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Abstract

Transformations of the Work: Ekelöf, Bergman, and Genetic criticism
 This article discusses genetic criticism as an interdisciplinary field of study, focusing on its application in the analysis of film and literature. Genetic criticism analyses works of art as textual histories, placing particular emphasis on the creative process, rather than the “final” state of the work. The object of study is the “avant-texte”; traditionally understood as the critical reconstruction and examination of author’s drafts, manuscripts, proofs, and other kinds of annotations. Over the past few years, the application of genetic criticism has expanded to include a variety of media and art forms; this article dicusses the implications of these new interdisciplinary perspectives. The article presents a general theoretical introduction to genetic criticism, followed by two case studies involving the works of Gunnar Ekelöf and Ingmar Bergman. In both cases, the key concept of the “avant-texte” is discussed; however, in the study of film, the diachronic relation between “text” and “avant-texte” is reevaluated. Here, the intermedial dimension of the filmic text is reinforced, and issues pertaining to media materiality and technological media in film aesthetics alter the conception of “original”, “copy” and “version”.
 There are a number of similarities and differences between Ekelöf and Bergman as writers and creators. Both use older drafts and notebooks extensively and, in both cases, the process of invention seems to emerge in the very material process of writing. Yet, Bergman’s notebooks are clearly focused, and may be regarded as an open genre suggesting new forms of mediation. By contrast, Ekelöf ’s continuous drafting of the same poem may be regarded both as a method of writing and a special trait in the author’s poetics. Ekelöf and Bergman both exemplify mediaspecific processes of creation, the various aspects of the “avant-texte”, and the ways in which the “avant-texte” suggests different aesthetic approaches to the work of art and artistic creation.
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