivation), and recursive predicates (those which undergo a derivational process that puts an end to the derivation, i.e. terminal process, preceded by another process that does not put an end to the derivation, i.e. non-terminal process). Non-terminal processes may be derivational, but also inflective, as in the inflection of drincan ‘drink’ for the past participle (druncen) as a prerequisite for obtaining druncennes ‘drunkenness’ by means of suffixation. Non-terminal and terminal processes are represented as shown by (3), which is based on Torre Alonso et al. (2008). (3a) represents the pre-terminal processes previous to the application of the terminal processes unfolded in (3b):
(3) a. [[ā]Af[sendan]V]V āsendan ‘to send forth’ [{drincan}V{drunken}V]Adj druncen ‘drunk’ b. [[in]af[āsendan]V]V ināsendan ‘to send in’ [[druncen]Adj[nis]Af]N druncenis ‘drunkenness’
This formalism calls for some further comment. Square brackets represent derivational processes, while curly brackets are used to account for inflections. Another relevant notation property is that both the terminal and non-terminal process make use of a metalanguage, rather than the actual realizations of the predicate. At this point it must be stressed that the use of metalanguage in terminal derivational chains makes it
2 See also Martín Arista (2010a, 2010b, forthcoming e) on the question of recursivity in Old English word-formation.
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 127–146 ISSN 0210-6124 132 Roberto Torre Alonso necessary to consider as prefixed bases some elements that lose their prefixation throughout the lexical creation processes. In the process of the identification of the bases of the complex words in Old English (and the adjuncts in the case of compounds) the loss of the prefix ge- throughout the derivations is not relevant for the research. However, when identifying the internal structure of the complex word, the situation is different, and some questions must be set beforehand. In the first place, a derivational process represents one level of complexity. Basic items show no morphological complexity. In the second place, if, as stated above, the loss of an affix has no consequences for the identification of a base as affixed, such a loss is relevant to the analysis of the internal structure of words, in such a way that if the affix is lost, the constituent loses one level of complexity. More specifically, if a predicate is the result of adding ge- to an underived base, and in a second step the structure is suffixed with the corresponding loss of the prefix, the final complex word will be represented as the combination of an underived base plus a suffix and the structure will be described as having one level of complexity. This is the case with the derivatives in (4):
(4) a. ge∂ræf ‘pressure’ [[ge]Af1[∂ræf]N]N b. ∂ræft ‘contentiousness’ [[∂ræf]N[t]Af1]N
As can be seen in (4), ge∂ræf ‘pressure’ is a complex noun made out of a noun plus the prefix ge-. When this complex noun enters a second process of affixation (suffixation with a suffix -t) the prefix is not present. Thus, in the analysis of the complex structure of ∂ræft ‘contentiousness’, the prefix ge- is not taken into consideration and, consequently, both the initial prefixed element and the second generation lexeme are analysed as having one level of complexity, with prefixation and suffixation, respectively, as the only morphological processes taking place. Before discussing the main results obtained from the analysis, two final remarks should be made upon the analytical notation. Consider the examples in (5):
(5) Inflected adjunct + underived base: Crīstesmæsse ‘Christmas’ [[{Crīst}N{Crīstes}N]N[mæsse]N]N Prefix + Suffixed base < Compounding: tōendebyrdnes ‘order, series’ [[tō]Af2[[[ende]N[byrd]N]N[ness]Af1]N]N Compound base (basic adjunct + zero-derived base) + Suffix: mancwealmnes ‘manslaughter’ [[[man]N[(cwelan)Vb(cwealm)N]N]N[nes]Af1]N
For the sake of clarity, the category of the lexeme has been added at the end of each derivational step. Similarly, the processes of zero-derivation and inflection have been distinguished, with round brackets denoting the former process and curly brackets indicating inflectional derivation. Finally, the order in which derivational processes occur and interact is also represented by means of formal notation. In this description a plus sign (+) represents attachment. It may be of an affix to a base or the joining of two
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 127–146 ISSN 0210-6124 The Morphological Structure of Old English Complex Nouns 133 free predicates. A minor than symbol (<) indicates that the process to the left of the sign occurs after (is fed by) the one to the right of the sign. Between brackets I represent the internal structure of compound elements.
3. Morphological process feeding and the structure of Old English nouns
After dealing with the relevant terminological and methodological questions relevant for this study, this section concentrates on the results of the analysis. For a detailed scrutiny of all the evidence furnished for this research, I refer the reader to the appendix. The data analysed prove the quantitative and qualitative relevance of process feeding for the derivational morphology of Old English. On the qualitative side, all morphological processes play a role in the recursive formations found in Old English lexical creation. On the quantitative side, a significant part of the lexicon of the language constitutes the output of recursive processes of word-formation. As a matter of fact, recursive noun- formation outnumbers non-recursive noun-formation, as table 1 shows:
Non-recursive Recursive Prefixation 217 548
Suffixation 1,010 3,059
Compounding 2,503 5,844
Zero-derivation 357 882
Table 1. Recursive and non-recursive noun-formation.
Within the realm of affixation, only 217 of the 754 prefixed nouns analysed in this work consist of the combination of a prefix plus an underived base (28.7%). The situation with suffixation does not differ much from these data. Of the 3,059 suffixed nouns under scrutiny, 1,010 display an underived base (33%). Within compounding, the number of compounds made by the addition of two basic predicates is 2,503, just above 1/4 of the total (26.7%). That is, the attachment of an affix to underived bases or the combination of two basic predicates to form a compound is rather limited when compared with the number of elements in which at least two derivational processes take place. These recursive nouns can be grouped around 119 different morphological structures, which suggests that lexical creation at this stage of the English languange is relatively unconstrained. The complexity levels of these structures range from single-level formations – those of a complex elements with an underived base in the case of affixation, zero derivation and inflection, and underived base and adjunct in compounding – to the six level structure of the compound ūpāstīgnestīd ‘ascension-tide’ shown in (6):
(6) Suffixed adjunct < Inflection < Prefixation < Prefixation + Zero-derived base (1) [[[{[ūp]Af2[[ā]Af1[stīgan]Vb]Vb}Vb{ūpāstigen}Vb][ness]Af3]N[(tēon)Vb(tīd)N]N]N
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 127–146 ISSN 0210-6124 134 Roberto Torre Alonso
On the grounds of the number of predicates that display each morphological structure, the classification given in table 2 can be put forward:
Number of predicates Number of structures Levels of complexity
1000+ 4 1-2
500+ 3 2-3
100+ 16 1-2-3
50+ 5 2-3
10+ 20 1-2-3-4
5+ 17 2-3-4
2+ 26 2-3-4
1 28 3-4-5-6
Table 2. Type frequency of morphological structures
Table 2 shows that there is an inverse ratio between frequency and complexity: the more complex the morphological structure, the less frequently it is displayed by complex nouns. More significantly, table 2 also evidences that the higher the level of complexity, the more different morphological structures partake of the level of complexity in question. In order to get a more refined interpretation, these data must be related to the total number of predicates created by the whole set of structures displaying the same level of complexity. If we focus on all the derivatives that display a certain structure in a given complexity level, the results are those shown in table 3:
Structural complexity Number of Predicates Number of Structures
1 level 4,095 5
2 levels 7,790 24
3 levels 1,819 61
4 levels 118 26
5 levels 2 2
6 levels 1 1
Table 3. Word-formations by level of structural complexity
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 127–146 ISSN 0210-6124 The Morphological Structure of Old English Complex Nouns 135
Although in general terms recursive lexical creation is common in Old English, high complexity in word-forms is strongly disfavoured. In fact, 5 and 6 complexity level structures must be regarded as exceptional, with only three combinations giving rise to three different predicates. The bulk of Old English complex nouns display a three-level internal structure. Nonetheless, the most frequent morphological structure found in complex nouns is that of two complexity levels, which is responsible for the creation of over half the predicates analysed in this research. Regarding the final morphological process occurring in complex words, another two aspects deserve comment. On the one hand, the number of structures to which each derivational process puts an end, and, on the other hand, the number of predicates they create by complexity level. Table 4 presents the number of structures to which each process puts an end:
1 Level 2 Levels 3 Levels 4 Levels 5 Levels 6 Levels
Prefixation 1 5 8 4
Suffixation 1 5 17 9 2
Compounding 1 10 33 13 1
Zero-derivation 1 2 1
Inflection 1 2 1
Table 4. Word structures by final derivational process.
Compounding and suffixation are responsible for the vast majority of the structures identified in this article. This is predictable to a certain extent, considering that these processes are final in 11,803 predicates, which represent 83.4% of the grand total of complex nouns. The relation between the three major lexical creation processes is of arithmetic progression, with compounding doubling the number of structures with respect to suffixation, and suffixation presenting twice as many structures as prefixation. This again reflects very neatly the proportion of predicates analysed. These three processes can be final with respect to all other processes. Only inflection and zero- derivation – which can be final with respect to underived, prefixed and compound bases only – are more constrained. By process and level of internal complexity, the formation of complex nouns can be summarised as follows in table 5. Along with the relative frequency of more and less complex morphological structures, tables 1 to 5 offer a picture of noun formation in which the different derivational processes interact in a rather unrestricted way. In this respect, I concur with Martín Arista (2008), who has pointed out that there is no lexical integrity in Old English word-formation, be it understood as a constraint on the recursive application of morphological processes or as a principle imposing a certain relative ordering on derivational and inflectional processes. Although the analysis I have carried out, unlike
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 127–146 ISSN 0210-6124 136 Roberto Torre Alonso
Martín Arista’s (2008), includes inflection and zero-derivation, lexical integrity does not hold in these areas either. Consider the examples in (7), where suffixation occurs before and after prefixation in (7a), and before and after compounding in (7b):
(7) a. midfæsten ‘mid-Lent’ ontimbernes ‘material; teaching’ b. ∂orn∂ȳfel ‘thorn bush’ nīed∂earfnes ‘need, necessity’
1 Level 2 Levels 3 Levels 4 Levels 5 Levels 6 Levels
Prefixation 206 511 67 9
Suffixation 1,010 2,236 418 24 2
Compounding 2,503 4,013 1,331 85 1
Zero-derivation 357 4 2
Inflection 19 148 3
Table 5. Total number of predicates by final derivational process and complexity level
As (7) shows, no relative ordering of processes can be put forward on account of these data. Lexical creation in Old English is a considerably free process in which complexity is achieved with little restriction. Whereas in Present-day English prefixation occurs systematically before compounding, these processes can feed each other in Old English. Thus, in midfæsten the prefix mid- is attached to the suffixed element fæsten, while in ontimbernes the suffix -ness is final with respect to the prefixed lexeme ontimber. As regards the examples in (7b), suffixation occurs in ∂ȳfel before this lexeme becomes part of the compound ∂orn∂ȳfel, while suffixation is final and takes place once a compound word has been created in nīed∂earfnes. The instances in (7) constitute 2 complexity level structures. Morphological processes interact in a more pervasive way when more complex formations with processes taking place at least twice, with another derivational element inserted in between, as in (8):
(8) a. ungesibsumnes ‘quarrelsomeness’ b. Prefixed base < Inflection < Prefixation + Suffix: unālȳfednes ‘licentiousness’ c. Prefixed base < Sufixation < Inflection + Suffix: un∂rowendlicnes ‘impassibility’
In example (8), we find identical processes being separated by a different derivational item, in such a way that a derivational process occurs before and after another derivational process identifiable in the same lexeme. Even more, (8a) presents subsequent affixation comprising prefixation + suffixation + prefixation + suffixation, with both intermediate processes feeding each other successively. In (8b) two
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 127–146 ISSN 0210-6124 The Morphological Structure of Old English Complex Nouns 137 prefixations occur before and after inflection, with suffixation occurring finally. In (8c) it is suffixation that occurs before and after inflection. The evidence against lexical integrity, as reflected by these examples, is compelling. Further instances of reversible feeding processes arise when compounding plays a role in lexical creation. Structures such as Prefix + Compound Base (suffixed adjunct + underived base) and Compound base (basic adjunct + prefixed base) + Suffix confirm that no relative ordering of processes can be claimed for this stage of the language. In the former case suffixation is prior to compounding, and compounding occurs before prefixation, while in the latter prefixation is found at the beginning of the derivation, entering a process of compounding with the resulting predicate being finally suffixed. While I agree with Martín Arista (2008) on the lack of lexical integrity of Old English derivation, I part company with this author regarding the maximum degree of complexity displayed by Old English complex words, at least of the lexical category noun. Martín Arista (2008) puts forward a morphological template with two structural positions to the left (prefield) and another two to the right (postfield) of the morphological head. This template is offered in figure 1:
[PREFIELD 2][PREFIELD 1]BASE[POSTFIELD 1][POSTFIELD 2] Figure 1. Old English morphological template (from Martín Arista 2008)
Whereas this proposal does not take into account zero-derivation or separate affixation from inflection in the rightmost position, I have opted for a maximum degree of complexity that consists of six positions, although I must admit that these structures are to be seen as exceptional rather than as the product of a generalised rule of word- formation (at least as far as to the category noun is concerned). A second point of divergence with the template given in figure 1 lies in the ordering of the constituents; I agree with Martín Arista (2008) in that the highest level of complexity without zero- derivation is four. On the other hand, the analysis I have carried out shows that the maximum number of elements attached to a base is two to the right and another two to the left. A structure as Suffixed base < Suffixation + Suffix, of which I have been able to identify a few instances, is a three-level structure which requires three postfield positions, as is the case with the examples in (9):
(9) ealdordōmlicnes ‘authority, control’ [[[[ealdor]N[dōm]Af1]N[lic]Af2]ADJ[nes]AF3]N wuldorfæstlicnes ‘glory’ [[[[wuldor]N[fæst]Af1]Adj[lic]Af2]Adv[nes]Af3]N
But for these exceptional instances, the template in figure 1 is valid for the vast majority of Old English complex nouns.
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 127–146 ISSN 0210-6124 138 Roberto Torre Alonso
4. Conclusions
The study of the structure of complex nouns reported in the previous sections yields the following results. In the first place, this study has demonstrated the recursive character of complex nouns, which favour complex morphological structures that result from the successive application of different rules of word-formation. Overall, 119 different morphological structures have been identified on the grounds of the degree of complexity and the processes exhibited by complex nouns. Secondly, a study based on the identification of the bases of complex nouns, considering the pre-final and final derivations only, underlines the inadequacy of any statement of lexical integrity in Old English, if this term is understood as relative ordering of the morphological processes of inflection and derivation. And thirdly, some differences have arisen regarding the complexity levels that each process admits. Up to three complexity levels, all the derivational processes analysed in this work (prefixation, suffixation, compounding, zero-derivation and inflection) may be final in the structure. Beyond this point, prefixation, suffixation and compounding only may turn up as final. Whereas prefixation, suffixation and compounding appear as final in four-level structures, suffixation only is final to five-level structures and compounding stands out as the final process in the only six-level structure identified in this research. Leaving aside five and six-level structures, which must be regarded as exceptional, the differences do not lie in the morphological structure of the formation, but in the number of structures of a given level to which each process can put an end. Thus, compounding is, in three- and four-level structures (by far the most frequent structures), the most frequent terminal process, followed by suffixation, and prefixation. Considering the final process, it is compounding that offers the greatest variation as regards the number of structures it puts an end to, which cannot be isolated from the fact that compounds constitute more than half of the corpus of analysis and that they are the result of the combination of two analysable constituents.
Works Cited Aronoff, Mark 1976: Word Formation in Generative Grammar. Cambridge: MIT P. Bosworth, Joseph, and Thomas Northcote Toller 1973 (1898): An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford UP. Caballero González, Laura, Elisa González Torres, Ana Ibáñez Moreno and Javier Martín Arista 2004-2005: ‘Predicados verbales primitivos y derivados en inglés antiguo. Implicaciones para la elaboración de una base de datos léxica’. Revista Española de Lingüística Aplicada 17-18: 35-49. Clark Hall, John Richard 1996 (1896): A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary. Toronto: U of Toronto P. González Torres, Elisa 2009: Affixal Nouns in Old English: Morphological Description, Multiple Bases and Recursivity. Unpublished Ph.D. thesis. University of La Rioja, Spain. ––––– 2010: ‘The Inflection-Derivation Continuum and the Old English Suffixes -a, -e, -o, -u’. Atlantis 32.1: 103-22. Kastovsky, Dieter 1968: Old English Deverbal Substantives Derived by means of a Zero Morpheme. Unpublished Ph.D. thesis. Eberhard-Karls-Universität, Tübingen. ––––– 2006: ‘Typological Changes in Derivational Morphology’. Ans van Kemenade and Bettelou Los, eds. The Handbook of the History of English. Oxford: Blackwell. 151-77.
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 127–146 ISSN 0210-6124 The Morphological Structure of Old English Complex Nouns 139
Mairal Usón, Ricardo and Francisco Cortés Rodríguez 2000-2001: ‘Semantic Packaging and Syntactic Projections in Word Formation Processes: the Case of Agent Nominalizations’. Revista Española de Lingüística Aplicada 14: 271-94. Martín Arista, Javier 2008: ‘Unification and Separation in a Functional Theory of Morphology’. Robert Van Valin, ed. Investigations of the Syntax-Semantics-Pragmatics Interface. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 119-45. ––––– 2009: ‘A Typology of Morphological Constructions’. Cristopher Butler and Javier Martín Arista, eds. Deconstructing Constructions. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 85-115. ––––– 2010a: ‘Building a Lexical Database of Old English: Issues and Landmarks’. John Considine, ed. Current projects in historical lexicography. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars. 1-39. ––––– 2010b: ‘Lexical negation in Old English’. NOWELE-North-Western European Language Evolution: 89-108. ––––– forthcoming a: ‘Morphological Relatedness and Zero Alternation in Old English’. Christopher Butler and Pilar Guerrero, eds. Morphosyntactic Alternations in English. London: Equinox. ––––– forthcoming b: ‘Parasynthesis in Old English Word-Formation’. ––––– forthcoming c: ‘Adjective Formation and Lexical Layers in Old English’. English Studies. ––––– forthcoming d: ‘Projections and Constructions in Functional Morphology: the Case of HREOW’. Language and Linguistics 12.2. ––––– forthcoming e: ‘Old English Lexical Primes: Corpus Analysis and Database Compilation’. Nila Vázquez, ed. Creation and Use of Historical Linguistic Corpora in Spain. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars. Martín Arista, Javier, Laura Caballero González, Elisa González Torres, Ana Ibáñez Moreno and Roberto Torre Alonso 2009: Nerthus: An Online Lexical Database of Old English. http://www.nerthusproject.com Pesquera Fernández, Laura 2009: Transparent and Opaque Word-formation in the Derivational Paradigms of Old English Strong Verbs. Unpublished Ph.D. thesis. University of La Rioja, Spain. Siegel, Dorothy 1979: Topics in English Morphology. New York: Garland. Spencer. Andrew 1991: Morphological Theory. Oxford: Blackwell. Stark, Detlef 1982: The Old English Weak Verbs. A Diachronic and Synchronic Analysis. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Sweet, Henry 1976 (1896). The Student’s Dictionary of Anglo-Saxon. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Torre Alonso, Roberto, Javier Martín Arista, Ana Ibañez Moreno, Elisa González Torres and Laura Caballero González 2008: ‘Fundamentos empíricos y metodológicos de una base de datos léxica de la morfología derivativa del inglés antiguo’. Revista de lingüística y lenguas aplicadas 3: 129-44. Williams, Edwin 1981: ‘On the Notions “Lexically Related” and “Head of a Word”’. Linguistic Inquiry 12: 51-97.
Appendix 1 LEVEL OF COMPLEXITY a) prefix + Underived predicate (217) oferbrāw ‘eye-brow’ [[ofer][brāw]N]N b) Underived predicate + Suffix (1,010) ∂ēofung ‘thieving’ [[∂ēof]N[ing]]N c) Underived adjunct+ Underived base (2,503) stāntorr ‘stone tower; crag, rock’ [[stān]N[torr]N]N
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 127–146 ISSN 0210-6124 140 Roberto Torre Alonso
d) Zero-derived nouns from Underived bases(357) ece ‘ache, pain’ [(acan)Vb(ece)N]N e) Nouns from inflection of underived predicates (19) bidden ‘petitioner’ [{biddan}Vb{biddend}Vb]N
2 LEVELS OF COMPLEXITY I) Prefixation a) Prefix + Prefixed base (31) undertōdal ‘secondary division’ [[under]A2[[tō]A1[dāl]N]N]N b) Prefix + Suffixed base (167) midfæsten ‘mid-Lent’ [[mid]A2[[fæst]Adj[en]A1]N]N c) Prefix + Compound base (underived + underived) (17) forelāttēow ‘leader’ [[fore]A1[[lād]N[∂ēow]N]N]N d) Prefix + Zero-derived base (275) ymbcyme ‘assembly, convention’ [[ymb]A1[(cuman)Vb(cyme)N]N]N e) Prefix + Inflected base (21) foretē∂ ‘front teeth’ [[fore]Af1[{tō∂}N{tē∂}N]N II) Suffixation a) Prefixed base + Suffix (1,152) ontimbernes ‘material; teaching’ [[[on]A1[timber]N]N[ness]A2]N b) Suffixed base + Suffix (368) hāligdōm ‘holiness’ [[[hāl]N[ig]A1]Adj[dōm]A2]N c) Compound base + Suffix (143) nīed∂earfnes ‘need, necessity’ [[[nīed]N[∂earf]N]N[ness]A1]N d) Zero-derived base + Suffix (386) ǣtere ‘eater, glutton’ [[(etan)Vb(ǣt)N]N[ere]A1]N e) Inflected base + Suffix (187) strecednes ‘bed, couch’ [[{strecan}Vb{streced}Vb]N[ness]A1]N III) Compounding a) Prefixed adjunct + underived base (46) gedālland ‘land under joint ownership’ [[[ge]A1[dāl]N]N[land]N]N b) Suffixed adjunct + underived base (290) blētsingsealm ‘the Benedicite’ [[[blēts]Vb[ing]A1]N[sealm]N]N c) Compound adjunct + underived base (64) hlāford∂rimm ‘dominion, power’ [[[hlāf]N[weard]N]N[∂rymm]N]N d) Zero-derived adjunct + underived base (821) flotscip ‘ship, bark’ [[(flēotan)Vb(flot)N]N[scip]N]N e) Inflected adjunct + underived base (35) Crīstesmæsse ‘Christmas’ [[{Crīst}N{Crīstes}N]N[mæsse]N]N f) Underived adjunct + prefixed base (279) ∂ēodgestrēon ‘people’s treasure’ [[∂ēod]N[[ge]A1[strēon]N]N]N g) Underived adjunct + suffixed base (417) ∂orn∂ȳfel ‘thorn bush’ [[∂orn]N[[∂ūf]N[el]A1]N]N h) Underived adjunct + compound base (75) ǣlārēow ‘teacher of the law’ [[ǣ]N[[lār]N[∂ēaw]N]N]N
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 127–146 ISSN 0210-6124 The Morphological Structure of Old English Complex Nouns 141
i) Underived adjunct + zero-derived base(1,982) ǣlif ‘eternal life’ [[ǣ]Af1[(līfan)Vb(līf)N]N]N j) Underived adjunct + inflected base (4) bencsittend ‘one who sits on a bench’ [[benc]N[{sittan}Vb{sittend}Vb]Vb]N IV) Zero-derivation a) Zero-derivation from prefixed bases (368) ymbsprǣc ‘conversation’ [([[ymb]Af1[sprecan]Vb]Vb)Vb(ymbsprǣc)N]N b) Zero-derivation from compound bases (7) ā∂swara ‘oath-swearing, oath’ [([[ā∂]N[swerian]Vb]Vb)Vb(ā∂swara)N]N V) Inflection a) Predicates resulting from the inflection of prefixed bases (143) ondǣlend ‘one who imparts, infuser’ [{[on]Af1[dǣlan]Vb}Vb{ondǣlend}Vb]N b) Predicates resulting from the inflectioGn of compound bases (5) hearmcwe∂end ‘slanderer’ [{[hearm]N[cwe∂an]Vb}Vb{hearmcwe∂end}Vb]N
3 LEVELS OF COMPLEXITY I) Prefixation a) Prefix + Suffixed base < Prefixation (15) onbescēawung ‘inspection, examination’ [[on]Af3[[[be]Af1[sceaw]Vb]Vb[ung]Af2]N]N b) Prefix + Suffixed base < Suffixation (5) mishealdsumnes ‘carelessness’ [[mis]Af3[[[heald]N[sum]Af1]Adj[ness]Af2]N]N c) Prefix + Suffixed base < Compounding (2) tōendebyrdnes ‘order, series’ [[tō]Af2[[[ende]N[byrd]N]N[ness]Af1]N]N d) Prefix + Suffixed base < Inflection (5) tōgecorennes ‘adoption’ [[tō]Af2[[{cēosan}Vb{gecoren}Vb][ness]Af1]N]N e) Prefix + Compound Base < suffixed adjunct (3) ūtwǣpnedmann ‘stranger’ [[ūt]Af2[[[wǣpn]N[ed]Af1]Adj[mann]N]N]N f) Prefix + Compound Base < Inflected base (1) unlandāgend ‘not owning land’ [[un]Af1[[land]N[{āgan}Vb{agend}Vb]Vb]N]N g) Prefix + Zero-derived base < prefixed verb (33) unbelimp ‘mishap, misfortune’ [[un]Af2[([be]Af1[limpan]Vb)Vb(belimp)N]N]N h) Prefix + Inflected base < Prefixed predicate underandfōnd ‘receiver (Sweet)’ [[under]Af2[{[on]Af1[fōn]Vb}Vb{andfōnd}Vb]N]N II) Suffixation a) Prefixed base < Prefixation + Suffix (18) ūpārisnes ‘resurrection’ [[[un]Af2[[ā]Af1[ris]Vb]Vb]vb[nes]Af3]N b) Prefixed base < Suffixation + Suffix (26) unwæstmfæstnes ‘barrenness’ [[[un]Af2[[wæstm]N[fæst]Af1]Adj]Adj[nes]Af3]N c) Prefixed base < Compounding + Suffix (1) unleo∂uwācnes ‘inflexibility’ [[[un]Af1[[leo∂u]N[wāc]N]N]N[ness]Af2]N d) Prefixed base < Zero-derivation + Suffix (3) onbringelle ‘instigation’ [[[on]Af1[(bringan)Vb(bring)N]N]N[el]Af2]N e) Prefixed base < Inflection + Suffix (3) forewritennes ‘proscription, exile’ [[[fore]Af1[{wrītan}Vb{written}Vb]Vb]Vb[ness]Af2]N
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 127–146 ISSN 0210-6124 142 Roberto Torre Alonso
f) Suffixed base < Prefixation + Suffix (60) andgietlēast ‘want of understanding’ [[[[and]Af1[giet]Vb]Vb[lēas]Af2]Adj[t]Af3]N g) Suffixed base < Suffixation + Suffix (5) wuldorfæstlicnes ‘glory’ [[[[wuldor]N[fæst]Af1]Adj[lic]Af2]Adv[nes]Af3]N i) Suffixed base < Compounding + Suffix (5) hearmcwidolnes ‘slander’ [[[[hearm]N[cwid]Vb]Vb[ol]Af1]Adj[nes]Af2]N j) Compound base (prefixed adjunct + underived base) + Suffix (3) ge∂yldmōdnes ‘patience’ [[[[ge]Af1[∂yld]N][mōd]N]N[ness]Af2]N k) Compound base (suffixed adjunct + underived base) + Suffix (3) mægen∂rymnes ‘great glory, majesty’ [[[[mag]Vb[en]Af1]N[∂rym]N][ness]Af2]N l) Compound base (compound adjunct + underived base) + Suffix (2) fyrwitgeornes ‘curiosity’ [[[[fyr]N[wit]N]N[georn]N]N[ness]Af1]N m) Compound base (underived adjunct + prefixed base) + Suffix (7) lēasōlecung ‘empty flattery’ [[[lēas]Adj[[ō]Af1[lecc]Vb]Vb]Vb[ung]Af2]N n) Compound base (underived adjunct + suffixed base) + Suffix (6) ælmihtignes ‘omnipotence’ [[[eal]Adj[[miht]N[ig]Af1]Adj]Adj[ness]Af2]N o) Compound base (underived adjunct + zero-derived base) + Suffix (3) mancwealmnes ‘manslaughter’ [[[man]N[(cwelan)Vb(cwealm)N]N]N[nes]Af1]N p) Compound base < underived adjunct + inflected base) + Suffix (3) æ∂elborennes ‘nobility of birth or nature’ [[[æ∂el]Adj[{beran}Vb{boren}Vb]Vb]Adj[ness]Af1]N q) Zero-derived base < Prefixation + Suffix (94) ofercymend ‘assailant’ [[([ofer]Af1[cuman]Vb)Vb(ofercyme)N]N[end]Af2]N r) Inflected base < Prefixation + Suffix (176) ymbsetennes ‘siege’ [[{[ymb]Af1[sittan]Vb}Vb{ymbseten}Vb]Vb[nes]Af2]N III) Compounding a) Underived adjunct + Prefixed base < suffixation (2) bōcgesamnung ‘library’ [[bōc]N[[ge]Af2[[samn]Vb[ung]Af1]N]N]N b) Underived adjunct + Suffixed base < Prefixation (5) eftforgifnes ‘remission, reconciliation’ [[eft]Adv[[[for]Af1[gief]Vb]Vb[nes]Af2]N]N c) Underived adjunct+ Suffixed base < Inflection (1) hrægelgefrætwodnes ‘fine clothing’ [[hrægel]N[[{frætwan}Vb{gefrætwod}Vb]Vb[ness]Af1]N]N d) Underived adjunct + Compound base (Suffixed adjunct + underived base) (2) sumorrǣdingbōc ‘summer lectionary’ [[sumor]N[[[ræd]Vb[ing]Af1]N[bōc]N]N]N e) Underived adjunct + Compound base (prefixed adjunct + underived base) (1) sundorgerēfland ‘land reserved to the jurisdiction of a gerēfa’ [[sundor]Adv[[[ge]Af1[rēf]N]N[land]N]N]N f) Underived adjunct + Compound base (underived adjunct + prefixed base) (1) rihtlandgemǣre ‘lawful boundary (of land)’ [[riht]Adj[[land]N[[ge]Af1[mǣre]N]N]N]N g) Underived adjunct + Compound base (zero-derived adjunct + underived base) (5) eoforhēafodsegn ‘banner with a boar’s head design?’ [[eofor]N[[(hebban)Vb(hēafod)N]N[segn]N]N]N h) Prefixed adjunct + Prefixed base (2) unrihtgestrēon ‘unrighteous gain’ [[[un]Af2[riht]Adj]Adj[[ge]Af1[strēon]N]N]N i) Prefixed adjunct + Suffixed base (17) fulwiht∂ēnung ‘baptismal service’ [[[ful]Af2[wiht]N]N[[∂egn]N[ung]Af1]N]N j) Prefixed adjunct + Zero-derived base (57) arcebiscoprīce ‘archbishopric, post of archbishop’ [[[arce]Af1[bisceop]N]N[(rēcan)Vb(rice)N]N]N
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 127–146 ISSN 0210-6124 The Morphological Structure of Old English Complex Nouns 143
k) Prefixed adjunct + Inflected base (2). Two cases lose ge- in the adjunct. unrihtdōnd ‘evildoer’ [[[un]Af1[riht]N][{dōn}Vb{dōnd}Vb]N]N l) Suffixed adjunct < Prefixation + underived base (2) forligerbed ‘bed of fornication’ [[[[for]Af1[lig]Vb]Vb[ere]Af2]N[bed]N]N m) Suffixed adjunct < Suffixation + Underived base (1) hāligdōmhūs ‘a place where holy things are kept, a sacrarium’ [[[[hāl]N[ig]Af1]Adj[dōm]Af2]N[hūs]N]N n) Suffixed adjunct + Prefixed base (8). mægenfultum ‘mighty help’ [[[mæg]Vb[en]af2]N[[ful]af1[tum]N]N]N o) Suffixed adjunct + Suffixed base (17) bisceophād∂ēnung ‘episcopal service’ [[[bisceop]N[hād]Af2]N[[∂egn]N[ung]Af1]N]N p) Suffixed adjunct + Compound base (5) ∂ēnungwerod ‘body of serving-men’ [[[∂egn]N[ung]Af1]N[[wer]N[rād]N]N]N q) Suffixed adjunct + zero-derived base (123) rǣplingweard ‘warder’ [[rǣp]Vb[ling]Af1]N[(weor∂an)Vb(weard)N]N]N r) Suffixed adjunct + Inflected base (1) ūtancumen ‘stranger, foreigner’ [[[ūt]Adj[an]Af1]Adv[{cuman}Vb{cumen}Vb]Vb]N s) Compound adjunct (inflected adjunct + underived base) + underived base crīstelmælbēam ‘tree surmounted by a cross?’ [[[{crīst}N{crīstes}N]N[mæl]N]N[bēam]N]N t) Compound adjunct + Prefixed base (2) marmstāngedelf ‘quarrying of marble’ [[[marm]N[stān]N][[ge]Af1[delf]N]N]N u) Compound adjunct + Suffixed base (12) dægrēdoffrung ‘morning sacrifice’ [[[dæg]N[rēd]Adj]N[[offr]Vb[ung]Af1]N]N v) Compound adjunct + Compound base (1) ēoredweorod ‘band, company’ [[[eoh]N[rād]N][[wer]N[rād]N]N]N w) Compound adjunct + Zero-derived base (39) mæsseprēostscīr ‘district for which a mass-priest officiated’ [[[mæsse]N[prēost]N]N[(scieran)Vb(scīr)N]N]N x) Zero < Prefixation + Underived base (134) andfengstōw ‘receptacle’ [[([on]Af1[fōn]Vb)Vb(andfeng)N]N[stōw]N]N y) Zero-derived adjunct + Prefixed base (49). bealuinwit ‘deceit, treachery’ [[(belgan)Vb(bealu)N]N[[in]Af1[wit]N]N]N z) Zero-derived adjunct + Suffixed base (132). wordpredicung ‘preaching’ [[(weor∂an)Vb(word)N]N[[predic]Vb[ung]AF1]N]N aa) Zero-derived adjunct + Compound base (Underived adjunct + Underived adjunct) (14) sealtherpa∂ ‘road to salt-works’ [[(sealtan)Vb(sealt)N]N[[here]N[pa∂]N]N]N ab) Zero-derived adjunct + Zero-derived adjunct (653) brynegield ‘burnt-offering’ [[(biernan)Vb(bryne)N][(gieldan)Vb(gield)N]N]N ac) Zero-derived adjunct + Inflected base (8) burgsittende ‘city-dwellers’ [[(beorgan)Vb(burg)N]N[{sittan}Vb{sittende}Vb]N]N ad) Inflected adjunct < Zero-derivation + Underived base (39) hildestrengo ‘vigour for battle’ [[{(healdan)Vb(hild)N}N{hilde}N]N[strengu]N]N ae) Inflected adjunct < Prefixation + Underived base (1) infangene∂ēof ‘right of judging thieves caught within the limits of one’s jurisdiction, and of taking the fines for the crime’ [[([on]Af1[fōn]Vb)Vb(infangen)Vb]Adj[∂ēof]N]N af) Inflected adjunct + Suffixed base (1) haransprecel ‘viper’s bugloss’ [[{hara}N{haran}N]N[[sprec]N[el]Af1]N]N ag) Inflected adjunct + Compound base (1) langafrīgedæg ‘Good Friday’ [[{lang}Adj{langa}Adj]Adj[[frīge]N[dæg]N]N]N
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 127–146 ISSN 0210-6124 144 Roberto Torre Alonso
ah) Inflected adjunct + Zero-derived base (27) oxanslyppe ‘oxanlip’ [[{ox}N{oxan}N]N[(slūpan)Vb(slyppe)N]N]N IV) Zero-derivation a) Zero-derived < Compounding (underived adjunct + prefixed base) (2) eftǣrist ‘resurrection’ [([eft]Adv[[ā]Af1[rīsan]Vb]Vb)Vb(eftǣrist)N]N V) Inflection a) Predicates resulting from the inflection of compound nouns with prefixed adjuncts (1) unrihthǣmend ‘adulterer’ [{[[un]Af1[riht]Adj][hǣman]Vb}Vb{unrihthǣmend}Vb]N
4 LEVELS OF COMPLEXITY I) Prefixation a) Prefix + Suffixed base < Prefixation < Suffixation (1) ungemōdignes ‘contentiousness’ [[un]Af4[[[ge]Af2[[mōd]N[ig]Af1]Adj]Adj[ness]Af3]N]N b) Prefix + Suffixed base < Suffixation < Prefixation (4) ungehīrsumnes ‘disobedience’ [[un]Af4[[[[ge]Af1[hīr]Vb][sum]Af2]Adj[ness]Af3]N]N c) Prefix + Suffixed base < Suffixation < Compounding (1) ungearuwitolnes ‘dulness of mind’ [[un]Af3[[[[gearo]Adj[wit]Vb][ol]Af1]Adj[ness]Af2]N]N d) Prefix + Suffixed base < Inflection < prefixation (3) unforhæfednes ‘incontinence’ [[un]Af3[[{[for]Af1[hebban]Vb}Vb{forhæfed}Vb]Vb[ness]Af2]N]N II) Suffixation a) Prefixed base < Suffixation < Prefixation + Suffix (13) ungesibsumnes ‘quarrelsomeness’ [[[un]Af3[[[ge]Af1[sib]N][sum]Af2]Adj][ness]Af4]N b) Prefixed base < Sufixation < Inflection + Suffix (1) un∂rowendlicnes ‘impassibility’ [[[un]Af2[[{∂rōwian}Vb{∂rōwiend}Vb]Vb[lic]Af1]Adv]Adv[ness]Af3]N c) Prefixed base < Inflection < Prefixation + Suffix (2) unālȳfednes ‘licentiousness’ [[[un]Af2[{ [ā]Af1[līefan]Vb}{ālȳfed}Vb]Vb]Vb[ness]N]N d) Suffixed base < Prefixation < Suffixation + Suffix (1) unmihtiglicnes ‘inability’ [[[[un]Af2[[miht]N[ig]Af1]Adj]Adj[lic]Af3]Adv[ness]Af4]N e) Suffixed base < Inflection < Prefixation + Suffix (2) oferflōwedlīcnes ‘excess, superfluity’ [[[{[ofer]Af1[flōwan]Vb}{oferflōwed}Vb]Vb[lic]Af2]Adv[ness]Af3]N f) Compound base (underived adjunct + Inflected base < Prefixation) +Suffix (1) eftācennednes ‘regeneration’ [[[eft]Adv[{[ā]Af1[cennan]Vb}{ācenned}Vb]Vb]Vb[ness]Af2]N g) Compound base (underived adjunct + suffixed base < prefixation) + Suffix (1) rihtgelēaffulnes ‘right belief’ [[riht]Adj[[[ge]Af1[lēaf]N]N[ful]Af2]Adj]Adj[ness]Af3]N h) Compound base (Compound adjunct (Underived adjunct + Prefixed base) + Underived base) + Suffix welgelīcwir∂nes ‘good pleasure’ [[[[wel]Adv[[ge]Af1[līc]N]N]N[wir∂]Adj]Adj[ness]Af2]N i) Inflected base < Prefixation < Prefixation + Suffix (2) onweggewitennes ‘departure’ [[{[onweg]Af2[[ge]Af1[wītan]Vb]Vb}Vb{onwegewiten}Vb]Vb[ness]N]N
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 127–146 ISSN 0210-6124 The Morphological Structure of Old English Complex Nouns 145
III) Compounding a) Underived adjunct + Suffixed base < Inflection < Prefixation (7) flǣscbesmitennes ‘defilement of the flesh’ [[flæsc]N[[{[be]Af1[smītan]Vb}Vb{besmiten}Vb]Vb[ness]Af2]N]N b) Underived adjunct + Suffixed base < Suffixation < Prefixation (1) dyrneforlegernes ‘fornication’ [[dyrne]N[[[[for]Af1[leg]Vb]Vb[ere]Af2]N[nes]Af3]N]N c) Underived adjunct + Suffixed base < Suffixation < Suffixation (1) mōdsta∂olfæstnes ‘firmness of mind’ [[mōd]N[[[[sta∂]Vb[el]Af1]N[fæst]Af2]Adj[ness]Af3]N]N d) Underived adjuct + Suffixed base < Zero-derivation < Prefixation (1) eardbegengnes ‘habitation’ [[eard]N[[([be]Af1[gangan]Vb)Vb(begeng)N][nes]Af2]N]N e) Suffixed adjunct + Suffixed base < Prefixation (1) ūtanymbstandnes ‘surrounding’ [[[ūt]Adj[an]Af3]Adv[[[ymb]Af1[stand]Vb]Vb[nes]Af2]N]N f) Suffixed adjunct < Prefixation + Zero-derived base (2) behrēowsungtīd ‘time of repentance’ [[[[be]Af1[hrēows]Vb]Vb[ung]Af2]N[(tēon)Vb(tīd)N]N]N g) Suffixed adjunct + Zero-derived base < Prefixation (5) hālsunggebed ‘prayer in a church service’ [[[hāls]Vb[ung]Af2]N[([ge]Af1[biddan]Vb)Vb(gebed)N]N]N h) Suffixed adjunct + Compound base (underived adjunct + Zero-derived base) (1) dryhtealdorman ‘paranymphus’ [[[dryh]N[t]Af1]N[[ealdor]N[(munan)Vb(mann)N]N]N]N i) Compound adjunct + Inflected base < prefixation (1) middangeardtōdǣlend ‘cosmographer’ [[middan]adj[geard]N]N[{[tō]Af1[dǣlan]Vb}Vb{tōdǣlend}Vb]Vb]N j) Compound adjunct (Suffixed adjunct + Suffixed base) + Underived base (7) sū∂anwestanwind ‘a south-west wind’ [[[[sū∂]Adj[an]Af1]Adv[[west]Adj[an]Af2]Adv]Adv[wind]N]N k) Zero-derived adjunct + Zero-derived base < Prefixation (36) feohbehāt ‘promise of money’ [[(fēon)Vb(feoh)N]N[([be]Af1[hātan]Vb)Vb(behāt)N]N]N l) Zero-derived adjunct < Prefixation + Suffixed base (9) forweardmercung ‘heading’ [[([for]Af2[weor∂an]Vb)Vb(forweard)N]N[[mærc]Vb[ung]Af1]N]N m) Zero-derived adjunct + Suffixed base < Prefixation (2) wilgedryht ‘willing band’ [[(willan)Vb(will)N]N[[[ge]Af1[dryh]N]N[t]Af2]N]N n) Zero-derived adjunct < Prefixation + Zero-derived base (12) forfangfeoh ‘reward for rescuing cattle or other property’ [[([for]Af1[fōn]Vb)(forfang)N]N[(fēon)Vb(feoh)N]N]N
5 LEVELS OF COMPLEXITY I) Suffixation a) Prefixed base < Suffixation < Inflection < Prefixation + Suffix (1) unācumenlicnes ‘unbearableness’ [[[un]Af3[[{[ā]Af1[cuman]Vb}Vb{ācumen}Vb][lic]Af2]Adv]Adv[ness]Af4]N b) Suffixed base < Suffixation < Zero-derivation < Prefixation + Suffix (1) gemyndiglicnes ‘remembrance’ [[[[([ge]Af1[munan]Vb)Vb(gemynd)N][ig]Af2]Adj[lic]Af3]Adv[ness]Af4]N
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 127–146 ISSN 0210-6124 146 Roberto Torre Alonso
6 LEVELS OF COMPLEXITY I) Compounding a) Suffixed adjunct < Inflection < Prefixation < Prefixation + Zero-derived base (1) ūpāstīgnestīd ‘Ascension-tide’ [[[{[ūp]Af2[[ā]Af1[stīgan]Vb]Vb}Vb{ūpāstigen}Vb][ness]Af3]N[(tēon)Vb(tīd)N]N]N
Received 5 July 2010 Revised version accepted 9 November 2010
Roberto Torres Alonso (PhD U. de La Rioja) is a member of the Functional Grammars Research Group responsible for the development of the lexical database Nerthus (www.nerthusproject.com) which includes formal, morphological and semantic information of over 30,000 Old English predicates.
Address: Departamento de Filologías Modernas. Universidad de La Rioja. C/ San José de Calasanz s/n, 26006 Logroño, La Rioja, Spain. Tel.:+34 941299547. Fax: +34941299419.
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 127–146 ISSN 0210-6124
REVIEWS
RESEÑAS
Gómez Reus, Teresa and Aránzazu Usandizaga, eds. 2008: Inside Out: Women Negotiating, Subverting, Appropriating Public and Private Space. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi. 364 pp. ISBN 978-90-420-2441-0
Rosario Arias Universidad de Málaga [email protected]
There is no doubt that spatial criticism has recently become one of the most productive fields in contemporary theory. The topographical turn from the 1970s onwards, inspired by the work of Henri Lefebvre, among others, prompted the publication of several studies on spaces and places. The ‘New Geographers’ radically challenged former versions of space, and “stress[ed] interaction and exchange, thus exposing space as a site of complex social, historical, and economic struggles” (Mergenthal 2002: 131). In the light of this, gender studies made a foray into the gender-specific separation-of-spheres discourse to argue that it was possible to see beyond the limitations of this traditional dichotomy, according to which women were invisible in the public area. Inside Out: Women Negotiating, Subverting, Appropriating Public and Private Space comprises the outcome of the seminar Teresa Gómez Reus co-organised with Deborah Parsons, ‘Women and Public Space: Practice and Representation’, at the 2004 ESSE Conference held in Zaragoza, plus the roundtable conducted in AEDEAN (Jaén, 2005) and other invited contributions. Clearly enough, the result is an excellent contribution to the field of spatial studies, as well as to that of gender studies. This timely volume interrogates the standard ideology of separate spheres, by means of which public and private spaces are immutable and gender-specific, in multiple ways, preceded by a foreword by Janet Wolff. Her seminal essay on the flâneuse in the 1980s, ‘The Invisible Flâneuse: Women and the Literature of Modernity’, paved the way for the ongoing interest in the female counterpart of the nineteenth-century flâneur. For those who are familiar with Janet Wolff’s work, it is fascinating to re-encounter her vibrant prose in the foreword to this collection twenty years after she published her often-cited essay. She most tellingly points out one of the remarkable achievements of this collection: “[the essays in this book] remove us from what has increasingly seemed to be the cul-de- sac of complaints about women’s absence from (or invisibility in) the public sphere” (15). In fact, in their co-authored introduction, Teresa Gómez Reus and Aránzazu Usandizaga trace the evolution of the relationship between women and the space from the 1980s onwards, and most interestingly, underline the “need to revise the standard ideology of separate spheres” (22). They give full credit to Janet Wolff’s pioneering essay in providing the theoretical backbone of Inside Out, as it seeks to problematise the neat distinction between the public and the private spheres. Bearing in mind the restrictions women have had in the access to the public sphere, the co-editors strive to call attention to the ways in which women writers negotiate the blurred lines between the domestic and the public. The volume is divided into six sections of three chapters each, with the exception of the last two, ‘Transformations in Nature’ and ‘Negotiating the City’, which consist of two
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 149–155 ISSN 0210-6124 150 Rosario Arias chapters each. In addition, the collection finishes with Janet Floyd’s concluding remarks and an index. The sections aim to give order and a chronological (and thematic) sequence to the negotiation of the public and the private in the work of women writers, and as a consequence, their headings point out the link between the chapters of each section. This structure is particularly praiseworthy, as it gives coherence and unity to a multifaceted and complex topic. Moreover, the essays complement one another very well, and when put together, they reveal unexpected aspects of the authors and works under consideration. ‘Early Escapes into Public Spaces’, the first of the six sections, encompasses three essays dealing with incipient attempts at escaping from the suffocating private room into the public realm, thus suggesting the porosity of the boundaries between the two spheres. Lucy Bending undertakes an examination of Harriet Martineau’s fight for her freedom through the re-configuration of the sick-room as a double space: “a physically-realised space with firmly demarcated, yet strangely elastic, walls that both imprison the patient, and yet allow a wider freedom, however mediated, through the windows, pictures …” (42). Efterpi Mitsi, in turn, explores the Turkish bath, the hammam, and considers it a liminal space, as full of potentialities as the modern Parisian arcade. Mitsi equates the figure of the nineteenth-century woman traveller with that of the invisible flâneuse, who “writing [her] impressions of different cultures often strove to attain the aesthetic distance associated with the flâneur” (48). Mitsi’s essay suggests that the hamman represents a (feminised) space of power relations, and most importantly, points out the link between the space itself and the body of ‘the other’. This is a particularly fascinating chapter as it incorporates orientalism in a subject matter usually deprived of references to racial differences. Whereas class issues are often invoked when dealing with the blurring of boundaries between the public and private spheres in the Victorian period, especially in relation to nineteenth-century women strollers as noted by Judith Walkowitz in City of Dreadful Delight (1992) and Lynda Nead in Victorian Babylon (2000), references to ethnicity are lacking in spatial studies on the Victorian age. The last essay in this first section, ‘Ladies on the Tramp: The Philanthropic Flâneuse and Appropriations of Victorian London’s Impoverished Domesticity’, by Cathleen J. Hamann, precisely calls the reader’s attention to class issues as it delves into the philanthropic work carried out by upper- and middle-class women in the poor and working-class homes of Victorian London. Notwithstanding the new social roles available for women in late Victorian England, such as theatre-goer, shopper and friendly visitor, Hamann argues, one should not forget the dangers of women’s mobility in the Victorian street, as Janet Wolff posited in her aforementioned essay. However, Hamann indicates the relevance of the ‘double condition’ of the modern city that “made the private space of the poor a vital element of public discourse” (81). Recent criticism has shown that women philanthropists enjoyed a certain degree of mobility in Victorian England as seen in Dorice Williams Elliott’s The Angel out of the House: Philanthropy and Gender in Nineteenth-Century England (2002). It is possible to argue that philanthropy and gender have found a niche in contemporary historical fiction set in Victorian times, what is now known as neo-Victorian fiction, for example in Sarah Waters’s Affinity (1999), where one of the protagonists is an upper- middle-class woman philanthropist, Margaret Prior.
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 149–155 ISSN 0210-6124 Reviews 151
‘Women on Display’ proves to be one of the most enticing sections of the whole book as its main concern is the question of women on display in the work of well- and lesser- known women writers such as George Eliot or Edith Wharton, on the one hand, and Gertrude Atherton and F. Tennyson Jesse, on the other. Very innovative and suggestive, these three essays tackle the spectacularisation of female characters to varying degrees, in both the domestic and public spheres. Anna Despotopoulou draws on Jürgen Habermas’ analysis of the thin line dividing private and public domains to argue that in Victorian times the private domain came to be governed by the rules of the marketplace. The author of this essay proves how “[c]oncern about the effect of the market is abundant in the Victorian novel” (91). Gwendolen Harleth in George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda (1876) illustrates the ways in which a woman’s domestic position is defined by the market, and how she can possibly challenge received notions of female subjectivity, torn between visibility and invisibility, in a novel concerned with spectacle and performance. In The Wings of the Dove (1902) Henry James adopts theatrical gestures and enactments to highlight the performative nature of human interaction. The private sphere, she argues, gives the false impression of freedom to women when they gain visibility through theatrical exposure. Anne-Marie Evans’s essay on Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth (1905) mobilises theories about the drawing-room as theatrical spectacle to describe the relationship maintained between Lily and Selden. The author compellingly contends that Wharton “utilises the popular contemporary pastime of the tableaux vivant as a metaphor for the urban, sophisticated woman as spectacle” (117). Lastly, Janet Stobbs’ ‘Tracing the Female Triptych of Space: Private, Public, and Power Strongholds in Gertrude Atherton’s Patience Sparhawk and Her Times (1897), and F. Tennyson Jesse’s A Pin to See the Peepshow (1934)’ examines two lesser-known novels from the point of view of the murderess, and the challenges this figure poses to the public and domestic spaces. Both novels feature a courtroom scene in which “the trials that take place in these novels are emblematic of the debate on women’s position in society, mirroring deeply-entrenched fears that women’s independence was conducive to criminal behaviour” (128). Extremely well-researched and documented, this essay shares with the previous ones the relevance of the theatrical metaphor, since the courtroom is regarded as a stage. This would appear to have mileage for future analyses of other narrative texts in which the trial occupies a central position. The third section, entitled ‘Approaching the City’, comprises three chapters which offer valuable insights into women’s intervention into the city. It is true that there are already a number of studies on the literary treatment of the Victorian and/or the modern city in women’s writing such as Deborah Epstain Nord’s Walking the Victorian Streets (1995), Christine Wick Sizemore’s A Female Vision of the City (1989) and Deborah Parsons’s Streetwalking the Metropolis (2000), and the aforementioned Walkowitz’s City of Dreadful Delight and Nead’s Victorian Babylon, alluded to in the editors’ joint introduction. These essays, however, explore uncharted territory as far as women and the city are concerned. For example, Valerie Fehlbaum’s chapter on Eliza Lynn Linton and Ella Hepworth Dixon successfully demonstrates that late-nineteenth-century women writers found the way to challenge sanctioned codes of behaviour in the modern city of London, a few decades before Virginia Woolf wrote Mrs Dalloway (1925) and ‘Street Haunting: A Public Adventure’ (1930). This essay is highly informative and it will prove to
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 149–155 ISSN 0210-6124 152 Rosario Arias be substantial for other critics to deal with late-nineteenth-century female strollers. The second chapter, by Melinda Harvey, discusses Dorothy Richardson’s Pilgrimage (1915- 1967), an often-neglected novel, key to any discussion of women and space. Miriam Henderson, the flâneuse par excellence, breaks down the distinction between public and private, and enjoys a certain freedom in the interstitial in-between spaces where the porosity of public and private is patent – the “live space” (168), a borrowed term from Richard Sennett. Again ethnicity comes to the fore, as happened in the first section, in the author’s analysis of the relation Miriam holds with Mendizabal, the Jewish character Miriam does have an affinity with. Mendizabal is instrumental in introducing Miriam to the continental café, and in incorporating the strangeness of the ‘other’ into the fabric of the city. Mª Lourdes López Ropero’s essay on the London life-writing of Janet Frame and Doris Lessing convincingly compares two writers whose background, education and life apparently have nothing in common. However, the author’s argument reveals unexpected links between these two writers as “white colonial writers pursuing writing careers in the metropolis, and both of them documented their urban experiences in their life-writing” (191). From the standpoint of the colonial observer and flâneuse, Frame and Lessing are able to read the city of London and to turn the public spaces of the metropolis inside out to affirm their presence. On a marginal note, one cannot help but comment on the author’s opinion about The Golden Notebook, “[Lessing’s] longest and most ambitious novel” (192; italics mine): this one is not the longest by far, since The Four-Gated City (1969), a novel which maintains some parallelisms with The Golden Notebook, is acknowledged as the longest of Lessing’s novels. ‘Conquering the Spaces of War’, the fourth section of the volume, is devoted to the exploration of women’s presence in the sphere of war. Teresa Gómez Reus and Peter Lauber’s chapter examines Edith Wharton’s Fighting France (11), her personal account of World War I. Their main aim is to claim the relevance of Edith Wharton’s eyewitness testimony in war literature through a study of the spatial images: “[they] help to convey Wharton’s reverence for French civilization and its resilience in the face of ‘troubled times’” (209). One such image is “the house on fire” (210), which functions as a motif that runs through Wharton’s account, or “houses in ruins” (211), a metaphor of utmost importance to Wharton’s depiction of wartime France. Wharton portrays the houses (and other spaces) as victimised beings, since she took pains not to show the French people as helpless, but according to the authors, Fighting France is simultaneously “a homage to the creative force of human life” (217), clearly shown in her depiction of gardens, hospitals and markets. This fascinating essay underlines key issues in Wharton’s text that have previously received scant attention. Laurel Forster’s essay, entitled ‘Women and War Zones: May Sinclair’s Personal Negotiations with the First World War’, concentrates on May Sinclair’s autobiographical text, A Journal of Impressions in Belgium (1915), a record of her short experience on the Belgian front line. This chapter offers a useful introduction to women’s role in World War I, and then proceeds to the analysis of Sinclair’s personal account of her war experience. Forster makes it clear that Sinclair held an ambiguous, in- between, position in war areas, as both an insider and an outsider, and that this is reflected in her Journal: “Sinclair’s war writings ... start to investigate whether war zones could also be understood and imagined as female spaces” (231). The author of this essay explores the ways in which Sinclair’s highly personal account markedly connects psychical
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 149–155 ISSN 0210-6124 Reviews 153 and physical places to the extent that the internal and the external approaches to war conflate and fuse together. Therefore, “[p]lace becomes a catalyst for stating the truth of her experience” (243), not only in her Journal but also in her war novels, as Forster develops in the final pages of her essay. The last chapter of this section, by Aránzazu Usandizaga, delves into the complexities of Vera Brittain’s Testament of Youth (1933), an autobiographical text that explores war spaces. Brittain’s work is particularly relevant to war literature, the author argues, because it became “very influential in the writing of later autobiographical texts and war texts by women” (252).The personal and the political cannot be divorced, and thus the stress is placed on the blurred lines between the private and the public spheres. Usandizaga explores the autobiographical text’s key issues such as the relevance of “[Brittain’s] literary persona” (255), “her daring invasion of narrative space both physical and metaphorical” (256), and “the gradual destruction of her own pre-war self as well as of that of her lover’s, her brother’s and her friends during the war” (260). Particularly fascinating is the author’s account of Brittain’s intervention into three post-war spaces: the spaces of the past, issues of class (related to her move away from literature), and the discourse of feminism and pacifism (262). In her concluding remarks, Usandizaga underlines the difficulties Brittain encountered to translate her war experiences, and those of her generation. ‘Transformations in Nature’, as the co-editors state in the introduction to the collection, represents an innovative approach to women and nature from the perspective of ecocriticism. The first of these essays, Stephen E. Hunt’s ‘Friends of our Captivity: Nature, Terror and Refugia in Romantic Women’s Literature’, provides an insight into the different ways in which four women writers of the Romantic period – Mary Robinson, Charlotte Smith, Helen Maria Williams and Mary Wollstonecraft – saw their relationship with nature as nurturing and comforting. To varying degrees, these Romantic writers found in the natural landscape solace and a potential source of inspiration and creativity, but their approach to nature was manifestly different from that of the male Romantic poets. For example, in Hunt’s view, Smith and Robinson portray “a relational self in contrast to the individualized unitary self” to be found in Wordsworth’s ‘The Daffodils’ (278). The second chapter, by Lilace Mellin Guignard, focuses on women and wilderness, and the difficulties women face when engaging in outdoor activities, especially in the American wilderness. Her essay offers coping strategies for women to access those restricted spaces, and interestingly, sets out to study a woman’s performative abilities in outdoor activities in texts by Gretchen Legler, written within the tradition of the pastoral essay. Prompted by the analysis of these texts, Guignard poses the following question: “What could women achieve if they had access to the self-knowledge acquired through wandering that is associated with great male thinkers and artists?” (309). She provides answers to this question, and affirms that outdoors a woman achieves freedom and liberation from cultural inhibitions (210). The last section of the volume, ‘Negotiating the City’, consists of two essays, each dealing with the negotiation between public and private. Kirsten Bartholomew Ortega’s ‘Adrienne Rich’s City Poetry: Locating a Flâneuse’ heavily draws on Charles Baudelaire’s nineteenth-century figure of the flâneur to explore the particular perspective conceded by a twentieth-century flâneur in Rich’s work. The influence of the French poet can be perceived in city poets such as Walt Whitman and T.S. Eliot, and Rich bases her urban
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 149–155 ISSN 0210-6124 154 Rosario Arias poetics on their findings: “Rich looks to her poetic forefathers to provide methods for translating the complexities of city life into poetry” (322). It is interesting to note that the recurrence of words like map and atlas in Rich’s work underlines the importance of reading the city for Rich’s poetics, a subject which has been so far neglected, according to Ortega. Some poems like ‘Frame’ (1980) emphasise the emotional response to the act of streetwalking. At times, however, this tendency clashes with her own commitment to reflect race, class, gender and sexuality. The author of this essay concludes that Rich attempts to appropriate and revise the figure of the flâneur, but “the restrictions of the form consistently disappoint the poems’ speakers” (333). The last chapter of the volume, by Sara Sullivan, engages in a comparison between the domestic spaces in Eavan Boland’s poetry and the public sphere of the nation. Boland sees the suburb as an in-between space, “a hybrid zone well-suited to the complexities of her poetry” (338), a positive area that nurtures her creativity as seen in Object Lessons (1995). In dissolving the boundaries of domestic and public spaces, Boland connects the personal and the political, as well as succeeds in circumventing the idealisation and objectification of women, clearly perceived in the Irish lyric mode. In other words, “Boland believes her political and historical engagement with Ireland is absolutely connected to her attempts to create poetry about a suburban woman’s life” (345). This chapter nicely links up with the previous one since Sullivan comments on the influence Adrienne Rich exerted on Boland, and how both share the belief in the transformative power of the written word (349). It is to the editors’ credit that these essays have been placed consecutively in the last section. Inside/Out closes with the Concluding Remarks, by Janet Floyd, who aptly rounds up the subject of space and gender by referring to the highlights of this collection. Floyd poses several questions that, in her view, remain unexplored, proving that the dynamics established between inside and outside should be considered of utmost relevance to spatial and gender studies, and to contemporary criticism as a whole. Floyd sustains the notion that the title provides the reader with the key to understanding the complex ambiguities of the porous area demarcating public and private spheres, using a tactic: “to turn the terms inside and outside ‘inside-out’, thus giving ourselves the opportunity to expose and know thoroughly the invisible workings of both terms” (354). This extremely well-structured and well-written collection is flawless. Perhaps one misses a reference to Marc Augé and the application of his concept of non-place to some chapters i.e. Mitsi’s essay on the Turkish bath or Evans’s chapter on consumerism in Wharton’s The House of Mirth. Augé’s definition of this notion would perfectly fit in the topics developed in those essays: “the word ‘non-place’ designates two complementary but distinct realities: spaces formed in relation to certain ends (transport, transit, commerce, leisure), and the relations that individuals have with these spaces” (Augé 1995: 94). Despite the fact that some chapters’ bibliographies are divided into primary and secondary texts/sources/references (chapters 10, 13), and others are not, the style and format of the collection are impeccable. Inside Out is, undoubtedly, a turning point in contemporary criticism about gender and social space. Useful and amenable, this collection reads as the most thorough examination of women’s writing and the concept of social space, which will be of future reference to anyone interested in gender, space and the (contested) dichotomy of the separate spheres.
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 149–155 ISSN 0210-6124 Reviews 155
Works Cited Augé, Marc 1995: Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity. London and New York: Verso. Elliott, Dorice Williams 2002: The Angel out of the House: Philanthropy and Gender in Nineteenth- Century England. Charlottesville and London: UP of Virginia. Mergenthal, Silvia 2002: ‘“Whose City?”: Contested Spaces and Contesting Spatialities in Contemporary London Fiction’. Susana Onega and John A. Stotesbury, eds. London in Literature: Visionary Mappings of the Metropolis. Heidelberg: Winter: 123-39. Nead, Lynda 2000: Victorian Babylon: People, Streets and Images in Nineteenth-Century London. New Haven and London: Yale UP. Nord, Deborah Epstain 1995: Walking the Victorian Streets: Women, Representation, and the City. Ithaca and London: Cornell UP. Parsons, Deborah L 2000: Streetwalking the Metropolis: Women, the City and Modernity. Oxford: Oxford UP. Sizemore, Christine Wick 1989: A Female Vision of the City: London in the Novels of Five British Women. Knoxville: U of Tennessee P. Walkowitz, Judith 1992: City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London. London: Virago. Waters, Sarah 1999: Affinity. London: Virago. Wolff, Janet 1985: ‘The Invisible Flâneuse: Women and the Literature of Modernity’. Theory, Culture and Society 2.3: 37-46.
Received 26 October 2010 Accepted 22 February 2011
Rosario Arias is Senior Lecturer in English Literature in the Department of English, French and German Philology at the University of Málaga. Her research interests centre on contemporary fiction, gender studies, critical theory, spatial studies and literature.
Address: Departamento de Filología Inglesa, Francesa y Alemana. Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Campus de Teatinos. 29071 Málaga, Spain. Tel.: +34 952131794. Fax +34 952131843.
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 149–155 ISSN 0210-6124
Silvia del Pilar Castro Borrego and María Isabel Romero Ruiz, eds. 2009: Identidad, migración y cuerpo femenino. Oviedo: KRK. 289 pp. ISBN 978-84-8367-213-6
Justine Tally Universidad de La Laguna [email protected]
Identidad, migración y cuerpo femenino is a nicely edited volume of essays, a product of the contributions of a group of international academics who participated in the first international conference on ‘Identity, Migration and the Female Body’, organized by the editors at the University of Malaga in December of 2008. Its English title, however, is perhaps more revealing as to the specific thrust of the essays, Identity, Migration and Women’s Bodies as Sites of Knowledge and Transgression, taken in fact from the full title of the original conference. (In accordance with the use of two official languages at the conference, both English and Spanish contributions are included in the volume.) It is this focus on the intersection of the physical, the psychological and the geographical that distinguishes it from other volumes on ‘Gender Studies’ and is perhaps most eloquently illustrative of the move away from essentialist views in which women, by nature of their gender, are somehow inseparably linked, independently of their specific contexts. These essays demonstrate that the incredible variety of experience in the movement of femaleness across borders more accurately reflects a post-positivist realist approach to gender studies and thereby broadens the scope of our understanding of ‘women’. In the words of Karina Valle Olsen in the last essay in the book, entitled ‘La interseccionalidad a debate desde la teoría crítica feminista’: “… la interseccionalidad habría de producir no solo conocimiento nuevo, sino nuevas formas de pensar sobre ese conocimiento”, helping us to “construir argumentos de equidad”; and providing “una herramienta que ha de usarse en pro de la justicia social” (286). But as Grace Kyungwon Hong has written, while the concept of intersectionality (a term coined and popularized later by Kimberlé Crenshaw) is well-known, “the epistemological implications are too infrequently theorized” (2007: 35). Valle-Olsen not only theorizes but is also quite adept here at relating the theoretical to the practical. As a review of the postulations as well as the critique of ‘intersectionality’ within a methodology of research, this essay might have been productively situated at the beginning rather than the end of the volume (although I do understand that, because Dr. Valle-Olsen is based at the University of Málaga, the editors possibly did not wish to open with the home front). On the other hand, coming at the end of five different sections, this final essay certainly ties together the multiple testimonies to a wide array of experiences that might be usefully incorporated into intersectional research, or which at least should serve as a compass to guide our further study. So much is suggested and discussed that the spectrum of possibilities for further research is daunting, not to mention the challenges for developing a theoretical approach which would meaningfully encompass and yet allow for and respect such variety. Although all participants in the conference were invited to submit their contributions for publication, this quite heterogeneous volume is in fact a selection of
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 157–162 ISSN 0210-6124 158 Justine Tally twenty-nine essays, nine of which, in addition to the Introduction, are written in Spanish, the remaining twenty in English. The grouping of these twenty-nine studies under five seemingly arbitrary headings helps to break up the volume into manageable reading. Some of the subtitles seem so similar that they are distinguishable only after a bit of thought, but all insist on the issues of identity in a complicated world of transition. Not all of the essays are ‘cutting edge’ to a seasoned reader, but perhaps fulfill their mission of introducing the novice in gender studies to the manifold possibilities of the field as well as to historical moments that are too often forgotten (or at least taken for granted) in contemporary discussion. And from those contributions in which the discussion is more informative than analytical, there is much to be learned (or to be reminded of), even by those of us who have been around for a while. It is obviously impossible to enter into a detailed discussion of each of the twenty-nine essays, so I wish here to group certain contributions which engage similar approaches or themes, and to select (obviously according to this reader’s own preferences) certain representative pieces, either because of exceptionally perceptive analysis, clarity of writing, or because the content itself is an innovative addition to the field. Castro and Romero open the discussion in a thoughtful Introduction which explains the raison d’être and the genesis of this volume as an attempt to “… examinar factores determinantes para la construcción de una identidad femenina como sujeto colonial y poscolonial, como son el género, la liminalidad y la frontera, así como las realidades más oscuras de la alienación, la discriminación, el trauma, el desequilibrio mental y espiritual” (15). It is important to note that the position of the physical body is foregrounded in particular in the first section, entitled ‘Body, Identity and Female Sexuality’, in which the essays address not only the abuse of the female body (through rape or appropriation) but also resistance (in film and in performance art, as in Noemí Acedo Alonso’s ‘Las palabras de los cuerpos heridos’), and even health (Romano Maggi examines the benefits of Shiatsu for women specifically). Daniela Corona illustrates the ‘Mediterranean Crossings in the Fiction of Marina Warner’ with a comparison of the Queen of Sheba, Rahab and Leto. Anabella Di Tullio re- examines in an erudite historical review the development of a feminist perspective on the nature of the female body right up to the opening years of the new century, engaging not only Foucault (and his study of the French Hermaphrodite, Herculine Barbin) and Judith Butler but also Laqueur, Diana Maffía and Mauro Cabral. Laëtitia Lefèvre-Thierry’s thoughtful essay on the use of the rape of the black body as strategy for combating racial stereotypes prevalent at the beginning of the twentieth century is a good example of the double-bind of feminist inquiry: is the violent ab/use of the female body (even though it is insinuated and not visually portrayed in the two Oscar Micheaux films discussed) justified as a means to an end? Or does the voyeuristic attraction of such a portrayal trump the politics? The films may be old; the dilemma, unfortunately, continues to be contemporary, a theme picked up by Inmaculada Pineda Hernández in Section IV in her discussion of ‘Women in Hip-Hop Culture’: just how subversive can these performers be if consumer culture demands that they conform to a specific way of behaving/dressing/performing in order to be commercially successful? (Such a dilemma, though not specifically nor theoretically addressed, underlies María Teresa Silva Ross’ look at the attempt to trangress ‘estereotipos de género en la música country norteamericana’, also in section IV). Lastly
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 157–162 ISSN 0210-6124 Reviews 159 in section I, Özlem Türe Abaci looks at ‘Strategies of Subversion and Resistance’, using a literary analysis to show how Grace Nichols works to undermine just such stereotypes in her poetry. The title of Section II, ‘Identity, Migration and Diaspora’, would seemingly shift the focus of the discussion to the challenges of forming an identity when forced migration shatters links to homeland and community; yet the essays herein focus almost exclusively on internal migration or on problems of acculturation in the lives of African Americans, Hispanic Americans and Asian Americans within the U.S., trying to negotiate the cultural values of their original communities with the demands of an omnipresent Anglo influence. María Luz Arroyo Vázquez returns to an analysis of the visual through a look at the artistic representation of black American life, particularly the paintings of Jacob Lawrence. Laura Gillman, drawing on the work of Satya Mohanty in his article ‘The Epistemic Status of Cultural Identity’, argues for the theoretical advantage of using ‘post-positivist realism’ to approach the issues of identity as a source for the generation of knowledge, and focuses on the political and social dimensions of mestiza identity. For post-positivist realists identity is socially constructed because identities refer outwardly to categories and structures of race, class, gender and sexuality in the real world. Identities also have an epistemic content to them because, from their particular location, people create interpretations out of their lived experiences. As Gillman concludes, “by testing out the accuracy of their interpretations against imposed identity schemas, members of marginalized groups are able to negotiate the social world, gaining more reliable theory-mediated knowledge about themselves, and reorganizing their identity in order to make it cohere with their material interest” (94). Gillman then proceeds to apply Amalia Mesa-Bains’ concept of domesticana mestizaje to Ana Castillo’s So Far from God, arguing that the novel is an excellent example of the tension inherent between ‘subjugated identities’ of domestic life and mestiza women’s attempts to reclaim domestic space and to explore the hidden meanings of mestiza identity. Patrycja Kurjatto-Renard is particularly adept at depicting the ways in which Asian American fictional women succumb to or surmount the pressures of adaptation. How much of the past is usable or even desirable for a future in the U.S.? Carolina Soria Somoza looks specifically at the ways in which authors Maxine Hong Kingston and Ha Jin subvert the ‘skin-deep’ characteristics of their women protagonists through ‘Weakening the Strong, Strengthening the Weak’. Turning to black minorities, Silvia Castro discusses the presence of the diasporic past in African American women’s literature, while Bibian Pérez Ruiz relates certain communal functions to Africa, adds the problem of aging and the stereotypes associated with the process, and then introduces us to literary works by women from South Africa, Senegal and Egypt by way of example. Both of these essays provide contextualizing background for Mónica Glonzalez Caldeiro’s discussion of the ‘Intersections of Race and Gender in Zora Neale Hurston’s Color Struck and Wallace Thurman’s The Blacker the Berry’. For the actual shift to transnational movement and the diasporic migration we must turn to Secion III: ‘Identity, Migration, Interculturality and Transnational Feminism’, in which the complex issues of immigration are complicated even more by the stereotyping of the female body. An analysis of Marjane Strapati’s ‘Persépolis’ – both in
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 157–162 ISSN 0210-6124 160 Justine Tally its comic and film versions – is broached by four different yet coordinated researchers (Adela Cortijo, Mireiia Calafell, Meri Torras and Begonya Saez) who, in the words of Sáez, discuss the creativity of this very cutting-edge text as a ‘transit novel’. The protagonist, exiled from her native Iran as a very young teenager, must factor in movement, both physical and cultural, across national boundaries and add the experience of extrañamiento to the difficult process of building an identity as an adolescent who, in essence, belongs nowhere. In an excellent theoretical contribution, Yousef Awad underscores the feminist agenda that underlies Ahdaf Soueif’s The Map of Love and Leila Aboulela’s Minaret, while Antonia Naravvo Tejero uses Edward Said’s concept of Orientalism to critically examine the case of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, concluding that while it may be her objective to denounce and combat the misogynist violence in Iran through her film, texts and interviews, the rhetorical strategies that she employs, in fact, reinforce the orientalist stereotyping of Islam and Muslim people. This type of textual deconstruction also underscores Valentina Castagna’s reading of Michèle Roberts’s The Book of Mrs. Noah as subversive rewriting of patriarchal myth. Castagna draws on classical Greek myth, however; had she looked past the Greeks to their origins in the ancient Egyptian veneration of Isis, she might also have demonstrated more clearly how the patriarchy wrested dominance from the original mother figures and powerful goddesses, turning them into the submissive handmaidens of their powerful brothers/fathers/husbands. In a section dominated by the ‘exotic’ (read ‘unknown’) ‘other’, the inclusion of Antonia Sagredo Santos’ more sociologically-oriented discussion of ‘Irish Women Migration and its Impact in the U.S. Labour Market’ is certainly a change in pace. Nonetheless, there can be no doubt that the massive forced migration (and I mean not ‘physically coerced’ but ‘economically compelled’) of the Irish to the United States certainly determined important segments of its history, the labor movements included. The struggle of these women first for survival and then for dignity is a story of which we need to be reminded. Section IV, ‘Female Identity and Creativity through Music, Drama and Literature’, again situates the analyses of contemporary women in the U.S. in the fields of theater and music, of which Claudia Alonso Recarte’s critical look at ‘Mythistory? Women’s Blues and Feminism’ offers an excellent analysis. Deconstructing the myth of female blues singers as prototypical feminists, she explains that, in fact, “as a business primarily handled by men the personas created in the songs had to appeal for the most part to a masculine audience. Women appear as objects just as much as subjects” (199). This is a strong piece that dares to take on veritable heavy-weights in the field: “Writers such as Angela Davis, Alice Walker, and Daphne Duval Harrison have endorsed an image of these women that is just that: an image” (193). As feminists we certainly need our myths of strong women, but we need to keep our eyes open and our sense of reality in check as well. In addition to the two essays on popular U.S. music mentioned above, two contributions to this section deal specifically with the theater: Marís Dolores Narbona Carrión sees the stage as a place for ethnic women to develop both acceptance and defense of their ‘othered’ bodies; Raquel Ruíz García discusses the search for identity in the characters of Zöe Akins. In the eyes of all the contributors to this section, the arts have a fundamental place in both the reclamation of the female body and the
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 157–162 ISSN 0210-6124 Reviews 161 subversion of pernicious stereotypes which, in spite of major progress, continue to plague women in the U.S. In ‘Colonial and Postcolonial Legal and Medical Discourses’, two essays rely on literary and historical record to document female participation in oppressive colonialist attitudes by English and German women in the past. While we would do well to recognize our participation in suppression of the ‘Other’, it is also not irrelevant to consider that the women under discussion here were also products of their time. ‘Science’ of the nineteenth century predicated a hierarchy of the human species as to the development, capacity and intellect of different ‘races’, and it would have taken a true visionary equipped with postcolonialist/feminist theory at the time to recognize scientific racism for what it was. Such an unusual woman is the subject of María del Rosario Piqueras Fraile, who resurrects the history of Elizabeth Blackwell, ‘A Pioneer in the American History of Medicine’, yet another woman from the past who should be an example of just what one individual can accomplish against daunting odds. And María Isabel Romero’s study on the ‘Vile Traffic’ of prostitution complicated by migration and transnationalism is certainly sine qua non for a volume of this nature and still horrifyingly pertinent in a world that has yet to come to terms with, and eradicate, female slavery. This is a problem that acutely, albeit painfully, distills the relationship of Identity, Migration and the Female Body. Part VI, ‘Intersectionality, Globalisation and Gender Politics’, not only contains the Valle Olsen essay discussed at the beginning of this review, but also introduces an innovative approach to the language adopted by young British and Spanish adolescent girls via web blogs, who seem to be attempting to construct an identity of ‘Mean Girl’. Antonio García Gómez argues that the analysis makes it possible to argue that this British and Spanish female adolescents’ construction of their self-concept does not only function at the level of the individual but must be regarded as an integrated multi-dimensional process, where the individual self struggles to meet both interpersonal (i.e. relational self) and social demands (i.e. collective self ) (271). The adoption of what the author terms ‘masculine agressiveness’ to express their feelings, particularly for the opposite sex after a break-up in the relationship, is noteworthy (I’m trying hard here not to date myself by saying alarming). If indeed, as the author suggests, this verbal posturing indicates “a nascent culture-specific change in Spanish female adolescents’ social representation of verbal aggression” (277), what it seems to me to be is rather an indication that we might be losing the younger generations to a poor imitation of males rather than fomenting those values we cherish as feminists. I cannot but protest the author’s choice of terminology when he designates this type of aggressive language as “androgynous femininity (e.g. feminisation of masculine expressions)” (272). We need to keep our terms clear here: to my understanding ‘androgyny’ would not feminize the aggressive masculine but continue to be a cultural goal through which both sexes would accept equality and respect for all other creatures, male and female alike, without resorting to the violence of aggressive (sexualized) language. What this essay does indicate is that more work like the contributions to this volume should be continued, promoted and published.
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 157–162 ISSN 0210-6124 162 Justine Tally
Perhaps not every one of the essays will appeal to each and every one of us. In their entirety, however, they speak to the impressive scope of research that is currently being undertaken in Gender Studies; in doing so they provide a daunting view of the vast amount that is still to be done.
Works Cited Hong, Grace Kyungwon 2007: ‘The Ghost of Transnational American Studies: A Response to the Presidential Address’. American Quarterly 59.1: 33-39.
Received 9 August 2010 Accepted 13 December 2010
Justine Tally is Professor of American Literature at the University of La Laguna where she specializes in African American Literature and Culture. She is author of Paradise Reconsidered: Toni Morrison’s (Hi)stories and Truths (Lit Verlag, 1999), The Story of Jazz: Toni Morrison’s Dialogic Imagination (Lit Verlag, 2001) and Toni Morrison’s Beloved: Origens (Routledge, 2009). She has edited the Cambridge Companion to Toni Morrison (CUP, 2007), and co-edited, with Walter Hölbling, Theories and Texts (Lit Verlag, 2007, 2009)
Address: Departamento de Filología Inglesa y Alemana, Universidad de La Laguna. 38201 Tenerife, Spain. Tel.: +34 922317645. Fax: +34 922317611.
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 157–162 ISSN 0210-6124 Anis S. Bawarshi and Mary-Jo Reiff 2010: Genre. An Introduction to History, Theory, Research, and Pedagogy. West Lafayette: Parlor Press and The WAC Clearinghouse. xi + 263pp. Glossary and Annotated Bibliography by Melanie Kill. ISBN 978-1-60235-173-8
JoAnne Neff van Aertselaar Universidad Complutense de Madrid [email protected]
Genre theory and research contributes to and draws on a number of academic traditions: literary (from typological classifications to cultural studies); linguistics (applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, discourse analysis and critical discourse analysis, English for Academic Purposes [EAP] and English for Specific Purposes [ESP]); communication studies (film and news media, i.e. digital and electronic forms); philosophy (phenomenological and social action theories); anthropology (ethnomethodological research); and psychology and education (Rhetorical Genre Studies [RGS] and Vygotskian approaches). Given the range of disciplinary communities studied, all of which are underpinned by genre systems, this 2010 book, titled Genre: An Introduction to History, Theory, Research, and Pedagogy (hereafter Genre), provides a timely critical review of a rich body of scholarship that has brought about a reconceptualization of genre in multiple contexts. Although each academic community may make use of the concept in diverse ways, in all contexts genre is presently conceived of as encompassing social ways of knowing and acting in order to bring about consequential, recognizable effects (Miller 1984). In this respect, in this volume of 11 chapters – grouped into 3 parts – the authors’ concept of genre provides a central nexus for the book: genre is considered as communicative action carried out within typified, recurring social situations and forming part of genre systems which are used by agents to enact conventionalized behaviors. Such a broad definition as this one may be put to work for unifying the goals of university departments that encompass both literary and language studies (discussed below), as is the case in many European universities. Part 1 of Genre, ‘Historical Review and Theories of Genre’, presenting various approaches to the application of genre in diverse disciplines, is subdivided into the following chapters (2 through 6): 2, Genre in Literary Traditions; 3, Genre in Linguistic Traditions: Systemic Functional and Corpus Linguistics; 4, Genre in Linguistic Traditions: English for Specific Purposes (a particularly interesting section in that these studies challenge process-based writing instruction); 5, Genre in Rhetorical and Sociological Traditions; and 6, Rhetorical Genre Studies. It is Part 1 that might provide the appropriate unifying framework for university degrees which combine Language/Linguistics with Literature studies. By structuring their syllabi around genre features and their semantic processing (i.e. making meaning with the choice of textual features), Language/Linguistics and Literature studies, which often times appear to be working in opposition to each other, might unify their pedagogy around genre-based approaches involving scaffolded modelling and text deconstruction (Byrnes 2006: 240-43).
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 163–171 ISSN 0210-6124 164 JoAnne Neff van Aertselaar
For those of us who teach EAP (in L1 or L2 contexts, the latter is this reviewer’s context) and have only kept up with literary studies insofar as they are present in cultural studies approaches to genre, the chapters of Part 1 (chapter 2: Neoclassical approaches to genre; Structuralist approaches to genre; Romantic and Post-romantic approaches to genre; Reader response approaches to genre; and Cultural studies approaches to genre) provide an opportune comparison of the various analytical methods that have been used to classify literary texts. Although genre analysis has come in for very heavy criticism (Patton 1976; Conley 1979, cited in Miller 1984) – and not only in literary studies, but in linguistic studies as well (see the discussion below) – humans are classifying animals and any type of cultural artefact that is similar and has been previously observed will inevitably be used to make associations (Rumelhart 1980). For humans, categorization permits conceptualization. As Jauss has noted: [A literary work] awakens memories of that which was already read, brings the reader to a specific emotional attitude and with its beginning arouses expectations for the middle and end, which can then be maintained intact or altered, reoriented, or even fulfilled ironically in the course of the reading, according to specific rules of the genre or type of text. The psychic process in the reception of a text is, in the primary horizon of aesthetic experience, by no means only an arbitrary series of specific instructions in a process of directed perception, which can be comprehended according to its constitutive motivations and triggering signals, and which also can be described by textual analysis (1986: 167). The idea, springing from Romanticism, that the use of genre theory may stultify literary creativity or criticism by setting up too many rhetorical constraints is as bogus in literary studies as it is in applied linguistics (see the discussion of Part 2). It is precisely the recognition that a text, literary or otherwise, forms part of one (or several) genre types that creates the basis for the recognition of a “change of horizons” (Jauss 1986: 168) in the readers’/public’s expectations (Culler 1975, 1980). And this is so because genre analysis situates texts within textual and social contexts, putting emphasis on the social nature of the production and reading of texts. Part 2 of Genre (chapters 7 through 9), ‘Genre Research in Multiple Contexts’, examines an important body of empirical research carried out in a wide range of contexts: the learning, teaching and production of academic, workplace and public documents. Included are studies, mostly concerning EAP in L1 contexts, which display diverse developments relating to the focus and purposes of research, designs and methods, and possible application of results for pedagogical purposes. This section of the volume can offer readers insights into how different types of training for the comprehension and writing of texts may or may not transfer from the academic setting into workplace genres. It seems that, of the three areas listed above, workplace writing might show the least transfer of EAP training. But this is most probably because most EAP or composition classes for native or non-native students in Anglophone contexts have a mixed population of students (i.e. from various disciplines), which sometimes limits the specificity of the texts that composition teachers may work with. However, this problem does not necessarily affect EAP courses given to non-native students within specific academic disciplines, as is the case in English Studies in Spain (comprising Linguistics and Literature), or in the various technical studies areas in Spain and some other European countries.
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 163–171 ISSN 0210-6124 Reviews 165
Part 2 is potentially the most controversial section of the volume, as it deals with fiercely debated issues such as the implicit/explicit teaching of genre features, the differences among genre traditions of RGS, ESP, SFL (Systemic Functional Linguistics, especially the Sydney School’s application of genre-based teaching in primary and secondary schooling) and the validity of the use of dichotomous terms in developmental psychology (un/conscious learning, procedural/declarative knowledge, etc.), issues which are all linked to larger philosophical questions. Part 2 includes the following chapters: 7, Genre Research in Academic Contexts; 8, Genre Research in Workplace and Professional Contexts; and 9, Genre in Public and New Media Contexts. Of these, chapter 7 is perhaps the most interesting in that it takes up the question of whether the explicit teaching of genre features can, or should, be part of university courses (e.g. EAP courses for native or non-native speakers), or, on the other hand, whether students can acquire genre tacitly as they become increasingly inducted into their discipline’s uses of genres. Far from being a conflict limited to local disciplinary concerns, this debate points rather to one more modern manifestation of the historical conflict (Crick 2003) between social constructivism and expressivism, sometimes referred to as the opposition of the skills approach to the experience approach (Vygotsky 1960; Bruner 1966). Regarding the implicit/explicit teaching of genre characteristics, there has been very heated debate since the 1993 publication of a special issue of Research in the Teaching of English, in which the Canadian writing scholar Aviva Freedman proposed two hypotheses: a strong hypothesis (explicit teaching of genre features is neither necessary nor useful, and perhaps even harmful) and a restricted hypothesis (there are certain carefully specified conditions under which explicit teaching of genre features may be helpful). Freedman’s abstract makes a plea for more focused research and theoretical consideration of genre teaching in the varieties of school writing in native-speaker Anglophone contexts, but, in reality, her article only considers the strong and the restricted hypotheses and does not do justice at all to the idea of “pushed output” (Swain 1985), i.e. explicit teaching of concepts or features at the next level of student development, or the zone of proximal development (Vygotsky 1960), that is, the level at which optimal learning takes place, the learning of something that is neither too easy nor too difficult. Since Barwarshi and Reiff do not criticize Freedman’s rather protracted insistence (over a period of at least 10 years) on implicit learning of genre features nor do they allude to any of Freedman’s underlying assumptions about learning processes, they appear to be much too indulgent with Freedman’s ‘evidence’, which is not based on diverse empirical studies. The implicit/explicit debate is important since is underpins the significant discord between ESP/EAP and SFL, on the one hand, and RGS, on the other. In her first article (Freedman 1993) and successive articles (Freedman 1994) and several books (Freedman and Medway 1994a and 1994b), Freedman turns to L2 specialist Krashen (“Competence in writing does not come from the study of form directly ... Writing competence ... is acquired subconsciously; readers are unaware they are acquiring competence while they are reading and are unaware that this accomplishment has taken place”, quoted in Freedman 1993: 230-13) and to Chomsky, whom Freedman (1993: 232) alludes to by stating that: “those who discuss first-language acquisition like to point to the tremendous complexity and sophistication of the laws of syntax, morphology, phonology
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 163–171 ISSN 0210-6124 166 JoAnne Neff van Aertselaar
– such that even Noam Chomsky cannot, at least not yet, adequately formulate a set of rules to account entirely for the grammar of our language”. It is puzzling that such a distinguished writing specialist would use the hypotheses put forth by either of these two theorists. It is well-known that Krashen (1993, 1981) has carried out most of his L2 research on reading, and therefore, has few empirical results to show as far as explicit or implicit learning of textual features in writing instruction are concerned. Regarding Freedman’s comments on Chomsky’s ‘laws of syntax, morphology, phonology’, this argument is beside the point when one is considering native speakers of English in secondary and university contexts (Freedman’s declared area of research). These students’ knowledge of their own language is well beyond the morphological and syntactic competencies referred to in syntactic theories (which have little to say about the construction of rhetorical elements in extended texts). In any case, the ‘rules’ or laws a writing instructor might find useful will most probably be those that stem from usage-based research, quantitative approaches such as corpus linguistics or qualitative methods such as discourse analysis, on a variety of expert texts, whose features can then be contrasted with the characteristics found in the texts of novice writers, native or non-native. To be fair to Freedman, it must be stated that she does refer to Ellis’s 1990 model of instructed acquisition, but again to emphasize that Ellis proposes a model similar to Krashen’s, i.e. that implicit knowledge is unconscious and procedural while explicit knowledge is conscious and declarative and that these two kinds of knowledge usually do not interact. In their review of this implicit/explicit knowledge debate, Bawarshi and Reiff present much evidence to counter Freedman’s weak hypothesis, but they do so in a context of also referring to Freedman’s plea for more genre research (alluded to more than 15 times) rather than criticizing her unsubstantial arguments. Nor do Bawarshi and Reiff turn to developmental psychology, a field in which the dichotomy between implicit and explicit knowledge in learning processes (and the concomitant dichotomous terms: un/consciousness, voluntariness-automaticity, procedural/declarative knowledge, etc.) has been increasingly questioned (McLaughlin 1990; Widdowson 1990). For one thing, explicit knowledge is not synonymous with ‘verbalizability’, and, at least some types of explicit expression of knowledge include the implicit attitude or belief in the necessary supporting facts, i.e. presuppositions which are not verbalized but must necessarily be implied (Dienes and Perner 2010). Bawarshi and Reiff, like many North American RGS specialists – most of whom were first trained in English and Composition or Rhetoric Departments – have lacked explicit instructional frameworks (Hyon 1996: 701), probably due to their focus on the situational contexts in which the genres at hand occur. According to Miller, “a rhetorically sound definition of genre must not be centered on the substance or the form of the discourse but on the action it is used to accomplish” (1984: 151). Although this view provides a much richer perspective of how discourse communities work, it also raises the question as to how, without focusing on the substance or form, the reader is able to comprehend what ‘action’ is being accomplished by the text. As Devitt notes, genre becomes “visible through perceived patterns in the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic features of particular texts” (1993: 580), which can be identified. Another reason for the RGS scepticism regarding pedagogical applications is that because genres
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 163–171 ISSN 0210-6124 Reviews 167 are always in a state of flux, the linguistic characteristics really might not be sufficiently recurring to be made use of in classroom applications. However, if genres actually changed so rapidly, publishing an academic paper would probably turn into a chaotic process rather than having to go through the present strenuous reviewing procedures in which genre expectations loom large on the part of the reviewers. This rationale of ‘genre fluctuation’ is then related to the alleged unauthentic nature of the classroom teaching of genres, which, supposedly, does not lead students to be co-participants in disciplinary communities (Hyland 2004: 39). But this begs the question of whether teaching students argumentation patterns (problem-solution, general to specific structuring of arguments, etc., [Freedman 1996]), with their related linguistic expressions, should really be considered to be outside the disciplinary fields in which the students are inserted. Even if the student is writing for the teacher, the generic patterns practiced are still part of ‘becoming a member of an academic community’. In the section within chapter 7, titled ‘Intercultural Research on Genre within Academic Settings’, Bawarshi and Reiff give an account of cultural influences in genre acquisition but, disappointingly for an EAP teacher in non-Anglo contexts, they focus mostly on genre acquisition in L1, for example, in the Brazilian system of education studies linked to Bazerman’s Brazilian genre projects with Brazilian Portuguese in L1 writing (Bazerman, Bonini and Figueiredo 2009). This chapter also presents one British study carried out by Myhill (2005), mostly on the influence of social class in the acculturation processes to academic genres. Not surprisingly, Myhill found that middle-class children were those most well-positioned to make use of school genres. At the end of this section, two final studies are included: Kapp and Bangeni (2005), a case study of first-year students of humanities at the University of Cape Town; and Sunny Hyon’s study of EFL students enrolled in a writing course at the University of Michigan. Kapp and Bangeni found that “while students can learn from explicit teaching of forms, acquiring genre knowledge and discourse knowledge takes time” (quoted by Bawarshi and Reiff [129]), a truly unamazing finding. Hyon’s excellent 2002 study on ESL university student writing (one of the few ESL studies included in this volume) led her to state that “ESL university students may be among the ‘some’ for whom explicit genre-based teaching is helpful, as they have not had as much tacit exposure to English- language genre as their L1 counterparts” (2002: 136). At this point, this researcher of Spanish EFL writing – convinced of the usefulness of explicit genre instruction, as Bawarshi and Reiff’s 15-year review of research seems to support – is beginning to become rather impatient with these authors’ constant reference to the arguments first set out by Freedman (1993, 1994), since it does not seem that Freedman has ever presented sufficient evidence that would support either the strong or weak hypotheses regarding explicit genre instruction. Bawarshi and Reiff’s cautious sidestepping of this contentious issue seems to point more to the existence of a strong pecking order in North American RGS. With some sense of relief from these tedious references to the implicit/explicit methodology debates, the reader advances to chapter 9, which presents ‘Genre Research in Public and New Media Contexts’, with an emphasis on RGS as used in historical studies (i.e. tracing the historical process of a particular genre) of widely diverse documents, such as tax forms (Bazerman, Little and Chavkin 2003), journalistic
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 163–171 ISSN 0210-6124 168 JoAnne Neff van Aertselaar contexts (Bonini 2009), personal narrative in public discourse (Segal 2007), radio genres (Edwards and McKee 2005), and blogs and other internet media (Miller and Shepherd 2004/2007). This information opens up useful avenues of research for ‘writing across the curriculum’ specialists. Finally, in the conclusion to Part 2, after 171 pages of the 209-page volume, Bawarshi and Reiff state that Freedman (2006) ‘acknowledges’ that “especially extensive empirical research ... has provided composition researchers with a very rich body of highly textured, largely qualitative work that has explained and elaborated on the discursive practices of professionals in their workplace and students in universities”; and that Freedman also ‘acknowledges’ “the complex, reciprocal relationship between theory and empirical research”, noting that “sometimes the data force researchers to reconsider the theory to modify, revise or even reject aspects or the whole of a theory that had been in use” (2006: 102). With this last statement Bawarshi and Reiff seem to suggest to the reader that they have given sufficient evidence in order to have warded off some of RGS’s past harsh criticism of pedagogical applications of genre theory in North America. Thus, in Part 3 (chapters 10 and 11) of the volume, ‘Genre Approaches to Teaching Writing’, as its subtitle indicates, Bawarshi and Reiff move ahead to focus on genre as used in writing instruction. Chapter 10, ‘From Research to Pedagogy: Multiple Pedagogical Approaches to Teaching Genres’, focuses on “a range of pedagogical approaches informed by genre research and scholarship ...”. The authors discuss “varied but overlapping pedagogical approaches” (176) by presenting a review of Hyon’s 1996 study of three different approaches: 1) the Sydney School approach (curriculum development based on SFL); 2) ESP (teaching of specific genres, much of which is based on Swales’ 1990 text-based theory of discourse moves); and 3) the New Rhetoric (RGS), with a focus on critical analysis of genres, including the rhetorical and social purposes. In addition to these, Bawarshi and Reiff propose a fourth approach, which they call the Brazilian educational model, and which draws on Bakhtinian communicative interaction and Vygotskian learning theories. The authors describe the new approach as ‘marked by’ the following working principles: 1) characterization of the social context of the genre; 2) study of the social history of the genre; 3) characterization of the context of production; 4) analysis of the thematic content; and 5) analysis of the compositional construction of the genre – style of the genre and of the author. Bawarshi and Reiff suggest that the Brazilian approach “brings together a focus on genre awareness, analysis of linguistic conventions and attention to social context” (177). In the remainder of this chapter, Bawarshi and Reiff (177-88) present various frameworks for genre pedagogies: Freedman’s model of (tacitly) acquiring new genres, and other explicit pedagogies – the SFL approach of the teaching-learning cycle; Swales’ CARS model; Devitt’s project model; and Guimarãers’s didactic workshop sequence approach. All of these models might provide useful starting points for EAP teachers to draw up a syllabus adapted to their contexts. In chapter 11, ‘Rhetorical Genre Studies (RGS) Approaches to Teaching Writing’, the center of attention is on the transfer of genre knowledge, both from teachers to students and in student learning, from one genre context to another. Here again, the authors suggest a series of frameworks, including their own which they presented in a book with Amy Devitt, Scenes of Writing: Strategies for Composing with Genres (Devitt,
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 163–171 ISSN 0210-6124 Reviews 169
Bawarshi and Reiff 2004), which offers the following guidelines: 1) collect samples of the genre; 2) identify and describe the situation of the genre; 3) identify and describe patterns of the genre’s features; and 4) analyze what the patterns reveal. Actually, much of this methodology has already been suggested in discourse analysis or critical discourse analysis (Titscher et al. 2000).This chapter also incorporates indications about how to teach critical awareness to students so that they can use ‘alternative responses’ to a genre context. This is a somewhat curious ending to the volume, since Bawarshi and Reiff’s own response to genre throughout the book seems to be overly anxious about RGS’s reaction to genre pedagogy. In the introduction to their book, Anis Bawarshi and Mary Jo Reiff state that their overarching goal “is to provide readers with an overview of what genre approaches have to offer for the study and teaching of writing” (10). As the title indicates, the authors must weave together various different perspectives – Historical, Theoretical, Research and Pedagogical – of the term genre, itself fraught with confusion, not least because of the different implications arising from its deployment in various disciplinary endeavors. To a specialist in applied linguistics, the extended discussion of the implicit/explicit debate provided by Bawashi and Reiff may seem somewhat superficial. The underlying assumptions of RGS are not discussed critically and the authors’ discussion of methodologies focuses almost completely on the findings from qualitative studies, while almost ignoring (they include only 4 pages) the wealth of information coming out of text-based quantitative studies, especially in L2 research. No doubt these oversights arise out of the different theoretical concerns of RGS, and the authors’ attempts to reduce some of the contention between various disciplinary groups. However, the RGS perspective of the volume is apparent to some extent in the Glossary by Melanie Kill (210-19) in that it contains mostly linguistic terms, implying that RGS readers will need to have some of this background information at hand. One certainly cannot deny the RGS contributions to the study of written texts, but any detailed view of genre must include linguistically oriented research because authors’ language choices constitute part of the information readers receive in order to be able to classify a text as belonging to a particular genre. Authors’ ideas are set out in patterns of argumentation, but the construal of those meanings occurs through the deployment of linguistic features.
Works Cited Bazerman, Charles, Adair Bonini and Débora Figueiredo, eds. 2009: Genre in a Changing World. Fort Collins: The WAC Clearinghouse and Parlor Press. Bazerman, Charles, Joe Little and Terry Chavkin 2003: ‘The Production of Information for Genres Activity Spaces: Informational Motives and Consequences of the Environmental Impact Statement’. Written Communication 20.4: 455-77. Bonini, Adair 2009: ‘The Distinction between News and Reportage in the Brazilian Journalistic Context: A Matter of Degree’. Charles Bazerman, Adair Bonini and Débora Figueiredo, eds. Genre in a Changing World. Fort Collins: The WAC Clearinghouse and Parlor Press. 199-225. Bruner, Jerome 1966: Toward a Theory of Instruction. Cambridge: Harvard UP. Byrnes, Heidi, ed. 2006: Advanced Language Learning: The Contribution of Halliday and Vygotsky. London: Continuum. Crick, Nathan 2003: ‘Composition as Experience: John Dewey on Creative Expression and the Origins of the “Mind”’. College Composition and Communication 55.2: 254-75.
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 163–171 ISSN 0210-6124 170 JoAnne Neff van Aertselaar
Culler, Jonathan 1980: ‘Literary Competence’. Jane Tompkins, ed. Reader-Response Criticism: From Formalism to Post-Structuralism. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP. 101-17. ––––– 1975: Structuralist Poetics. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Devitt, Amy 1993: ‘Generalizing about Genre: New Conceptions of an Old Concept’. College Composition and Communication 44: 573-86. Devitt, Amy, Anis S. Bawarshi and Mary-Jo Reiff 2004: Scenes of Writing: Strategies for Composing with Genres. London: Longman. Dienes, Zoltan and Josef Perner 2010: ‘A Theory of Implicit and Explicit Knowledge’.
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 163–171 ISSN 0210-6124 Reviews 171
Patton, John 1976: ‘Generic Criticism: Typology at an Inflated Price’. Rhetoric Society Quarterly 6.1: 4-8. Rumelhart, David E. 1980: ‘Schemata: The Building Blocks of Cognition’. Rand J. Spiro, Bertram C. Bruce and William F. Brewer, eds. Theoretical Issues in Reading Comprehension. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum. 33-58. Segal, Judy 2007: ‘Breast Cancer Narratives as Public Rhetoric: Genre itself and the Maintenance of Ignorance’. Linguistics and the Human Sciences 3.1: 3-23. Swales, John M. 1990: Genre Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Swain, Merrill 1985: ‘Communicative Competence: Some Roles of Comprehensible Input and Comprehensible Output in its Development’. Susan Gass and Carol Madden, eds. Input in Second Language Acquisition. Rowley: Newbury House. 235-53. Titscher, Stefan, Michael Meyer, Ruth Wodak and Eva Vetter 2000: Methods of Text and Discourse Analysis. London/Thousand Oaks/New Dehli: Sage. Vygotsky, Lev 1960 (1934): Collected Works. Vol. 1. Robert Rieber and Aaron Carton, eds. Trans. N. Minick. New York: Plenum: 39-285. Widdowson, Henry G. 1990: Aspects of Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford UP.
Received 13 January 2011 Revised version accepted 24 March 2011
JoaAnne Neff is Associate Professor at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Her research interests include L2 Acquisition of English, Contrastive Linguistics, Corpus Linguistics, Feminism and Stylistics.
Address: Departamento de Filología Ingles I, Facultad de Filología, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Ciudad Universitaria. 28040 Madrid, Spain. Tel.: +34 913945274. Fax: +34 913945478.
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 163–171 ISSN 0210-6124
Carol Griffiths, ed. 2008: Lessons from Good Language Learners. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. xi+324pp. ISBN 978-0-521-71814-1 (Paperback)
Anik Nandi University of Santiago de Compostela [email protected]
Since the late 1960s, the effective learning of languages has been a burning issue for language researchers, especially for those who have been dealing with successful learning strategies for second or foreign languages.1 The present research in this field shows that some learners are capable of picking up the L2 rapidly and easily, while others, in comparison, never achieve complete fluency or are incapable of expressing themselves accurately in the foreign language (Cook 2002). Effective individual strategies, in fact, enable some to be comparatively good or effective learners of L2. Carol Griffiths, the editor of Lessons from Good Language Learners (2008), is an eminent academic and also an experienced language instructor who has contributed independently and co-authored several chapters to this seminal work published by Cambridge University Press (CUP), a venerable name in the field of scholarly publications on second language teaching/learning. This volume has been designed with a specific format containing short chapters. Each article is well-defined and begins with an overview of previous research, continues with the concordances and disagreements with regard to respective studies and, finally, concludes with well- defined implications for the teaching/learning situation. Even though each chapter is stylistically distinct from the others, the structural consistency provides coherence to the book as a whole. It is worth mentioning that, in these articles, more often than not the authors seek references from fields outside ELT, such as psychology, educational theories etc., thus enriching the contents of this work. Lessons from Good Language Learners (hence LGLL) is written to commemorate the 30th anniversary of Joan Rubin’s pioneering article ‘What the “Good Language Learner” can Teach us’ (1975), published in TESOL Quarterly, in which she had set out to identify the useful strategies followed by successful L2 learners. Rubin stated that "if we knew more about what the 'successful learners' did, we might be able to teach these strategies to poorer learners to enhance their success record" (1975: 42). Therefore, this edited collection takes into account the same topic in the light of current thinking and research, analysing the implications for the language teaching and learning fields, and re-examines some of the questions which are hitherto unresolved. This volume contains 23 chapters in two sections. The first deals with ‘Learner Variables’ in 11 chapters on ‘Motivation and Good Language Learners’, ‘Age and Good Language Learners’, and so on, thus examining the individual characteristics or behaviours which make each learner unique. The second brings into focus the ‘Learning
1 I am indebted to (MAEC-AECID) for their generous funding, which I acknowledge with gratitude.
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 173–178 ISSN 0210-6124 174 Anik Nandi
Variables’ commencing with a chapter entitled ‘Vocabulary and Good Language Learners’ and ends with ‘Tasks and Good Language Learners’. Each of these two sections encompasses both research-based and state-of-the-art articles, thus providing a variety of perspectives on the issues concerned. LGLL starts with a prologue by Andrew D. Cohen providing an explanation of the inspiration behind the book along with an overview of the field. This prologue also recounts some touching anecdotes about Joan Rubin. The chapter entitled ‘Reflections’, by Joan Rubin herself, contains her major observations. This section ends with a lucid and comprehensive synopsis of the whole book in the chapter titled ‘The Learner’s Landscape and Journey’. The first chapter – bearing the title ‘Motivation and Good Language Learners’, by Ema Ushioda – commences with the universally accepted hypothesis that basically ‘good language learners are motivated’. Motivation has been accepted by Rubin (1975) as one of the most essential variables on which the proficiency of an efficient language learner virtually depends. The first section takes into account the social-psychological and socio-educational perspectives of Robert C. Gardner (1972, 1988), which point not only to the learners’ rudimentary attitudes towards the target language community, but also to more education-friendly approaches to language learner motivations providing more comforting insights for language teachers and learners. Apart from highlighting the social context of motivation, she reassesses several prior studies related to self- motivating strategies (Dörnyei 2001), self-regulatory skills (Ottó 1998), and motivational self-regulation (Ushioda 2003, 2007), which lead her to the valid conclusion that “motivation will suffer unless ways are found to regulate it” (26). Further discussions on the connection between identity and self-regulated motivation can be found in Dörnyei and Ushioda (2009). The second chapter entitled ‘Age and Good Language Learners’, by Carol Griffiths, corresponds to the ‘age’ of L2 learners. Rubin (1975) categorized ‘age’ of L2 learners as content demanding further investigation, and even after three decades, the research on ‘age’ retains its controversial character in the field of L2 Teaching and Learning. While adult learners acquire language more rapidly at the initial stage, children reach the expected level of perfection in the long run. After recounting multiple success stories of adult language learners from various socio-cultural backgrounds, Griffiths finally drives home the axiom that ‘younger is better’. Recent studies by García Mayo and García Lecumberri (2003), Singleton and Ryan (2004) and Muñoz (2006), however, question her claim on the matter. Chapters on ‘Style’ (Chrisma Nel), ‘Personality’ (Madeline Ehrman), and ‘Gender’ (Martha Nyikos) of good language learners come next. Rubin (1975) included learning style as a subject of further research. After reassessing certain research literatures on ‘Learning Style and Good Language Learners’ (Chapter 3), Nel concludes that each and every L2 learner has his/her unique learning style, containing various preferences related to instructions, environment, personality and so forth. The personality factor of a successful L2 learner has always been a vulnerable factor in L2 research. Madeline Ehrman, in ‘Personality and Good Language Learners’ (Chapter 4), finally settles for the reflection that successful L2 learners “tend to have introverted personalities” (70), a thought which clearly goes beyond pedagogical
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 173–178 ISSN 0210-6124 Reviews 175 intuitions. In chapter 5, Martha Nyikos touches upon issues related to gender in L2 acquisition. Gender has been argued “as one of the many important facets of social identity, [which] interacts with race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, (dis)ability, age and social status in framing students’ language learning experiences, trajectories and outcomes” (Norton and Pavlenco 2004:504). To conclude, the author finally acknowledges that the commonly held view that women are more successful learners than men may not be substantiated by empirical research. The succeeding three chapters are associated with ‘Strategies’ (Carol Griffiths), ‘Metacognition’ (Neil J. Anderson) and ‘Autonomy’ (Sara Cotterall) of good language learners. According to Rubin, language learning strategies are “techniques or devices which a learner may use to acquire knowledge” (1975: 43). In ‘Strategies and Good Language Learners’ (Chapter 6), Griffiths marshals a large amount of data regarding the devices adopted by efficient L2 learners. But she keeps this research open-ended, since individual learners are infinitely variable. Next comes the discussion on ‘Metacognition and Good Language Learners’ (Chapter 7); in ELT, the students without metacognition have been treated as learners without direction who cannot monitor their process of learning. Previous investigations in this field propose that efficient L2 learners apply a number of metacognitive strategies to learn the target language (TL). However, in the concluding section of his article, Anderson places more emphasis on well-structured language programmes and efficient language instructors than on self-regulated learning experiences. In ‘Autonomy and Good Language Learners’ (Chapter 8), Cotterall closely examines the autonomy-fostering approach of language learning where she correlates learners’ psychological kinship with both the language learning process and the methodological aspects of language learning. The concluding chapters of ‘Learner Variables’ move on to explore the ‘Beliefs’ (Cynthia White), ‘Culture’ (Claudia Finkbeiner) and ‘Aptitude’ (Leila Ranta) of good language learners. Unlike prior approaches where beliefs have been considered as somewhat static and monotonous, White attempts to re-examine learners’ beliefs from a socio-cultural outlook in ‘Beliefs and Good Language Learners’ (Chapter 9). The 10th chapter, by Finkbeiner, who discusses and elaborates the importance of culture and ethnic identity in a language teaching/learning classroom, is highly engaging. Not least, in the final section focussing on ‘Aptitude and Good Language Learners’ (Chapter 11), Ranta strongly challenges the long-fostered thought that “aptitude is undemocratic and irrelevant to language learners and teachers” (151). The first four chapters of ‘Learning Variables’ examine the good language learners’ approach towards learning ‘Vocabulary’ (Jo Muir and Paul Nation), ‘Grammar’ (Margaret Bade), ‘Functions’ (Zia Tajeddin) and ‘Pronunciation’ (Adam Brown). The importance of teaching vocabulary in a language teaching/learning programme has always been a debatable question for language researchers; Moir and Nation in ‘Vocabulary and Good Language Learners’ (Chapter 12) analyse diverse ways of acquiring target language vocabulary. There is no doubt that the study of grammar is essential and rudimentary for effective communication in any language. However, the appropriate method of teaching grammar has always been debated. In ‘Grammar and Good Language Learners’ (Chapter 13), Bade endeavours to look into the most effective ways of learning grammar. The following section (Chapter 14) by Tajeddin focuses on the ‘functional approach’ of
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 173–178 ISSN 0210-6124 176 Anik Nandi language teaching and learning, a notion which has been designed to compensate for learners’ needs. This article mainly investigates language learners’ approaches towards achieving functional competence in the target language, an area which was left untouched by Rubin (1975) in her seminal article. In ‘Pronunciation and Good Language Learners’ (Chapter 15), Adam Brown investigates learners’ attitudes towards pronunciation, and concludes that each efficient L2 learner is strongly aware of it since he/she “has a strong desire to communicate” (Rubin 1975: 46). The next four chapters study good language learners’ relationship with the art of ‘Listening’ (Goodith White), ‘Speaking’ (Yasushi Kawai), ‘Reading’ (Karen Schramm) and ‘Writing’ (Louise Gordon) in L2. Even though effective language learning does not depend only on good listening skills, White, in ‘Listening and Good Language Learners’ (Chapter 16), finds that efficient L2 learners often are good listeners. He further claims that the methodologies related to teaching listening skills are still underdeveloped, and far from acquiring momentum. Fruitful strategies to develop oral proficiency in a foreign language have always been questioned in SLA research. Kawai, in ‘Speaking and Good Language Learners’ (Chapter 17), clarifies that an introvert attitude towards oral communication in the (TL) does not inevitably indicate that the learner is less- motivated and therefore, unable to communicate in the TL. However, previous research shows that an active participation in the class by teachers as well as learners is necessary in order for the learner to develop oral skills. Schramm’s contribution, ‘Reading and Good Language Learners’ (Chapter 18), investigates good language learners’ attitudes towards the reading process in the TL. Schramm finds that efficient L2 learners can successfully “monitor their own comprehension, evaluate problems and take appropriate action” (238). This chapter, I find, is more closely directed to teachers than any other. Louise Gordon, in ‘Writing and Good Language Learners’ (Chapter 19), deals with language learners’ attitudes towards writing in the TL. Composing something in a new language has always been a challenging task for L2 learners. Even though the communicative classroom does not recognise the importance of extensive writing, Gordon finds it essential for those who would like to carry out their further studies within a target language. The succeeding two chapters of ‘Learning Variables’ are concerned with good language learners’ attitudes towards ‘Teaching/Learning Method’ (Carol Griffiths) and ‘Strategy Instruction’ (Anna Uhl Chamot). Although innumerable approaches have been introduced over the years in order to learn and teach foreign languages, Griffiths in ‘Teaching/learning Methods and Good Language Learners’ (Chapter 20), advocates strongly in favour of a contemporary ‘eclectic approach’ which actually is a melting-pot of diverse language teaching/learning techniques. In effect, Griffiths maintains that proficient L2 learners generally do not stick to any specific method of learning; rather, they switch to diverse learning techniques according to their needs. Chamot, in ‘Strategy Instruction and Good Language Learners’ (Chapter 21), takes into account questions associated with strategy instruction in SLA. Learning strategies of efficient as well as those of unsuccessful learners have always been a question of extensive research. Chamot, in this article, not only criticizes explicit, implicit, integrated and discrete strategy instructions, but also investigates the wide range of consequences related to strategy research and its reflections on language teaching. Above all, there is no single
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 173–178 ISSN 0210-6124 Reviews 177 method which can be proved unanimously helpful for each and every learner in the classroom. Therefore, language teaching, at any level, should be learner-centred. Chapter 22 – entitled ‘Error Correction and Good Language Learners’, by Michael Roberts and Carol Griffiths – engages those readers analysing good language learners’ attitudes to error correction or corrective feedbacks. This chapter will be useful for classroom practitioners, for the importance of error correction has always been questioned in SLA research. While a certain group of linguists condemn it as “erratic, ambiguous, ill-timed and ineffective in the short termed” (286), others find it useful for the learner’s development. However, the teacher’s role in the classroom has also been criticized, since excessive emphasis on errors may prove disappointing and demoralizing for students. Therefore, correction and encouragement should go hand in hand. To sum up, Roberts and Griffiths affirm Rubin’s observation that an efficient learner accepts the feedback and learns from his/her mistakes. In the 23rd chapter, titled ‘Tasks and Good Language Learners’, Joan Rubin and Patricia McCoy make an important observation on task-based language teaching and learning. Task-based language teaching/learning curricula have been designed to modify learners’ communicative abilities outside the classroom. This article could be seen as a development of Wenden’s (1995) ‘tripartite task analysis procedure’, which, by and large, explains studies related to ‘task purpose’, ‘task classification’ and ‘task demands’. Task analysis has often been associated with planning, one of the five main metacognitive procedures (Rubin 2001, 2005). Efficient L2 learners use their knowledge to analyse tasks. Depending largely on their analysis of tasks, expert learners finally decide their goals of learning. After an extensive study, the authors come to the conclusion that ‘task analysis’ has been used widely by successful language learners. The final section – bearing the title ‘The Learners’ Landscape and Journey: a Summary’, by Rebecca Oxford and Kyoung Rang Lee – sums up the whole body of research on good language learners. This chapter, I find, outlines a wide range of studies related to learner identity, learner self- regulation, the learning situation and the learning destination, a perfect synopsis of extensive research on SLA as in LLGL. The hypothesis associated with the detectabilty of a unique set of characteristics possessed by the good language learner and the possible transferability of those characteristics to less-successful learners slowly but surely gave way to the insight that no ideal set of characteristics existed. LGLL is a thought-provoking book opening windows for further enquiries and explorations. Reading such a well-planned book is a pleasure. While in Rubin (1975), the focus was mainly on language learning strategies, LGLL goes one step further and approaches the question of how effectively successful language learners learn from a more elaborate perspective. This collection relocates some of the genres Rubin identified as requiring further investigation, and includes others which were not mentioned by her directly (such as gender, personality or autonomy). These variable factors have also been accepted as virtually important contributors to achieving proficiency or otherwise in the learning of the target language(s). However, more extensive research is needed to determine whether L2 acquisition is an innate ability (Saville-Troike 2006: 17) and how far it can be channelled so as to facilitate successful L2 teaching/learning results. It has been found that while some
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 173–178 ISSN 0210-6124 178 Anik Nandi people are endowed with inborn qualities to be good language learners, others can also be aided to become equally efficient. The articles in this book are immensely inspiring and contribute effectively to the improvement in the field of language teaching/learning in the next few years. After all, good language learners have a lot to teach us, and even after three decades, several lessons are still to be learned.
Works Cited Cook, Vivian 2002: Portraits of the L2 User. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Dörnyei, Zoltan 2001: Motivational Strategies in the Language Classroom. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. ––––– and Ema Ushioda, eds. 2009. Motivation, language identity and the L2 self. Bristol, UK.Multi-Lingual Matters. ––––– and Istvan Ottó 1998: ‘Motivation in Action: a Process Model of L2 Motivation’. Working Papers in Applied Linguistics (Thames Valley University) 4: 43-69. García Mayo, María del Pilar and María Luisa García Lecumberri, eds. 2003: Age and the Acquisition of English as a Foreign language. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Gardner, Robert C. and Wallace E. Lambert 1972: Attitudes and Motivation in Language Learning. Rowley: Newbury House. ––––– 1988: ‘The Socio-educational Model of Second Language Learning: Assumptions, Findings, and Issues’. Language Learning 38: 101-26. Muñoz, Carmen, ed. 2006: Age and the Rate of Foreign Language Learning. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Norton, Bonny and Aneta Pavlenco 2004: ‘Addressing Gender in the ESL/EFL Classroom’. In TESOL Quarterly 38.3: 504-14. Rubin, Joan 1975: ‘What the “Good Language Learner” can Teach us’. TESOL Quarterly 9.1: 41-51. ––––– 2001: ‘Language Learner Self-management’. Journal of Asia Pacific Communication 11.1: 25-37. ––––– 2005: ‘The Expert Language: a Review of Good Language’. Keith Johnson, ed. Expertise in Second Language Learning and Teaching. Basingstoke, Hants, England: Palgrave MacMillan. 37-63. Saville-Troike, Muriel 2006: Introducing Second Language Acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Singleton, David and Lisa Ryan 2004: Language Acquisition: The Age Factor. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Ushioda, Ema 2003: ‘Motivation as a Socially Mediated Process’. David Little, Jennifer Ridley and Ema Ushida, eds. Learner Autonomy in the Foreign Language Classroom: Teacher, Learner, Curriculum and Assessment. Dublin: Authentik. 90-102. ––––– 2007: ‘Motivation, Autonomy and Sociocultural Theory’. Phil Benson, ed. Learner Autonomy 8: Teacher and Learner Perspectives. Dublin: Authentik. 5-24. Wenden, Anita L. 1995: ‘Learner Training in Context: a Knowledge Based Approach’. Leslie Dickinson and Anita L. Wenden, eds. Special Issue on Autonomy, System 23.2: 183-94.
Received 20 July 2010 Revised version accepted 23 March 2011
Anik Nandi is a PhD Candidate at the Universidad de Santiago de Compostela. His research interests centre on sociolinguistics and include English language teaching (ELT), foreign language teaching (FLT), psycholinguistics, language policies and minority issues.
Address: Facultad de Filoloxía, Campus Universitario Norte. Universidad de Santiago de Compostela 15782, Santiago de Compostela, Spain. Tel.: +34 981563100- Ext:11777. Fax: +34 981 572 770.
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 173–178 ISSN 0210-6124 Laura Alba 2009: Perspectives on Discourse Analysis: Theory and Practice. Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars. X + 409pp. ISBN 978-1-4438-0597-1
Noa Talaván Zanón Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia [email protected]
The description of discourse analysis (henceforth DA) can be viewed as a challenging enterprise, given the variety of approaches that this field encompasses. However, the approach taken in Perspectives on Discourse Analysis has managed to overcome this difficulty by presenting a thorough overview of most of the different aspects and approaches involved in this discipline. This type of proposal turns the present volume into a very practical resource from the point of view of students and scholars wanting to learn or review all the possible aspects involved in DA. The organization of the book is well suited to didactic purposes, given that each chapter starts with an outline, moves from general to specific headings, ends up with a summary of the main aspects, and provides, not only self-evaluation questions and specific practice related to the contents described, but also suggestions for further reading and a list of useful websites on the corresponding subject matter examined. It is clearly a book for university students. In fact, as the author acknowledges in the introduction, this volume is a completely revised version of a previous book published in 2005 by Alba herself and entitled Discourse Analysis for University Students. However, this updated version can also serve as a general guide for scholars who want to learn more about DA, or even check particular aspects of some of the approaches that are included in this vast field. After stating the main objectives of the book (i.e. to identify the different approaches to DA, to learn to carry out analyses of different texts and apply the DA tools in a practical way), the book offers twelve chapters moving from broader to more specific perspectives. The first two chapters are in fact rather general. Chapter 1, ‘Introduction to Discourse Analysis’, outlines the organization of the book, discusses the categories of definitions for discourse and explains the basics of Text Linguistics and DA. It should be noted that the author is careful to distinguish between formal and functional approaches; in contrast to other types of linguistic trends, the focus of DA is on what people do with language, that is, on “the use of language in context” (16), and not on the formal relationships between language constituents. In the same general line, chapter 2 (entitled ‘The Data’) introduces Corpus Linguistics, describing the main methods of data collection, surveying sources of data typically used for investigations of DA and discussing transcription conventions and ways of selecting appropriate samples of discourse for specific research. The first part of the book, after the two introductory chapters described above, is dedicated to the mainstream approaches to DA. Chapter 3 presents ‘Pragmatics’, described as a division of DA, with special attention to Grice’s (1975) ideas; it contains a practical introduction to Speech Act Theory and to the concepts of implicature, deixis,
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 179–183 ISSN 0210-6124 180 Noa Talaván Zanón reference and presupposition. Chapter 4 deals with ‘Interactional Sociolinguistics’, providing examples of analysis, and presenting the theories of Gumperz (1982) and Goffman (1959); it also devotes special attention to Brown and Levinson’s (1987) Theory of Politeness, which is thoroughly described from various angles. Chapter 5 focuses on ‘Conversation Analysis’ (presented as one of the most practical approaches to DA), by explaining its central concepts: turn-taking, adjacency pairs, preference organization and other sequences. The author centers her discussion on the contributions of Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson (1974), and stresses that "the core of Conversation Analysis is the exploration of sequential structures of social action" (112). The focus of Chapter 6 is ‘Ethnography of Communication’, which delves into Hymes' (1970) contributions in general, together with his concepts of Communicative Competence and the SPEAKING grid, and emphasizes the interdisciplinary nature and the multiple research possibilities of this ethnographic approach. Chapter 7 begins with a discussion of Labov's (1972) Variation Analysis, which explains the phenomenon of linguistic change (including an outline of the main techniques of data collection and analysis), before taking the reader into the exposition of ‘Narrative Analysis’; this chapter also leads to considerations of social and cultural identity, as well as to the concept of narrative voice. It concludes that narrative analysis can provide “the answers to many questions about the construction of local and global identities” (163). The title of Chapter 8 is ‘Functional Sentence Perspective: Thematic and Information Structures’. It is a rather dense chapter that deals with Functionalism, the Prague School and Thematic and Information Structure; here, Alba’s words remind the reader that DA does not offer one definitive approach to the study of language in context, but is more “an attempt to describe and understand the different ways human beings understand their linguistic messages” (196). The last part of the book is devoted to more recent perspectives. Chapter 9 discusses ‘Post-Structuralist Theory and Social Theory’, mainly through Foucault’s (1980), Bakhtin’s (1981) and Bourdieu’s (1991) contributions to DA. This chapter introduces these two theories as the basis of Critical Discourse Analysis and Mediated Discourse Analysis, which are further discussed in the following two chapters. First, chapter 10 examines two Post-Structural perspectives: ‘Critical Discourse Analysis and Positive Discourse Analysis’, the latter viewed as a response to the former. Critical Discourse Analysis is presented by the author as a multidisciplinary approach that critically studies social problems and power structures in relation to discourse from diverse areas “such as rhetoric, stylistics, sociolinguistics, pragmatics, ethnography, conversation analysis, etc.” (238). The aim of Positive Discourse Analysis, on the other hand, is presented with “the emphasis being put on the discourse we like rather than on the discourse we want to criticize” (254), that is to say, stressing more the positive than the negative aspects of power. The texts and exercises contained in the practice section give the reader the opportunity to examine discourse from a critical perspective, having examined texts using these two Post-Structural methods. Then, chapter 11 exposes one more Post- Structural approach, ‘Mediated Discourse Analysis’, a perspective that centers on human social action and explores every aspect of the environment as part of a larger context. The author emphasizes the interdisciplinarity of this approach and stops to analyze the position of Geosemiotics. Finally, the last chapter, entitled ‘Further Issues in
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 179–183 ISSN 0210-6124 Reviews 181
Discourse Analysis’, constitutes a very good closing for this comprehensive explanatory review. It lists other key aspects and concepts that should be borne in mind when studying DA, such as the selection of different units of analysis depending on the perspective chosen. It also provides a quick insight into some of the main types of genres and includes a note on textual cohesion and coherence, discourse markers and discourse strategies and functions. All in all, the volume ends with a solid conclusion, focusing its attention once again on interdisciplinarity and emphasizing what all the possible perspectives on the study of language in context have in common. Although Alba’s work is not theoretically as thorough as that of Shiffrin, Tannen and Hamilton (2003) The Handbook of Discourse Analysis, it likewise contains a variety of discourse studies and a synergy between theory and data analysis, although at a lower level than that of Shiffrin et al., given that Alba’s book is clearly more specifically addressed to students than to experts. In fact, along the same line of Downing and Locke’s (2006) well-known reference book English Grammar. A University Course, the present publication is very practical and self-explanatory, something that makes it suitable for self-study and distance learning education. Each chapter outline is always directly related to the main goals of the chapter; furthermore, every chapter contains an extensive number of textual examples and data analysis that illustrate the theory provided in the most appropriate manner, in a style similar to Tannen’s (1993) Framing in Discourse. Then, the summary of the main ideas does not only help the reader to recap or review the information contained in the chapter but can also be valuable in terms of information scanning for the scholar who is looking for specific information throughout the book. As to the self-evaluation questions that are placed at the end of each chapter, they are multiple choice questions that address mainly the theoretical issues discussed in each chapter, and can help for study review, but, given their closed nature, do not seem to help in checking if the reader has really understood the main ideas presented therein. Fortunately, these self-evaluation questions are complemented by practical exercises, in which students are asked to analyze different types of texts from various DA perspectives; here, readers can actually put the contents into use, that is to say, they can apply the theories described and really test their understanding of the concepts just read. Shiffrin’s (1994) Approaches to Discourse also provides this type of practice at the end of each chapter, although when similar chapters of both works are compared, Shiffrin’s usually contain a wider number of practical open exercises, and this entails a more varied and thorough practice in some cases. Since the author does not treat in depth any of the approaches to DA presented, the ‘further references’ section at the end of every chapter turns out to be handy for the reader who finds a specific stance worthy of further study whenever it suits his/her academic interests. As far as the useful websites recommended in each chapter are concerned, although they complement the previous information in terms of interesting supplementary sources of information, it must be noted that this type of resource is very ephemeral and changeable (even more so when references to Wikipedia are provided). Thus, although they may be considered valuable today, they might not be so in a few months’ time if they happen to be modified or deleted, which is very often the case on the World Wide Web.
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 179–183 ISSN 0210-6124 182 Noa Talaván Zanón
The reference system of Perspectives on Discourse Analysis can be said to be genuinely exhaustive. The main authors who have studied this scientific field are addressed whenever necessary and so are all those who have played an important role in the evolution of the field: Austin (1962), Brown and Yule (1983), van Dijk (1985), Lakoff (1990), Tannen (1993) and Jefferson (2007), among others. In addition, the various approaches described are presented in a more or less chronological manner, something that enables the reader to understand how some perspectives on DA may have evolved from previous ones. In this sense, one remarkable aspect of the book is the neutral tone with which it addresses the various tendencies and authors. The author does not allow herself to be carried away by the possible criticisms that the various tendencies and authors may have received; thus, “it is [truly] up to analysts to choose a given approach or certain elements of different approaches in order to best suit the needs of their research” (196). To describe DA is “not an easy task” (6), as the author points out towards the beginning of this volume. However, Alba ends up proving this first statement wrong, thanks to the mixture of pedagogical and critical style she uses to describe this field in the most comprehensive way possible for 409 pages. It could even be considered a somewhat reduced and updated version of van Dijk’s volumes entitled Handbook of Discourse Analysis (1985). Apart from commenting on almost everything that has been said on DA, the author provides a series of in-depth analyses of different text types, as well as practical exercises that constructively supplement the theoretical description. All in all, a very good reference book for students, thanks to its instructive approach, and a handy resource for scholars drawn to such a fascinating field.
Works Cited
Austin, John Langshaw 1962: How to Do Things with Words. Oxford: Clarendon P. Bakhtin, Mikhail 1981: ‘Discourse in the Novel’. Michael Holquist, ed. The Dialogic Imagination. Austin: U of Texas P. 259-422. Bourdieu, Pierre 1991: ‘Language and Symbolic Power’. Adam Jarworski and Nikolas Coupland, eds. The Discourse Reader. London and New York: Routledge. 502-13. Brown, Paul and Stephen C. Levinson 1987: Politeness. Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Brown, Gillian and George Yule 1983: Discourse Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Downing, Angela and Philip Locke 2006: English Grammar. A University Course. London and New York: Routledge. Foucault, Michel 1980: Power/Knowledge: Selected Writings and Other Interviews 1972-1977. Colin Gordon, ed. New York: Pantheon Books. Goffman, Erving 1959: The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Anchor Books. Grice, Paul 1975: ‘Logic and Conversation’. Jerry Cole, ed. Syntax and Semantics 3: Speech Acts. New York: Academic P. 41-58. Gumperz, John J. 1982: Discourse Strategies. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Jefferson, Gail 2007: Sequence Organization in Interaction: A Primer in Conversational Analysis. Vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Hymes, Dell 1970: ‘On Communicative Competence’. J.B. Pride and Janet Holmes, eds. Sociolinguistics. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Labov, William 1972: Sociolinguistic Patterns. Oxford: Blackwell.
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 179–183 ISSN 0210-6124 Reviews 183
Lakoff, Robin 1990: Talking Power: The Politics of Language. New York: Basic Books. Sacks, Harvey, Emanuel A. Schegloff, and Gail Jefferson 1974: ‘A Simple Systematics for the Organization of Turn-taking in Conversation’. Language 50.4: 696-735. Shiffrin, Deborah 1994: Approaches to Discourse. Malden: Blackwell Publishing. Shiffrin, Deborah, Deborah Tannen and Heidi E. Hamilton 2003: The Handbook of Discourse Analysis. Malden: Blackwell Publishing. Tannen, Deborah 1993: Framing in Discourse. New York: Oxford UP. van Dijk, Teun A. 1985: Handbook of Discourse Analysis. 4 vols. London: Academic P.
Received 24 September 2010 Revised version accepted 25 January 2011
N. Talaván Zanón works as a Lecturer in the Foreign Languages Department at the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED) in Madrid. She is a certified translator and currently holds the position of academic coordinator of English CI at the Centro Universitario de Idiomas a Distancia (Open University Language Centre), Spain.
Address: Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Facultad de Filología, Departamento de Filologías Extranjeras y sus Lingüísticas, Senda del Rey, 7, 28040 Madrid, Spain. Tel.: +34 913988626. Fax: +34 913987399.
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 179–183 ISSN 0210-6124
Manuel M. Martín Rodríguez 2009: Gaspar de Villagrá: Legista, soldado y poeta. León: Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de León. 347 pp. ISBN 978-84-9773- 487-5
M. Carmen Gómez Galisteo ESNE – Universidad Camilo José Cela [email protected]
Until fairly recently, it was commonplace to open a U.S. history textbook only to find it beginning with an account of the foundation of the first British settlement in North America, Jamestown, in 1607. According to the way American history has been conventionally taught, the nation’s historical roots were to be found either in Jamestown or, preferably, in the Puritan communities which sprouted in New England following the arrival of the Pilgrim Fathers in 1620 and the Great Migration of the 1630s. In presenting such a view of America’s past, History books as well as literary anthologies dealing with the United States have, with very few exceptions, consistently ignored the Spaniards’ contribution. History books in particular have traditionally dated the origins of American literature back to the publication in 1588 of Thomas Harriot’s chronicle, A Briefe and True Report of the New-found Land of Virginia. By considering American literature only that originally written in English, Spanish- language texts were more often than not left out from history books even when they had been written on North American soil. This omission, of course, was far from being accidental, for it reflected nationalistic agendas that have for long decisively shaped the study and teaching of United States history (Mulford 1999: 1; Baym 1989: 459). As a result of this critical neglect, Spanish conquistadors such as Gaspar Pérez de Villagrá or Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, to name but two, have not enjoyed the historical credibility paid to contemporary English explorers such as Captain John Smith or Thomas Harriot. Until a couple of decades ago, “contemporary Anglo-Americans may have scaled back their historical horizons to Plymouth Rock and 1776, leaving 1492 for Hispanics to worry about” (Butzer 1992: 346) while the New England Puritan Fathers were heralded as the forerunners of the ‘true’ American identity and history (Baym 1989: 460). The Spanish presence in North America was not only regarded as distinct and separate from the British colonization process, but also most conveniently omitted. It is because of this scholarly neglect that the figure of Gaspar Pérez de Villagrá, the first poet who wrote in the present-day United States, has not until recently become the object of a more serious and thorough study by the American academe. Evident of this change in sensibility is the entry devoted to Gaspar Pérez de Villagrá in the latest edition of the Heath Anthology of American Literature (Bruce-Novoa and Winans 2005). More often than not, the study of Villagrá’s work has been limited to critical editions of his Historia de la nueva Mexico or confined to histories devoted to the Spanish exploration of the Americas. When it comes to the former, Villagrá’s only work has certainly been the object of a number of critical editions, including those by
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 185–190 ISSN 0210-6124 186 M. Carmen Gómez Galisteo
Mercedes Junquera (1989), Victorino Madrid Rubio, Elsía Armesto Rodríguez and Augusto Quintana Prieto (1991), Miguel Encinias, Alfred Rodríguez, and Joseph P. Sánchez (1992), or Felipe I. Echenique (1993). However, when it comes to Villagrá’s labor as a conquistador and explorer of New Mexico, Wiget’s 1991 landmark essay ‘Reading Against the Grain: Origin Stories and American Literary History’ is an exception to this trend in scholarship in that it compares Villagrá’s Historia with a Native American account as well as with Pilgrim Father William Bradford’s Of Plymouth Plantation, thus placing Villagrá in the context of more canonical interpretations of America’s literary history. However, until now there had been no fully-fledged study of Gaspar Pérez de Villagrá’s work and historical context. Manuel Martín Rodríguez’s book comes to solve this telling and flagrant gap in scholarship. Gaspar de Villagrá: Legista, soldado y poeta constitutes the most exhaustive biography of Gaspar Pérez de Villagrá to date and, as such, is a valuable piece of scholarship for anyone interested not only in colonial Hispanic Studies but in Early American Studies as well. The introduction of the book explains the relevance of Villagrá’s Historia de la nueva Mexico and its publishing history. First published in Alcalá de Henares in 1610, it combines poetry and history in its depiction of the origins of New Mexico, making of Villagrá the first poet in what is nowadays the Southwest of the United States. The volume follows a chronological order to chronicle Villagrá’s life and is divided into nine chapters preceded by Villagrá’s genealogical tree, a chronological chart of the main events in his life and an introduction. Chapter 1, ‘Antecedentes familiares’, recounts Villagrá’s family history. Born Gaspar Pérez in Puebla de Los Ángeles in New Spain around 1555, he was subsequently better known as Gaspar (Pérez) de Villagrá, this being the Spanish village from which his parents, Hernán Pérez and Catalina Ramírez, hailed (present-day La Unión de Campos in Valladolid). While the names of many of those who participated in the Spanish conquest campaigns in America have fallen into oblivion, his name stands apart from that of other, lesser-known conquistadors because of his authorship of the Historia de la nueva Mexico. Chapter 2, ‘Etapa salmantina’, collects information about Villagrá’s formative years in the city of Salamanca. Having arrived in Spain for the first time with his father in 1569, Villagrá did not begin his university education until 1571, most probably spending the two years in between completing his Latin and educational background in preparation for his university studies (39). Education at the time put special emphasis on rhetoric, grammar and the study of classical sources, a formal training that proved decisive for Villagrá’s later life (46, 52). The volume offers the transcription of documents related to Villagrá as well as first-hand testimonies of his contemporaries. The information that is missing about Villagrá’s particular experiences as a student in Salamanca is supplied by means of other, contemporary testimonies. It is a particular strength of the book that Martín Rodríguez has checked out the original documents himself, rather than relying on previous transcriptions of them (which, by means of Martín Rodríguez’s scholarship, are sometimes proved to be inaccurate). A number of false truths and lies have made their way into Villagrá’s biography, which, after being repeated endless times, have come to be considered the true official history on the basis
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 185–190 ISSN 0210-6124 Reviews 187 of their reiteration; these are now being proved wrong and amended. Martín Rodríguez, after a close examination of the Universidad de Salamanca records, comes out with the rather surprising revelation that Villagrá did not major in arts (letras), as has been held, but that he read law. With this, the doubts and confusion raised as to why Villagrá transcribed legal documents in full in his poem are put to rest (24). This is the first time that this valuable piece of information regarding Villagrá’s academic formation has been proved, constituting one of the many strengths of this volume. The following chapter, ‘El regreso a Nueva España: Villagrá en la Nueva Vizcaya’, offers new information at the same time as it advances some new venues for research in Villagrá’s biography still to be explored, such as, for instance, whether he had a daughter (apart from his two sons), as some scholars contend on the basis of the existence of a will penned by a so called son-in-law of Villagrá’s (59). The significance of this section comes from the fact that mystery surrounds the life of Villagrá once he returned to America; only snippets of information are known about the following two decades of his life. During this period in his life, Villagrá was a participant in the wars against the local Native Americans, and on July 23, 1596 Juan de Oñate appointed him to the post of Procurador General del Campo in his expedition to New Mexico, a post that he unwillingly accepted only after much persuading (66-69). In ‘Itinerario de la expedición de Juan de Oñate (1597-1599)’ and ‘Gaspar de Villagrá en la Nueva México’, Martín Rodríguez not only offers the trajectory of the expedition but also points out probable reasons why the only two chroniclers of the expedition, Villagrá himself and the author of the Ytinerario de las Minas del Caxco, chose to put an end to their respective works after the brutal slaughter of Native Americans, interpreting this event as a decisive shift in the character of the colonization of New Mexico (107). Villagrá stated his intention of resuming his poem with a second part recounting the massacre of Ácoma and what followed, but he never managed to write it. His silence speaks louder than words. Martín Rodríguez points out the difficulties that Villagrá would have had to recount this incident in the same heroic mode as that of the Historia (107). These chapters also show how Villagrá’s academic formation and religious zeal had a profound impact on his time in New Mexico (110). For Villagrá, the conquest of New Mexico “no se trató de una experiencia exclusivamente militar, sino que su compromiso con la colonización posterior … fue constante” (177).1 It was not a case of veni, vidi, vici, but a long-term commitment to the lands he had discovered. ‘Nuevo viaje a España y publicación de la Historia de la Nueua Mexico’ recounts the events leading to the publication of the Historia, which was supported by several Spanish scholars who praised the work in a number of poems as a sort of introduction preceding the Historia (188-89). The existence of these poems praising Villagrá’s work is especially significant, for this scholarly support was more often than not unattainable to the majority of conquistadors. Conquistadors such as Mariño de Lobera (in Chile), Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca (in the U.S. Southwest), Bernal Díaz del Castillo (in New Spain) and others, failed to win scholars’ endorsement of their works, unless they had
1 “It was not an exclusively military experience; his commitment to the future colonization was constant”.
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 185–190 ISSN 0210-6124 188 M. Carmen Gómez Galisteo them extensively re-written by more ‘trained’ voices, as happened in the case of Lobera (Gómez Galisteo 2009: 119). Villagrá, by contrast, enjoyed both support and praise for the publication of his Historia. ‘Regreso a Nueva España: Juicio, defensa y condena’ presents Villagrá as suffering a fate similar to that of his fellow conquistador Cabeza de Vaca. Villagrá was accused by his detractors of the “muertes, justicias, y castigos que el Adelantado don Iuan de Oñate dizen que hizo en la Nueua Mexico” (qtd. in 218). Tried in 1613, Villagrá was sentenced in 1614, deprived of his rank and condemned to banishment from the capital of New Spain, thus having the misfortune of sharing a fate common to a number of Spanish conquistadors fallen out of royal favor. In ‘Nuevo viaje a España (1615)’, we are introduced to a Villagrá already back in Madrid, where he was given back “la certificación de méritos de la Audiencia de Nueva Galicia” (251). It seems that Villagrá spent the years between 1615 and 1620 in Spain trying to rehabilitate his tarnished reputation, to secure royal pardon and a new post in reward for his past services to the Crown. Moreover, Villagrá apparently worked hard to obtain the same rights for Oñate (253-54) although there is no documentation left of this. The book closes with Villagrá’s will, his last signature and the inventory of Villagrá’s possessions compiled after his death at sea in the ship taking him back home (278). The last chapter, ‘Los herederos de Gaspar de Villagrá, 1621-1625’, recounts the life experiences of Villagrá’s two sons, José and Gaspar. The two appendixes that follow consist of a list of the participants in the Oñate expedition (1598-1602) and a comparison of the two versions of the ‘Memorial de Justificación’. In sum, this volume is a most valuable piece of scholarship and a much-welcomed contribution to the field of Early American Studies in general and to the study of Early American Spanish-language texts in the United States of today in particular. Because of the reasons detailed above, this is a book to take into account as a reference for future studies on Villagrá or his Historia, a book appropriate for anyone interested in the colonial history of New Mexico. This book is the first volume of an ongoing three- volume study, the second volume being an annotated critical edition of the Historia whereas the third will consist of a new, critical analysis of the Historia. We shall be looking forward to the publication of the next two volumes.
Works Cited Baym, Nina 1989: ‘Early Histories of American Literature: A Chapter in the Institution of New England’. American Literary History 1.3: 459-88. Bruce-Novoa, Juan and Amy E. Winans 2005: ‘Gaspar Pérez de Villagrá (1555-1620)’. Paul Lauter, ed. The Heath Anthology of American Literature. 5th edition
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 185–190 ISSN 0210-6124 Reviews 189
Villagrá, Gaspar de 1989: Historia de Nuevo México. Ed. Mercedes Junquera. Madrid: Historia 16. ––––– 1991: Historia de Nuevo México. Ed. Victorino Madrid Rubio, Elsía Armesto Rodríguez and Augusto Quintana Prieto. Astorga: Publicaciones del Centro de Estudios Astorganos Marcelo Macías. ––––– 1992: Historia de la Nueva México, 1610. Ed. Miguel Encinias, Alfred Rodríguez and Joseph Sánchez. Albuquerque: U of New Mexico P. ––––– 1993: Historia de la Nueva México. Ed. Felipe I. Echenique. México, D. F.: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. Wiget, Andrew 1991: ‘Reading Against the Grain: Origin Stories and American Literary History’. American Literary History 3.2: 209-31.
Received 28 August 2010 Revised version accepted 10 December 2011
Mª Carmen Gomez-Galisteo currently teaches at the Universidad Camilo José Cela in Madrid. Her research interests are Early American literature, captivity narratives, adaptation studies, and American popular culture. Her most recent publication is The Wind is Never Gone: Sequels, Parodies and Rewritings of Gone With the Wind. Jefferson, NC and London: MacFarland, 2011.
Address: ESNE – Universidad Camilo José Cela, English Department, Avda. Alfonso XIII, 97, 28016 Madrid, Spain. Tel.:+34 915552528. Fax: +34 915556337.
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 185–190 ISSN 0210-6124
Josep M. Armengol 2010: Richard Ford and the Fiction of Masculinities. New York: Peter Lang. xi+138 pp. ISBN 978-1433110511
Peter Ferry Queen’s University Belfast [email protected]
In an interview with The Paris Review in 1996, Richard Ford is asked, “Some critics have said that they consider you a particularly male writer. Do you see yourself that way?” Ford’s reply is emphatic: “I think that’s a load of crap” (Lyons 1996). As Michael Kimmel states in his article ‘Invisible Masculinity’, “to men ... gender often remains invisible. Strange as it may sound, men are the ‘invisible’ gender. Ubiquitous in positions of power everywhere, men are invisible to themselves” (1993: 29). The great project of the burgeoning field of Masculinity Studies, therefore, is to make the invisible visible. With this task in mind, Josep M. Armengol’s Richard Ford and the Fiction of Masculinities (2010), the winner of the 2010 AEDEAN Literary Scholarship Prize, is a landmark text. In the act of ‘gendering’ the writing of one of the heavyweights of contemporary American fiction, Armengol is not only breaking new ground in the field of research on Richard Ford, but he also, and some might say even more importantly, affirms the value of literary representations of masculinity in the study of social construction of (American) masculinity. Masculinity Studies, a branch of the diverse and dynamic field of Gender Studies, has enjoyed steady progress for the last three decades within the disciplines of sociology, psychology and cultural studies (Lea and Schoene 2002: 319). Challenging the universal belief of a masculine essence, scholarship within the field has demonstrated that masculinity is a historically contingent construction (Foucault 1981; Connell 1987, 2005; Butler 1990; Kimmel 1996, 2000). Despite these advances within the fields of sociology and psychology, it is only in the last ten years that the field of Masculinity Studies has begun to recognise the wider cultural and social value of literary representations of men and masculinities. Studies such as Ben Knight’s Writing Masculinities (1999), Berthold Schoene-Harwood’s Writing Men: Literary Masculinities from Frankenstein to the New Man (2000) and Alice Ferrebe’s Masculinity in Male Authored Fiction 1950-2000 (2005) have demonstrated the ability of the novel to elucidate, illustrate and critique the social condition of masculinity. Josep M. Armengol’s Richard Ford and the Fiction of Masculinities not only builds upon the emerging awareness of the wider social value of the literary text, but also points towards the potential of the American novel to offer new models of manhood in contemporary American society. The main body of the text is made up of five chapters of material previously published as journal articles in Atlantis: Journal of the Spanish Association for Anglo-American Studies, Journal of Men’s Studies and Revista de estudios norteamericanos. In the preceding introductory chapter, Armengol offers a succinct summary of the main critical approaches to the study of Richard Ford. Recognised as a writer of American realist fiction alongside Raymond Carver and Tobias Wolff, we learn that Ford’s fiction is either deemed an illustration of working-class experience (Folks 2000), a rumination on ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 191–196 ISSN 0210-6124 192 Peter Ferry southern attitudes (Hobson 1991), or a reflection upon feelings of alienation (Guagliardo 2000). Armengol’s argument that critics have focused on “epistemological, ontological, and/or stylistic questions” (7) and have therefore overlooked the “perhaps less philosophical and more materialist, gender issues in his works” (7) is crucial – both to Armengol’s study of Ford and the growing scholarly interest in the literary representations of masculinity. Drawing on a range of feminist critics that shape his theoretical approach to the study of masculinity, Armengol is intent on displaying that the deconstruction and reconstruction, or indeed the decentring and recentring, of the modern man is not an abstract theoretical notion but is fundamental to the very fabric of society. And it is Ford’s fiction that proves to be the ideal case study to explore this hypothesis. Chapter one, ‘Masculinity as Success? Self-Made Manhood in A Piece of My Heart and Rock Springs’, targets one of the fundamental ideals of American masculinity – self-made manhood. Setting Ford neatly into a historical lineage of American authors who have challenged this myth, including Mark Twain, Herman Melville, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Arthur Miller, Armengol argues that Richard Ford “has deconstructed the American myth of self-made manhood by re-presenting it as a fictitious, damaging, and ultimately, unattainable ideal” (26). Armengol reads Ford alongside the revolutionary ideas of the Liberationist Movement of the 1970s that identified the restrictions and oppressions of the male sex role, and Michael Kimmel’s writing on male power. Ford’s contemporary revision of this American myth is characterised by three distinct yet interrelated features. The first is Ford’s illustration of “the liberationist claim that men’s obsession with money and success ends up having a detrimental effect on their lives and bodies” (31). A Piece of My Heart proves to be the ideal case study. The father of Sam Newel, one of the novel's main characters, strives towards this unfeasible projection of true masculinity until both his physical and mental health deteriorate and he suffers a fatal accident at work. In his attempts to become a ‘self-made’ man he pays the ultimate price. The second warning given by Ford illustrates “how the obsession with wealth can easily turn into moral irresponsibility, and ultimately, into family dissolution and emotional isolation” (35). Earl Middleton, the protagonist of the short story ‘Rock Springs’, is a man who believes that he can fulfil his American Dream by stealing cars as he makes his way to Florida to start a new life with his girlfriend and daughter. As his dream turns into a living nightmare, Ford makes it clear that Earl’s inability to recognise what is real in his life will force those that love him to leave him. Armengol suggests that these stories demonstrate that the American male’s sense of his own masculinity is shaped in the juxtaposition of his ‘public’ and ‘private’ masculinities. This conflict is played out by Ford with these opposing masculine types represented by the two male characters of ‘Fireworks’, Eddie Starling and Louis Reiner. Unemployed after being fired at work, Eddie has moved to a poor neighbourhood with his wife Lois. One day Lois happens to meet her ex-husband, Louis Reiner, a man whom Eddie despises for his financial wealth and success. Ultimately it is the feminine voice of Lois, the woman who connects these two men, who “repeatedly undermines the mythical image of Reiner as a self-made man” (39) and outs Reiner as a fraud. Armengol puts forward the character of Eddie Starling – a man who accepts the reality of having to depend, both financially and emotionally, on his female partner – as Ford’s proposition of another fulfilling masculine identity that is obtainable and achievable.
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 191–196 ISSN 0210-6124 Reviews 193
In the second chapter, ‘“The Buddy as Anima?” Men’s Friendships in The Sportswriter’, Armengol attempts to ‘move beyond’ what he identifies as the binary opposition of literary and empirical male homosocial relationships. Beginning with a historical overview of literary depictions of male friendship, Armengol introduces Leslie A. Fiedler’s Love and Death in the American Novel (1960). This is undoubtedly sound judgment. Fiedler identifies the main theme of American literature as the male figure’s rejection of women and (hetero) sexuality in favour of male comradeship away from the ‘civilizing’ nature of society. Armengol sets this almost mythical fictional representation of male friendship against the social reality of homosocial relations between men. Citing a range of scholars, including Michel Foucault, Michael Kimmel and Lynne Segal, who identify the birth of the modern homosexual as the point at which homosociality took on its modern form, Armengol states, “when the term ‘homosexual’ changed from an adjective to a noun, homophobia came to play an increasingly central role in men’s lives” (47). The relationship between the protagonist of The Sportswriter, Frank Bascombe, and a man he meets at ‘The Divorced Men’s Club’, Walter Luckett, appears as the ideal case study. Armengol underlines the key aspects that define their relationship: Frank’s uneasiness in the role of the ‘listener’, his fear of emotional attachment, and a rejection of intimacy.1 Armengol’s argument throughout is measured, well structured and lucid. The only concern I would have is that on two occasions in this chapter Armengol accuses Frank Bascombe of portraying “blatant homophobia” (49, 56). I am not entirely convinced that this is the case. The Sportswriter is certainly a text that “illustrates the specific influence of masculinity ideals, particularly male homophobia, on the gendered construction of male friendship” (49), but I wonder if Armengol is overstating the influence, or indeed appearance, of manifest homophobia in Frank’s relationship with Walter. Walter is not rejected by Frank because of his homosexual encounter with Warren, nor even when Walter later kisses Frank. Walter is rejected by Frank for not conforming to Frank’s idea of the traditional definition of masculinity. Frank and his ‘friends’ in the Divorced Men’s Club maintain a strict code of ‘masculine’ behaviour. Frank sees masculinity as defined by isolation, rationality, self-control and a non-display of emotional feeling. Does this, however, make him ‘blatantly’ homophobic? I can’t help feeling that this reading of Frank is a leap too far. The third chapter of the book, ‘Where are Fathers in American Literature? Fatherhood in Independence Day and The Lay of the Land’, addresses an area of American literary studies that is characterized by a distinct lack of research. With his overview of representations of fatherhood in the American literary tradition, Armengol identifies two major themes: the absence of the father in American fiction or, if the father is present, his existence as a figure enforcing patriarchal authority. The two novels analysed in this chapter, Independence Day (1995) and The Lay of the Land (2006), challenge these established patterns and offer a contemporary model of fatherhood. The role of the absent
1 It must be said that Armengol, dedicating a substantial paragraph to Frank’s issue with intimacy, repeatedly quotes from Ford’s 1995 novel Independence Day but incorrectly attributes these lines to The Sportswriter. Armengol repeats the quotation at a later point but sources the quotation correctly on page 69. ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 191–196 ISSN 0210-6124 194 Peter Ferry father that Frank Bascombe played in The Sportswriter, the first instalment of the trilogy that these two novels complete, has now evolved. Frank still believes in a certain masculine code of behaviour, which is demonstrated when he gives his son Paul a copy of Emerson’s Self-Reliance and the Declaration of Independence, and yet we see Frank undergo a transformation in Independence Day. Armengol offers a perceptive reading of the pivotal scene with Frank and his son Paul when Paul is struck in the eye with a baseball at a pitching range. As Armengol argues, “Paul’s accident is also the catalyst that begins to push Frank out of the Existence Period” (71), a time characterized by isolation, cynicism and emotional disengagement into the ‘Permanent Period’ with his new role as “an emotionally committed, nurturing, closer father and man” (73). Frank’s journey reaches its conclusion in The Lay of the Land. Frank’s self-awareness and acceptance of his, perhaps necessary, self-transformation is complete. Frank feels he must move on from the Permanent Period and embrace what he calls the Next Level, a state of mind characterized by acceptance – acceptance of his frailties as a father, and acceptance of who his son and his daughter have become. Armengol’s analysis of the second and third parts of what has now become the ‘Frank Bascombe Trilogy’ is extremely significant. Through his careful reading of the effect of fatherhood on Ford’s famed American ‘everyman’, Armengol underlines the force of fatherhood in shaping contemporary American masculinity. It is ultimately fatherhood that makes Frank’s masculinity visible to himself. It is fatherhood that offers Frank the opportunity to question his traditional masculine beliefs and reconsider what it is to be an American male in the 21st century. The majority of research into sexuality within the field of Masculinity Studies is focused on what are considered marginalised sexualities. Armengol’s book affirms itself as a pioneering piece of scholarship by concentrating its efforts on denaturalising the dominant category of heterosexuality. Armengol achieves this by presenting masculinity and male sexuality as a product of sociohistorical processes. The seminal study on sexuality in American literature is undoubtedly Leslie A. Fiedler’s Love and Death in the American Novel (1960) and this text anchors the overview section of chapter four, ‘Sexing Men: Male Sexualities in Rock Springs and A Multitude of Sins’. Despite its influence upon the field of American literary studies, Armengol attempts to follow on from Fiedler’s canonical contribution to reach a contemporary reading of male sexuality in American fiction. It would appear that Ford’s fiction upholds the American novel’s dismissive or immature treatment of sexuality and masculinity identified by Fiedler. However, Armengol argues that “Ford’s fiction is centrally concerned with depicting, and rewriting, the traditional connection between masculinity and male sexuality in American literature” (89). Armengol offers a solid and persuasive argument that suggests that selective pieces of Ford’s fiction, particularly his short fiction, do subvert traditional notions of masculine sexual behaviour whilst pointing to new alternative images of male sexuality. Armengol presents Ford’s short story ‘Privacy’, from the collection A Multitude of Sins, as the ideal case study of a central element of heterosexual masculinity – the male gaze. Citing the feminist critics Lynne Segal and Laura Mulvey, particularly Mulvey’s work on ‘scopophilia’, Armengol argues that in the story ‘Privacy’ “Ford challenges the traditional gender dichotomies between activity/passivity, looking/to be looked at, and masculinity/femininity” (91-92). The second short story analysed in this chapter, ‘Winterkill’, from Rock Springs (1987), also revises concepts of patriarchal masculinity.
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 191–196 ISSN 0210-6124 Reviews 195
Applying the theory of Eve Sedgwick on the power relations at play within male-male- female love triangles, Armengol argues that the rivalry between the two male characters over the female character proves a method for Lester Snow and Troy Burnham to display their superior masculinity to each other. Although Les and Nola have a sexual encounter in a car, it is Troy, disabled from the waist down, who takes Nola Foster to his room as the story ends. In doing so Armengol declares that “moving beyond reductive phallic notion of sexuality, Ford opens up the world of male (hetero)sexuality to different bodily pleasures and sensations, as well as to a new world of feelings and emotions” (96). Ford’s fiction is often considered asexual and therefore Armengol’s argument appears as a new starting point for further research on the effect of Ford’s subversion of traditional conceptions of male sexuality on American masculinity. In the final chapter of the book, ‘Richard Ford’s Revisions of Violence as a Test of Manhood’, Armengol demonstrates Ford’s subversive approach to male violence by setting him alongside the author whom many would consider the father figure of literary representations of masculinity and violence: Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway’s posthumously published piece of short fiction, ‘An African Story’ (1954), serves as the perfect example for Armengol to demonstrate that masculine acts of violence in Hemingway’s fiction are associated with bravery, virility and heroism. Although it would seem that Ford, in some ways, follows Hemingway within the lineage of American literature, Armengol identifies a major distinction. Rather than violence being celebrated as a fundamental element of masculinity as in many of Hemingway’s novels, acts of violence in Ford’s Rock Springs lead to imprisonment (‘Sweethearts’), loss of love and affection (‘Empire’) and family dissolution (‘Optimists’) (108). Violence is therefore rejected as a form of masculine self-definition and is re-appropriated as a form of self- destruction. Armengol’s case study of choice, ‘Communist’, not only reaffirms this view but demonstrates the theoretical findings of Masculinity scholars, namely Myriam Miedzian, Lynne Segal and Michael Kimmel, who have identified that “male violence does not occur when men feel most powerful, but when they feel relatively powerless” (113). The protagonists of these short stories, both younger men witnessing the negative impact of the violent acts committed by the father figures in their lives, embody “the possibility of a new, alternative, and nonviolent model of manhood” (116). Armengol’s hopeful conclusion of Ford’s fiction offering “positive images of boys and men who manage to move away from violence, leaving abusive fathers and aggressive friends behind” (119) connects directly to the overall premise of this study. In gendering the fiction of Ford, a writer, it must be said, who considers his work as genderless, Armengol has skilfully and persuasively posited that Ford’s writing displays changing patterns of masculine performance. As such Ford’s fiction suggests the possibility of the American male embracing new forms of masculinity as we settle into the 21st century. As this book is a collection of previously published material on a diverse range of issues that underpin the study of contemporary American masculinity, it might be expected that the text would lack a strong sense of cohesion. On the contrary, Armengol’s text displays the depth and range of scholarship required for a successful study into literary representations of masculinity. In the foreword of the book Michael Kimmel states that the critical study of masculinity is in its earliest stage, calling Masculinity Studies “an offshoot of Gender Studies” (ix). The question remains,
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 191–196 ISSN 0210-6124 196 Peter Ferry therefore, of when Masculinity Studies will be recognised as its own stand-alone area of research. Will it forever be the younger brother of Gender Studies? In my estimation it is only a matter of time before further academic investigation of the quality demonstrated here by Josep M. Armengol will lead to this burgeoning academic discipline becoming a fully formed, dynamic and innovative project. The greatest accolade that can be laid upon Richard Ford and the Fiction of Masculinities is that it will surely be recognised as a seminal text in the continuing development of Masculinity Studies. The text undoubtedly achieves its own specific aims and objectives in gendering the fiction of Richard Ford whilst, arguably even more significantly, affirms the value of literary representations of masculinity in sociological investigation.
Works Cited Butler, Judith 1990. Gender Trouble. New York: Routledge. Connell, Raewyn 1987: Gender and Power. Cambridge: Polity P. ––––– 2005 (1995): Masculinities. Cambridge: Polity P. Ferrebe, Alice 2005: Masculinity in Male-Authored Fiction 1950-2000. Houndmills: Macmillan. Fiedler, Leslie. A. 1998 (1960): Love and Death in the American Novel. Champaign, IL: Dalkey Archive P. Folks, Jeffrey J. 2000: ‘Richard Ford’s Poststructuralist Cowboys’. Huey Guagliardo, ed. Perspectives on Richard Ford. Jackson: Mississippi UP. 141-56. Foucault, Michel 1981 (1976): The History of Sexuality Vol. 1: An Introduction. Trans. Robert Hurley. London: Penguin. Guagliardo, Huey 2000: ‘Introduction’. Perspectives on Richard Ford. Ed. Huey Guagliardo. Jackson: Mississippi UP: xi-xvii. Hobson, Fred 1991: The Southern Writer in the Postmodern World. Athens: Georgia UP. Kimmel, Michael 1993: ‘Invisible Masculinity’. Society 30.6: 28-35. ––––– 1996: Manhood in America: A Cultural History. New York: Methuen. ––––– 2000: The Gendered Society. Oxford: Oxford UP. Knights, Ben 1999: Writing Masculinities: Male Narratives in Twentieth-Century Fiction. Houndmills: Macmillan. Lea, Michael and Berthold Schoene 2002: ‘Introduction to the Special Section on Literary Masculinities’. Men and Masculinities 4.4: 319-21. Lyons, Bonnie 1996: ‘Richard Ford, The Art of Fiction No. 147’. The Paris Review
Received 17 February 2011 Accepted 10 April 2011
Peter Ferry is a second year PhD student at Queen's University, Belfast. His thesis explores literary representations of American masculinity in contemporary fiction set in Manhattan. His research interests include the areas of Masculinity Studies, particularly the work of Raewyn Connell and Michael Kimmel, contemporary American fiction, and postmodern theory.
Address: Queen’s University Belfast, School of English, 2 University Square, Belfast, BT7 1NN, UK. Tel.: +44 (0)2871312404. Fax: +44 (0)28 90973334.
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 191–196 ISSN 0210-6124 Gerardo Rodríguez Salas 2009: Katherine Mansfield: El Posmodernismo incipiente de una modernista renegada. Madrid: Verbum. 280 pp. ISBN 978-84-7962-456-9
Eva Gómez Jiménez Universidad de Granada [email protected]
Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923) is considered one of the best and most representative British writers of short fiction. Historically speaking, it is acknowledged that she belonged to the modernist era, and, consequently, to my knowledge, every study that has been published on her work has been carried out from a modernist approach. Gerardo Rodríguez Salas is the first scholar to develop a monographic study in which Mansfield is analyzed from a new perspective; he claims that Mansfield is a modernist writer who anticipated the postmodernist movement. This he does on the strength of certain features that prominently belong to this later literary period. The structure of the book follows a clear pattern. It consists of four chapters, each corresponding to one or several postmodernist features that Rodríguez Salas finds in Katherine Mansfield’s work. The chapters are preceded by an introduction and followed by Conclusions, an extensive Bibliography and an Index. Each chapter is related to the rest, since although they make reference to different features and are self- contained, there is interdependence between one concept and the others. In the introductory chapter of Katherine Mansfield: El posmodernismo incipente de una modernista renegada, Gerardo Rodríguez Salas focuses his attention on the distinction between Modernism, Postmodernism and Post-Postmodernism, both in terms of chronology and ontology. Although Katherine Mansfield belongs to Modernism according to time, the intention of the author is to dissociate her from this movement. He also introduces the term marginality in Postmodernism, an aspect that will undoubtedly determine the whole book. Taking the option that politics is one of the main concerns of this movement, Postmodernism has an important social scope related to ‘dedoxification’. Finally, the author takes the nine postmodernist features defined by Hassan in 1987 and brings them together into four groups which correspond to the next four chapters in the book and which are found in Mansfield’s stories: characters as split subjects, language as a key to dismantling oppression, intertextuality and parody. Chapter one is devoted to the split subject. In order to explain this concept, the author starts by introducing the term indeterminacy, closely related to Postmodernism and its impossibility to be defined. The split subject, the central aspect of this chapter, is better understood thanks to the clear explanation of the differences between subject and individual and the concept of the sublime. Here, Rodríguez Salas illustrates the different perspectives of Modernism and Postmodernism in relation to the subject: while the former seeks the truth, the latter accepts the idea of chaos, although it does not offer any solution; this is a crucial criterion for placing Katherine Mansfield in the second movement. After giving the opinions of several scholars, the author justifies his
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 197–201 ISSN 0210-6124 198 Eva Gómez Jiménez preference for Wilde’s theory (1981). Finally, Rodríguez Salas explains the three attitudes towards essence in Postmodernism: apocalypse, optimism and conciliation. He adopts a conciliatory position, suggesting a fragmented, split subject whose inner world is always an interrogation. This first part of the chapter provides the theoretical background, in places somewhat densely, that underpins the thesis proposed throughout this book. Subsequently, he applies this theoretical background to Mansfield’s texts. Starting with the autobiographical material, the author shows that, while the letters give an optimistic vision (they show the social projection of the subject), the diary is the perfect example of the conciliatory position (Mansfield uses this material to defend artificiality and fragmentation, and admits the concept of the sublime).The textual analysis involving ‘The Daughters of the Late Colonel’, ‘The Garden Party’, ‘Je ne parle pas français’ and ‘A Married Man’s Story’ provides many examples to justify the author’s position. Chapter two, ‘Lenguaje, dogmatismo y estrategias subversivas’, is similar in structure. It starts by presenting language as a powerful tool for society, together with the concept of mask. This part calls attention to ideology, the concept of catachresis, denotation and pronouns, while also introducing silence and paraliterature. In this way, Rodríguez Salas attempts to define Katherine Mansfield’s type of metafiction and her use of silence and paraliterature as subversive strategies, although the latter is not used as an incipient feature of her work. As regards silence, Rodríguez Salas analyses ‘Weak Heart’, ‘The Doll’s House’, ‘The Daughters of the Late Colonel’ and ‘The Garden Party’: in all of them, the position of Katherine Mansfield towards silence is systematized and there are two levels of significance, which Rodríguez Salas justifies with a profusion of examples. Regarding paraliterature, having analysed ‘Miss Brill’, ‘Je ne parle pas français’ and ‘A Married Man’s Story’, Rodríguez Salas finds common features, such as the references to theatre, the artificiality of language, or even the consciousness of the literary process. Chapter three is the longest, and also the one which contains a deeper textual analysis. This section focuses on intertextuality and, just as in the previous chapters, the author starts by clarifying the meaning of this term, stating the relation between it and paraliterature. For the sake of better understanding, the author selects Genette (1989) and Bakhtin (1994), taking from the first one the clarification of the main concept as the relation of coexistence between two or more texts. The relevant aspect in Bakhtin is the ‘ludicrous’, an aspect that, according to the author, is always present in Mansfield’s production. As Bakhtin points out, there is a clear union between the former and Postmodernism, for both are subordinated to the dominant canon. As before, the remarkable point of this section is the presence of clear explanations of all the terms that are to be used in the textual analysis, for example, dialogism, polyphony, heteroglossia, or the role of the reader. Once everything has been explained, fairytales are selected by the author to represent this postmodernist feature in Mansfield. Rodríguez Salas then proceeds to focus his attention on the conscious use of intertextuality made by Mansfield. He completes his theoretical frame by citing Propp’s Morphology of the Folktale (1985) as the starting point for the deepest textual analysis in the book. This analysis distinguishes the early fairytales from those written in adulthood. The first, written when Mansfield was a teenager, follow the traditional fairytale structure,
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 197–201 ISSN 0210-6124 Reviews 199 although, as Rodríguez Salas emphasises, their themes are usually those of death, darkness or sex. ‘In Summer’, ‘A Fairy Tale’, ‘The Green Tree: A Fairy Tale’, ‘His Ideal’ and ‘Les deux étrangères’ are the analyzed texts. The author reveals their structure according to Propp’s theory, and draws our attention to those elements that make these intentionally subversive. Katherine Mansfield uses the structure of the classic fairy tale in order to question the dominant social values, though in most we can infer a magical atmosphere. Things become different in Mansfield’s fairytales about adulthood: realism, the absence of a magic element, a modernist approach and a new treatment for the themes that were already used before are the features of these texts. Rodríguez Salas discusses intertextuality in ‘Sun and Moon’, ‘A Suburban Fairy Tale’ and ‘The Tiredness of Rosabel’, in particular the influence of ‘Hansel and Gretel’, ‘The Bible’ or ‘Cinderella’. The last chapter in the book is devoted to irony, parody and pastiche. Here again, Rodríguez Salas starts the section by explaining the differences between these three subversive strategies and their relation to paraliterature and intertextuality. His intention is to clarify the situation of irony in Postmodernism, since traditionally it has been placed as a typical feature in Modernism. Different types of irony are also used to distinguish this aspect. Subsequently, he summarises the debate for parody and its comic effect, ending this first section by distinguishing the differences between both concepts. Textual analysis in this last chapter is exemplified, in this case, in ‘Taking the Veil’, ‘Violet’ and ‘Picture’. The sentimental novel and Katherine Mansfield’s inversion of its features are the central elements of this analysis. Rodríguez Salas explains how the author uses such features as women’s passivity, sentimentality or extreme passion in order to show how we should infer the need for change in society. Irony, of course, is Mansfield’s tool; immaturity and sacrifice are the result of women’s reading sentimental novels. A summary of the structure important aspects of the chapters serves as a conclusion and justification of Salas’ postmodernist claim, defending the constant idea that she anticipated this new movement. Rodríguez Salas offers in this book a consistent, clear account of bibliographical references on Mansfield and Postmodernism. “[w]hat we need to develop now with Mansfield criticism and scholarship is what might be called a postmodern view” (Morrow 1990: 42). This statement encapsulates the starting point of this study, and transforms this book into the first volume that defines Mansfield’s works by means of a new critical perspective. At the same time he makes use of the recent modernist approaches that were developed, providing the reader with an excellent, recent bibliographical background. Theoretically speaking, the book by Rodríguez Salas is deep and clarifying. Almost the same length is devoted to theoretical discussion as to textual analysis. This is helpful, since it provides a complete framework for readers to understand the author’s analysis. The length of the book also helps to deal with the matter in depth, which can be increased if the other monographic study, Hijas de la diosa Blanca: ginocrítica y feminismo restaurador en la narrative de Katherine Mansfield (2007), is taken in consideration. Leaving aside critical aspects, Katherine Mansfield: El posmodernismo incipiente de una modernista renegada is a well-structured book. An important aspect of the study is
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 197–201 ISSN 0210-6124 200 Eva Gómez Jiménez its simplicity in structure, since every chapter is divided into two main parts: the theory and the analysis, thus enabling readers to find their way around when seeking a certain part. The length of the Index likewise contributes to the facility in locating discussions or analysis of the short stories. Footnotes have been judiciously employed by Rodríguez Salas to clarify certain sections, a feature for which readers will be grateful since footnotes are much more manageable than endnotes. My only concern about this book is the absence of references to other studies and publications related to Mansfield. Apart from a brief mention of Patrick D. Morrow’s four-page piece of 1990, which points to the absence of a monographic study of Mansfield in terms of Postmodernism, there is nothing of relevance. It is true that Rodríguez Salas initiates his introduction by citing certain names and perspectives apart from his own, and throughout the whole book he makes reference to many scholars. Nevertheless, the volume does not offer the possibility for the reader to know the content of these other works in relation to that of the author. It would have been of great interest to readers if the author had included and discussed these publications, enabling the reader to form a balanced comprehension of Rodríguez Salas’ contribution to the subject of Katherine Mansfield’s oeuvre. In this sense, it is surprising that, apart from Rodríguez Salas’ dissertation, in Spain there is only one thesis on Katherine Mansfield, Recurrencias temáticas y formales en el cuento de autoras en lengua inglesa: de Mansfield a Carter, by Maria Isabel Carrera Suárez, defended in 1988. The subject of this thesis is unrelated to that of Rodríguez Salas, and furthermore, does not deal exclusively with Mansfield. Outside Spain, there are a number of dissertations that also deal with this author with regard to feminism, but none studies Mansfield from a postmodernist perspective. At the same time, the number of theses on Mansfield in the last decade is very low. The effort carried out by Rodríguez Salas has the merit of producing a work that is innovative, exhaustive and pioneering. Rodríguez Salas undoubtedly contributes to clarifying understanding of Mansfield, and his book can be compared to neither contemporary nor previous studies. In this respect its contribution to this field is essential reading. This reviewer sees it as a work that will not disappoint and will, on the contrary, provide a stimulus to re-read Mansfield’s short stories, this time from a postmodern perspective.
Works Cited
Bakhtin, Mijaíl Mijáilovich 1981 (1965): ‘From M. M. Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 1965’. Pam Morris, ed. Trans. H. Iswolsky. London and New York: Edward Arnold. 89-96. Carrera Suárez, Maria Isabel 1988. Recurrencias temáticas y formales en el cuento de autoras en lengua inglesa: de Mansfield a Carter. Unpublished Ph. D. thesis. Universidad de Oviedo, Spain. Genette, Gerard 1989 (1962): Palimpsestos: La literatura en segundo grado. Trans. Celia Fernández Prieto. Madrid: Altea, Taurus, Alfaguara. Hassan, Ihab 1987: The Postmodern Turn: Essays in Postmodern Theory and Culture. Ohio: Ohio State UP. Jameson, Fredrick 1984: Introduction. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi. Manchester: Manchester UP.
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 197–201 ISSN 0210-6124 Reviews 201
Morrow, Patrick D. 1990: ‘Katherine Mansfield and World War I’. David Bevan, ed. Literature and War. Amsterdam and Atlanta. 39-43. Propp, Vladimir 1985 (1929): Morfología del cuento. Trans. F. Díez del Corral. Madrid: Akal. Rodríguez Salas, Gerardo 2003: La marginalidad como opción en Katherine Mansfield: postmodernismo, feminismo y relato corto. Unpublished Ph. D. thesis. Universidad de Granada, Spain. Rodríguez Salas, Gerardo 2007: Hijas de la diosa Blanca: ginocrítica y feminismo restaurador en la narrativa de Katherine Mansfield. Oviedo: Septem. Wilde, Alan 1981: Horizons of Assent: Modernism, Postmodernism, and the Ironic Imagination. Baltimore and London: The John Hopkins UP.
Received 7 January 2011 Revised version accepted 9 April 2011
Eva María Gómez Jíménez (MPhil Granada) is a postgraduate researcher at the University of Granada. Her research interests centre on e.e.cummings, Modernism, experimental poetry and translation studies.
Address: Departamento de Filología Inglesa y Alemana, Universidad de Granada, Campus de Cartuja s/n 18071 Granada, Spain. Tel.: +34 958243677. Fax: +34958243678.
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 33.1 (June 2011): 197–201 ISSN 0210-6124
203
Acknowledgements
The Editors wish to thank all those members of the Editorial Board of Atlantis who have given their time and expertise to this journal. Likewise, we thank Gisle Andersen (Norwegian School of Economics & Business Administration); Marc Amfreville (Université Paris XII); Dieter Kastovsky (University of Vienna); Belén Martin-Lucas (Universidad de Vigo); Marta-Sofía López Rodríguez (Universidad de León); Rachel Whittaker, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid for their willingness to collaborate with us in assessing certain articles.
205
Editorial policy, Instructions to contributors and abridged Guidelines
What we publish Atlantis publishes articles, reviews and interviews in the field of Anglo-American studies. Contributions submitted to Atlantis should meet the following criteria:
• Suitability for the aim and scope of the journal. • Originality and interest in relation to subject matter, method, data or findings. • Relevance to current research in the field. • Revision of previously published work on the topic. • Logical rigour in argumentation and in the analysis of data. • Adequate use of concepts and research methodology. • Discussion of theoretical implications and/or practical applications. • Command of recent bibliography. • Linguistic appropriateness, textual organisation and satisfactory presentation. • Readability and conciseness of expression.
Concurrence: Authors are expected to know and heed basic ground rules that preclude simultaneous submission, duplicate publication or any other kind of self-plagiarism. Prospective contributors to Atlantis commit themselves to the following when they submit a manuscript:
• That no concurrent consideration of the same, or almost identical, work by any other journal and/or publisher is taking place. • That the potential contribution has not appeared previously nor is about to appear within two years, in any form whatsoever, in another journal, electronic format or as a chapter/section of a book. • If, after two years, a contribution first published in Atlantis is to be reprinted elsewhere, permission is not required but the author should credit Atlantis for the contribution’s first appearance. If in doubt about any of the above, the author should consult the General Editor.
What to send The recommended length for articles and interviews is between 6,000 and 8,000 words. Book reviews should be between 2,500 and 3,000 words. Manuscripts should be double-spaced with wide margins. The first page of each article must include a 100-200 word summary written in English, followed by six keywords. A similar summary and keywords are required in Spanish, on a separate file. These will be provided by the Editors for those contributors who do not handle Spanish. Your contribution should reach the Editor in TWO double-spaced, point 12 clear computer printouts with wide margins. Additionally, please send the General Editor an electronic version (MS Word for Windows) as an e-mail attachment. Please see the inside front cover for the Editor’s addresses.
206
Anonymity policy. All details of personal identification, including your name in citations and references, must be absent from both the hard copy and the electronic manuscript, as well as from the file properties. The author's name should be replaced by ‘author’ throughout the paper. If the submission contains any element of identification of the author, it will not be sent to referees. The author must submit the following information on a separate sheet. Personal details should be absent from the manuscript itself.
• Title of the manuscript • Author’s name • Institutional affiliation and full postal address • Home address • Telephone numbers (both home and office) • Fax number and e-mail address (if applicable) • Word processor and version used to format the document • Total number of words, including works cited and notes
Assessment policy Submissions to Atlantis are evaluated anonymously (double-blind) by three specialists from the journal's international Board of Referees. Acceptance by at least two specialists is a condition for publication.
Conventions and style Titles of contributions. For articles, type the title at the top of the page on which the text begins. Do not italicize your title or capitalize it in full. Italicize only a published work in the title or a cited word in a linguistic study. Capitalize only the first letter of the first word and of all significant words (nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs) as well as proper nouns which appear in titles. Do not use a period after titles. The title should not carry a reference to a note, unless by the Editor; in articles or other contributions put necessary acknowledgements or explanations in a footnote to the first or last sentence of the first paragraph, not to the title.
Quotation marks. Double quotation marks (“ ”) are used to enclose quoted speech or writing only. For quotations within run-on quotations use single quotation marks. If there are quotes within an indented quotation, the double quotation marks are used. Single quotation marks (‘ ’) are used in the following ways: a) to enclose titles of articles, essays, short stories, short poems, songs, chapters and sections of books, lectures and unpublished works other than dissertations; b) to enclose quotations within quotations; c) (usually called ‘scare quotes’) to indicate that the word or phrase is being used deliberately in an unusual or arguably incorrect sense, as well as for not yet wholly standard terms; d) for English or Spanish translations of words or phrases from a different language (agua ‘water’)
Section headings. The inclusion of section headings should be kept to a minimum. Section headings must begin from the left margin, with no period at the end. Headings should be numbered. The use of Arabic numerals is recommended. Centred Roman 207 numerals may be used when there is no heading title. If absolutely necessary, further division within a section should follow the same format used for section headings. They must be preceded by Arabic numerals separated by full stop (e.g. 1.1). Do not capitalize headings in full.
Punctuation. In general, make your usage as consistent as possible. Although the finer points of punctuation are often a matter of personal preference, the main purpose is clarity, and here it is wiser to follow established convention. Do not use commas (,) before “and” and “or” in a series of three or more. Never use a comma and a dash together. A comma can never precede a parenthesis; it must always follow it (such as this), if required by the context. A dash (–) is not the same as a hyphen (-). The former is used to introduce an explanation (you must arrive on time—not two hours late), and the latter joins words in a compound such as twenty-four. Do not confuse them. Question marks (?) and exclamation marks (!) should not normally be used in scholarly writing. Periods (.) close notes and bibliographical citations as well as complete sentences in text and notes. The period is placed within the parenthesis when the parenthetical element is independent: “. . . the language is both subliterary and transpersonal (in contrast, allegory, for example, is transpersonal but not subliterary)”. but “. . . the language is both subliterary and transpersonal. (On the other hand, allegory, for example, is transpersonal but not subliterary.)” Square brackets ([]) are used for an unavoidable parenthesis within a parenthesis, to enclose interpolations or comments in a quotation or incomplete data and to enclose phonetic transcription. (Slash marks [/] are used to enclose phonemic transcription.) Note that a period or comma is placed before a superscript indicating a note, for example: “…with whose king he has negotiated the monopoly of the sugar trade with England.14”
Works Cited. In the titles of books and articles each main word is capitalized, i.e. nouns, adjectives verb and proper nouns. The first names of authors and editors should be given in full, rather than as initials. Publisher’s names are appropriately abbreviated in the list of works cited. For example, Macmillan Publishing Company, Inc. becomes simply Macmillan. Any university press will be abbreviated according to one of two patterns: U of Miami P or Toronto UP. Bibliographical references should follow the following style:
Danby, John F. 1961: Shakespeare’s Doctrine of Nature: A Study of King Lear. London: Faber. Carnero González, José 1982: ‘Calipso y Penélope en Ulysses’. James Joyce: A New Language: Actas/Proceedings del Simposio Internacional en el Centenario de James Joyce. Ed. Francisco García Tortosa, et al. Sevilla: Depto. de Literatura Inglesa de la Univ. de Sevilla: 167-74. Kastovsky, Dieter 1986: ‘The Problem of Productivity in Word-formation’. Linguistics 24: 585- 600.
For full details visit our website: www.atlantisjournal.org