Poetic Narrative Research Articles

My Name is Sculpture

Metabolic sculptures explore the transformative and generative processes of matter and life. They enable art to enter reality, to link artworks with processes in nature and society and to create visions of possible futures and relationships between our bodies and technology. Data streams, biological organisms, methods from the sciences and "real" processes are increasingly becoming the material of art. How do the new correspondences between art and science, fact and fiction, construct themselves in contemporary art production? Which conceptual and narrative aesthetics and poetics result from this? By taking the PROMETHEUS DELIVERED project as an example, the artistic method of conceptual narration will be presented, which combines pictorial, literary and molecular ways of speaking and acting. PROMETHEUS DELIVERED performs a story that oscillates between science fiction and horror, utopia and dystopia. The project connects sculptures, drawings and literature with biochemical processes in which, for example, human liver cells are cultivated, fermented and distilled into alcohol. The liver cells refer to the ancient tradition of hepatoscopy. The organ that was once deemed the seat of life becomes the vital point of departure to read humanity’s future in the context of a cellular economy. In POMETHEUS DELIVERED, cannibalism becomes autophagy, which is not derived from amorality or dark evil, but from the principle of autotropic resource use. Microperformativity as the inclusion of metabolic processes of the living creates a new realism of art. Digital algorithms and biochemical processes turn works of art into autopoietic systems that preserve themselves, change themselves and process reality. Artistic objects are transformed into subjects and agents, into actors acting on different levels: semiotic and molecular, virtual and material. Thus artistic works that were formerly described as pictures and sculptures no longer insist in a unmutable state, but become the starting point for changes that can be described with transformation, transmutation, variability or as processual. Performers are not only of human nature, but artistic objects become agents performing real processes.

“El infierno tan temido” de Juan Carlos Onetti

En este ensayo, y a través de un análisis crítico, realizamos varias lecturas del conocido cuento El infierno tan temidode Juan Carlos Onetti. Lo analizamos desde el poema de Santa Teresa de Jesús y desde la visión existencialista de Camus y Schopenhauer. El autor hurga en la cara oculta de la vida y penetra en sus estratos profundos. Conside-ramos que el discurso de este cuento de Onetti con su ge-nialidad escritural y su narrativa poética logra sobrepasar los límites del mundo literario hispanoamericano porque trata un tema universal y eterno desde una posición pu-ramente onettiana: la existencia humana como infierno (tortura) y la necesidad de tener una razón de ser, que dé sentido a la existencia. Analizar esta obra de Onetti es comprometerse a penetrar el mundo extremo de su autor. El cuento presenta su cosmovisión acerca del absurdo de la existencia y lo logra, sobre todo, a través de las acciones radicales de sus coprotagonistas: Risso y Gracia.

Sacramental Vision in Annie Dillard’s Holy the Firm

Abstract In this article I explore the central motif of vision in Annie Dillard’s short poetic narrative, Holy the Firm. Attention to the book’s tripartite structure reveals a movement through an aesthetic appreciation of creation, to an intellectual contemplation of the Fall, finally culminating in a mystical vision of wholeness in the redemptive descent of Christ. I turn to Julian of Norwich’s parable of the Lord and Servant in order to illuminate their shared attunement to the workings of divine love in the face of human suffering. For Dillard, Christ’s kenotic love is continually revealed in the Christian sacraments of baptism and communion. Finally, I suggest that through the artist, the thinker, and the nun, Dillard leads her reader toward a sacramental vision of the world, which locates the holy in the everyday.

Por una memoria poética compartida. Arte, conflicto y paz en Colombia: entre la poesía y el engaño

En el presente artículo se habla sobre el contraste entre el relato poético y el relato mediático del conflicto colombiano. Ambos relatos hacen uso de los dramas fundacionales de la cultura patriarcal: mitos como matar al padre, la disputa mortal entre los hermanos, etc. El relato poético busca hacer preguntas sobre las causas del conflicto. El relato mediático casi siempre usa estos mitos para que la ciudadanía se identifique con las emociones que justifican la guerra, tales como el odio, la venganza, la desesperanza y la desilusión: esta guerra no la acaba nadie. En el ensayo se propone un gran programa de arte para relatar, en todas las voces y lenguajes, la épica de la resistencia a la guerra por parte de las comunidades, la épica de las víctimas y la épica de quienes hicieron la guerra, en especial la épica de quienes dejaron las armas. Se hace un acercamiento a algunos de los relatos poéticos actuales, e, igualmente, se aproxima a los procedimientos dramatúrgicos de los relatos mediáticos.

Experiencing the Filmpoem

Susannah Ramsay’s Experiencing the Filmpoem: A Film-Phenomenological Inquiry presents five short experimental films which evoke multi-sensorial experiences for the viewer through visceral combinations of lens manipulation, camera movement and rhythmic editing. For Ramsay, filmpoems are a synthesis of these experimental techniques with poetic narration and soundscapes which constitute a deeply personal, expressive form of filmmaking. Her written statement contextualises this practice with historical insights and outlines her exhibition strategies for the work which aim to produce a reciprocal relationship between the artwork, the screening space and the viewer to provide an embodied experience.

A Call from Inside the House: Broadcasting the Black Audio Film Collective's Postcolonial Critiques on Channel 4

This article resituates four British films from the Black Audio Film Collective (BAFC) in the context of their televisual broadcast on Channel 4. First, the article traces the history of Channel 4's intersection with experimental film and its role in funding the BAFC's films. It then places John Akomfrah's Testament (1988) and Seven Songs for Malcolm X (1993) and Reece Auguiste's Twilight City (1989) and Mysteries of July (1991) in conversation with theories of televisual time. It deploys Homi Bhabha's concept of the postcolonial time-lag to explore how television theories of liveness and flow are reinterpreted by the BAFC to subvert the promise of televisual presence. In particular, it focuses on how the direct use of televisual archives and address of the television news in combination with poetic narration allow the BAFC to dwell in the personal stories of diasporic women and to mourn the deaths of black men, using the space and tools of television to show how trauma lingers long past its broadcast on the nightly news.

A poesia nos livros didáticos de português de Moçambique e Brasil: um estudo comparativo

Resumo Neste texto será feita uma análise a respeito do modo como se configuram as representações dos professores em relação às poesias presentes nos livros didáticos de português de Moçambique e Brasil, procurando compreender as práticas de escolarização da leitura do texto poético e a sua importância para a formação dos jovens. A pesquisa é de caráter qualitativo. Foram analisados textos poéticos em quatro livros didáticos de português (dois de Moçambique e dois do Brasil). Entre os vários aspectos, tomaram-se em conta representações sociais que poderiam emergir nos livros didáticos. Para além da pesquisa bibliográfica, foram coletados dados por meio de entrevistas semiestruturadas com 16 professores, sendo oito pertencentes a quatro escolas de Moçambique e oito pertencentes a quatro escolas do Brasil. O objetivo era compreender a importância que os professores atribuem à poesia e como realizam o trabalho poético com seus alunos. A despeito do fenômeno da globalização, que estilhaça as fronteiras nacionais, o nacional continua a induzir a formação de narrativas (neste caso, poéticas), com o fim de ser ele o gerador da identidade oficial. Considerando o fato de os livros didáticos se constituírem em um instrumento que dá visibilidade a práticas de letramento e a modos de ler os textos por elas instituídos, espera-se que esta pesquisa contribua para que a poesia não seja apenas um elemento importante na formação de professores e alunos, mas que possa também contribuir para a reflexão acerca da formação dos leitores.

The Power of (Re)Creation and Social Transformation of Binomial ‘Art-Technology’ in Times of Crisis: Musical Poetic Narrative in Rozalén’s ‘Lyric Video’ “Aves Enjauladas”

Abstract: The epidemic outbreak of the coronavirus has meant a sudden, temporary ceasing of activities as we knew them. The health crisis has led to a social and economic crisis, and these circumstances have revealed solidarity on a global scale. In moments of separation, when culture has brought us closer together, the global phenomenon of charity songs has emerged, generating financial aid for scientific research and care for the most vulnerable people. This work focuses on a charity song turned into a hymn, a narrative poem in the first person that tells everyone's common story, “Aves enjauladas” (‘Caged Birds’) by the Spanish singer-songwriter Rozalén. This paper carries out a linguistic, stylistic and audiovisual analysis of this multimodal event, which has been transmitted through a ‘lyric video’ and spread in a vertiginous way on digital platforms and social networks, reaching millions of views. Ultimately, the paper analyses the spiritual and material impact, the body and soul of this living poem, taking a still photograph of the artistic recreations and musical, visual, pictorial and pedagogical ‘echoicities’ of this work (Balsera & López, 2015), as well as appreciating its material socio-economic repercussions in the real lives of families at risk of exclusion.

Narratology Redux

Narratology Redux

Poetics of Narrative in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Novel “A Pale View of Hills”

The current paper explores the narrative strategies and poetics of intermediality in Kazuo Ishiguro’s first novel “A Pale View of Hills” (1982). Particular attention is paid to the notions of narrative unreliability and subjectivity exemplified by the ambiguous first-person narrative in the novel. The researcher focuses on the narrative techniques, as well as on the numerous lexical and other literary means that emphasize the unreliability of the narrator, who is also the protagonist. It allows revealing the hidden emotions and tendency to self-deceit. In addition, the paper traces the features of Japanese aesthetics and literature in the novel. The most peculiar among them are concise verbal expression, lack of emotion, and audiovisuality, which is primary concentration of the narrative on the visual and auditory images, rather than on the characters’ internal psychological processes. A range of narrative strategies and special literary effects in “A Pale View of Hills”, being characteristic for the art of cinematography, make the novel a vivid example of the cinematographic (cinematic) literature, which requires a different, more image-oriented perception of the reader. Among such techniques, the most notable are the enhanced symbolism of sensual images; revealing the characters’ actual feelings and thoughts through their non-verbal language and dialogues; fragmented and elliptic nature of the narrative that resembles the technique of montage; and the plasticity of chronotope, which is represented by the active use of flashbacks in the novel.

Alastair Matthews: The Medieval German Lohengrin. Narrative Poetics in the Story of the Swan Knight. Rochester u. New York: Camden House, 2016.

Alastair Matthews: The Medieval German Lohengrin. Narrative Poetics in the Story of the Swan Knight. Rochester u. New York: Camden House, 2016.

Le récit poétique en question

Cet article interroge la categorie problematique de recit poetique : largement utilisee dans l’historiographie litteraire au sujet des formes narratives des annees 1920, elle se prete a de nombreuses ambiguites et glissements semantiques. Apres un rappel de la litterature critique en matiere de narration poetique, la variete de son application est envisagee a travers l’analyse de trois ouvrages assimiles, selon des criteres differents, a cette categorie intergenerique : Le Voleur de Talan de Reverdy, Simon le pathetique de Giraudoux et Detours de Crevel.

Black Epistemologies and Blues Methodology: Engaging Liminal Ontological Space in Qualitative Research

This article demonstrates how liminality provides methodological possibilities that consider affective, social, and cultural knowledge domains in interdisciplinary qualitative research. Arguing that researching perspectives of liminal citizens whose intellectual traditions exist outside the bonds of the most liberal citizenship conceptions requires liminal ontological space for researchers to un think the research process. In this blues poetic narrative, I recount how Black Studies liminal concepts of alterity, blues epistemology, and forms of life twisted in my research praxis informing a critical culturally appropriate methodology which is the blues methodology. The methodology is a social inquiry designed to use community knowledge to identity and address issues of democratic governance, spatial displacement, and educational equity. Situated within the Black Studies theoretical perspective, blues methodology employs cultural tools to create liminal ontological space for historically marginalized Black epistemologies to challenge and recreate citizenship knowledge and practices from the alterity vantage point.

Reel by reel: Jan Stanislav Kolár’s narrative poetics in the context of transition to feature-length format in Czech silent cinema

This article examines the screenwriting practice in Czech silent cinema in the late 1910s and 1920s. It focuses on Jan Stanislav Kolár’s narrative poetics as a case study of specific storytelling choices within the transitional era from one- or two-reelers to the feature-length format in the context of local technological restrictions in exhibition – inevitable breaks of changing film reels in single-projector cinemas. Poetological analysis of Kolár’s Řina (1926) with his other surviving scenarios and pictures shows that meant not only the necessity of adapting to these limitations, but also became a productive way of achieving particular effects on the audience. Semi-independent narrative acts, thrilling moments occurring at the end of the reel, or significant shifts in space and time between two reels were integral parts of his own original stories as well as adaptations of various novels. Nevertheless, the article outlines more general perspective in relation to film reels as structural narrative units and screenwriting practice among Czech filmmakers as well.

The Medieval GermanLohengrin: Narrative Poetics in the Story of the Swan Knight.By Alastair Matthews. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2016. ix + 236 pages + 4 color illustrations. $99.00.

The Medieval German<i>Lohengrin</i>: Narrative Poetics in the Story of the Swan Knight.<i>By Alastair Matthews. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2016. ix + 236 pages + 4 color illustrations. $99.00.</i>

A Semantic and Semiotic Study of Viewpoint in Mam and Zin

The domain of semantic_ semiotic studies can be very vast and such kind of studies is applicable as an analytical tool and foundation theory for analyzing narratives and fictions. Since the point of view is a collection of techniques which enables the narrator to create diversity in the processing of the text, therefore the selection of the viewpoint by the narrator has a great function in the narrative. In this research the researches try to scrutinize the point of view and its kinds in the poetic narrative of Mam and Zin by using the mechanism of semantic_ semiotic approach. The research also tackles with different kinds of viewpoints in a descriptive analytical method in accordance with the poetic template of the narrative. The outcome of the research indicates that the way of using the different kinds of viewpoint in addition to visualizing the skills and abilities of the poet, also makes the narrative more attractive and influential. All in all this semantic_ semiotic study of the narrative indicates that the literary creation is the result of a narrating activity in which the text of the narrative of this research includes such kind of narrating forms. Keywords : semantic, semiotic, viewpoint, Mam and Zin.

Landscapes Mythicized:

The lay of a people is often tethered to the lay of the land that they live in or leave behind; for the land holds all the associations of ancestry, heritage, and environment that constitute what Emile Durkheim would call “the collective conscious.” Landscapes may assume near mythical dimensions in forming and framing the creative impulse of writers who draw their images and symbols, themes and motifs, and aspirations and apprehensions from their terrestrial roots and routes. In the present paper, I seek to reread a few poems of the famous Kashmiri-American poet Agha Shahid Ali with a view to highlighting his poetics of place that remains true to the kindred points of haven (America, the adopted land) and home (Kashmir, the homeland). Attempts will be made to shed light on the re-creative dynamics of his poetry that helps him to mythicize these two landscapes with the aid of “memory” and “imagination.” My objective here is to foreground the process through which the poet’s re-creation of place combines with the reader’s focus on spatiality to situate Ali’s poems such as “Postcard from Kashmir,” “Snowmen,” “A Wrong Turn,” “Snow on the Desert,” “Farewell,” etc. In the poem, “Postcard from Kashmir” for example, the speaker holds the postcard that represents to him the land of his birth – “Kashmir shrinks into my mailbox,/ my home a neat four by six inches.” The persistent pains of “exile” lead him to proximate the half-inch Himalayas to this “home,” because he realizes “This is home. And this the closest I’ll ever be to home.” Similarly, in the poem “Snow on the Desert,” the poet brings to bear all his imaginative elasticity to re-create the Papago’s way of living in the Sonoran desert in the South Western part of the United States. His poetic narrative brings to the surface the native history of the Papagos people whose long lost lives are imaginatively re-created by a diasporic poet, keenly aware of the ancient glory of his own homeland as contrasted with its recent abjection.

The Poetics of Coming Out and Being Out: Feminist Activism in Cis Lesbian and Trans Women’s Poetic Narratives

While coming out or the telling of sexual selves for LGBTQ+ people is often seen as the final step toward living a free and healthy life, lesbians who also identify as feminists embark on a life-long journey in which the plot ebbs and flows around activism and mobilization. Their goal is not only to come out, but to be out. Both cisgender radical-lesbian feminists and trans feminists consider coming out as not only crucial for the realization of self, but also an important tactic for taking up space and intervening in a heteronormative world. But, while the original theories of radical feminism advocated a fierce anti-essentialism, some contemporary radical feminists continue to focus on biology and questions like “what is a woman?” I hope to refocus the question to ask: how are narrative audiences, discursive forms of text, and spaces important for feminists as they realize lesbian or trans identities and communities? Data come from a historical printed newsletter by self-described radical feminists practicing lesbian separatism and two current micro-blogs, one surrounding radical-feminist narratives and the other around trans feminism. Through a textual analysis, I show how self-proclaimed radical feminists and trans feminists use poetic and emotive writing to produce different kinds of narratives about coming out and being out in different spaces and for unique audiences. Ultimately, these discursive forms are important for communities as members’ stories challenge and are impacted by public narratives of gender, essentialism, and cis- and hetero-normativity.

Rhetorical Theory of Narrative and Contemporary Narrative Poetics: A Conversation with James Phelan

Abstract In the summer of 2018, James Phelan co-organized the Summer Seminar on Narratology on behalf of Project Narrative at Ohio State University, in collaboration with Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and the journal Frontiers of Narrative Studies. During this period, Shang Biwu, the editor of Frontiers of Narrative Studies, had a conversation with Phelan, who talked about important issues such as rhetorical poetics, fictionality, and narrative communication.

Body inking: butoh: (a poetic narrative): ... artist pages

The writing becomes a limbed extension – a dance – inked on shore and paper by a body moving in these artist pages. The author poetically captures the process of engaging in the 22nd annual Kokoro Dance Theatre Society’s Wreck Beach Butoh Intensive: a nine-day in-studio period, followed by three outdoor performances: on the shores and in the waters of Vancouver, Canada’s Pacific Ocean. Preece captures the days in a poem, synthesizing felt experience with elements of the daily choreography and context, offering palpable, personal and sensual tellings of one woman moving through process, practice and performance. Although specific, the poems remain accessible – interpretable and relatable to the reader – as fresh offerings, as movements themselves.