Murcia University Pass

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In this book, I discuss those places in narrative literature where theoretical conceptualizations intersect with detailed analysis of literary texts, taking into account what images emerge from them. I have selected those that I consider masterpieces to connect contemporary thoughts with what has been called “cultural heritage.” I do not intend to rewrite the history of literature, but to point out how works from the past are relevant to today, and vice versa.

 

This integration of both the theoretical and literary dimensions will shed new light on the literary and artistic qualities of these texts, as well as on their social, historical and ethical relevance, which will encourage the reader to understand the place of literary analysis. in contemporary cultures.

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I present this book as “pieces” of an archive of reflections on literary narrative in its power to stimulate the imagination, with its fertility to create visual images. Starting from one or more significant texts, a relevant theoretical problem opens up, as they are: color in literature; the tension between narration and description; the integration of words and images; the inevitable relationship with the canons; the challenge and need for an intercultural reading; ethics in relation to memory and time; empathy and the need for “disturbing empathy” as an alternative to identification; the difficult problem of trauma; the role of rivalry at all levels; and, finally, the presence of the essayistic within fiction. The central element is the question of figuration and visualization.

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Table of Contents

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Preface 

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1. Authorship: Expanding on the Pre-existing, for the Sake of Creativity
Introduction: Creation as Responsibility
Killing the Author – or Just Wounding Him/Her/It?
Timely Remains of the Author
Exploding Authorship
Narrative Polyphony
From Cacophony to Witnessing
Figurality

 

2. Yellow Fever: How Proust started a Dialogue Between Literature and visual Art
Introduction: A Dangerous Colour
Performance Anxiety
Encyclopaedic Thinking
Far Encounters
Safely Seeing the Sun
Illumination
Framing
Photo-Memory

3. “Descriptology”: Towards the Figural
Introduction: The Problem of Description
Robin in The Frame
Albertine Becoming Object
Nana in Decomposition
Emma Ending

 

4. Words and Images Integrated: Figuration in the Act
Introduction: Words Become Images
Introducing Rape as Key
Rape, Suicide, Signs, and Show
Contagious Logorrhea: Between Men
Vision Vying Violence: Between Women
Expository Writing

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5. Love Stories: For an Ethics of Non-Indifference
Introduction: Reading in a Canon
Ethics Entangled with Aesthetics
Detailed Reading as an Ethical Task
Feminism as a Mode of Reading
Feminist Framing

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