HomeInterarts - mimetic hypertextuality between rewritings and allographic continuity

Interarts - mimetic hypertextuality between rewritings and allographic continuity

Interartes : hypertextualité mimétique entre réécritures et continuations allographes

InterArtes: Ipertestualità mimetica tra riscritture e continuazioni allografe

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Published on Tuesday, January 09, 2018

Abstract

The last decades have seen an increase in the number of publications concerned with the theme of trans-textuality, meaning the conscious reuse of themes and subjects. A widespread practice during the seventeenth and eighteenth century, trans-textuality was interrupted during the Romantic age only to be relentlessly resumed until  becoming, today, a real trend in literature and other arts, overlapping genres and artistic expressions.

Announcement

Summary

Proposals are invited for the publication of a volume of studies on the phenomenon of rewriting, as part of the Iulm University departmental project entitled InterArtes: mimetic hyper-textuality between rewritings and allograph continuations.

Due to its interdisciplinary nature, the project includes among its members professors of Iulm University coming from 10 different disciplinary groups, as well as professors of other Italian universities (Milano Statale, Bologna, Macerata, Pisa, Trento, Varese, Venezia) and foreign ones (Madrid, Paris, Clermont-Ferrand, Paris 3).

Presentation

The last decades have seen an increase in the number of publications concerned with the theme of trans-textuality, meaning the conscious reuse of themes and subjects. A widespread practice during the seventeenth and eighteenth century, trans-textuality was interrupted during the Romantic age only to be relentlessly resumed until  becoming, today, a real trend in literature and other arts, overlapping genres and artistic expressions. Last June the Department of Humanities of Iulm University (Milan) lauched a project entitled «InterArtes: mimetic hyper-textuality between rewritings and allograph continuations» to analyse the outcomes of this trend. (A brief description of the project is to be found on the dedicated page of Iulm University website at this address:    http://www.iulm.it/wps/wcm/connect/iulmit/iulm-it/ricerca/progetti-di-ricerca/progetti-di-ateneo/interartes-ipertestualita-mimetica-tra-riscritture-e-continuazioni-allografe).

Criticism: State of the Art

Among the critical approaches that have characterized the literary field from the second half of the 80s onwards, two of these, diametrically opposed, should be considered for this project: postmodernism, even if it seems to be at its end, and the formation of the canon. Postmodernism has shown that no work of art lives on its own, since it finds meaning in the relation with other texts, and starts from them to create its uniqueness. Yet, from the 90s onwards numerous ideas around the concept of literary canon have just evaluated, and selected, with inevitable exclusions, a series of works for their singularity and ‘value’ (which is, obviously, a very controversial concept).

Studies on literature, and on any artistic expression, «in the second degree» cannot disregard these two critical approaches. The narratological foundations of these studies have been at the centre of Genette’s Palimpsestes (1982), which gives us the starting theoretical framework. The examples used by Genette go back to Homer and (as far as the subject of our research is concerned) go no further than the 60s of the twentieth century, when this trend was not established yet nor was it widespread in literature and other fields, such as cinema and television as well as the ludic and musical fields.

After Genette, researches were focused on intertextuality, considered as network of references in the literary text. The annotated bibliography is not as full of contributions on rewriting as on intertextuality, even if researches on rewriting are increasing, as shown by Richard Saint-Gelais’ study Fictions transfuges, Seuil, 2011.

Delimitation of the field of study

While trans-textuality has been widely analysed in its meaning referring to intertextuality tout court, which will therefore be excluded, the same cannot be said for research studies regarding the conscious reuse of themes and subjects, called by Genette ‘mimetic hypertextuality’. Richard Saint-Gelais talks about transfictionnalité when the elements of a certain fiction are recalled in more than one text.

To define the theme and decline it in a field having a proper coherence, we will take into consideration only works from 1970 onwards, excluding parodies and pastiches to privilege three well defined areas in the macro category of allograph mimetic hypertexts:

  • a)     Rewritings, which are characterized by the conscious reuse of themes and subjects to create a relation to the hypertext that goes beyond the simple allusion. Part of this category are also the contrapuntal readings.
  • b)    Suites and continuations, which are based on retrieving from another text themes and characters that will constitute the framework of a new one.

From fan fictions to tv series, the aim of a spin-off is often the exploitation of the popularity of the hypotext, even if recent publications by authors that cannot be defined as secondary maybe deserve a less superficial overlook than the one that would define them as imitations with no value. The continuations insert themselves in the hypotext through such means as prolepsis, analepsis, ellipsis and paralepsis, and can be gathered into two categories:

  1.  works that give to the original a different ending.
  2.  works that complete an unfinished epitext.
  3.  Transpositions of and from other arts (poems/paintings, symphonic poems/narrations, movies/literature, comics that rethink classics). Here we deal with intersemiotic and intermedial recovery and continuation.
  4.  Intersemiotic transpositions represented by videogames, many of which use narrative patterns traced over the classics.

What should lead the choice of the work to analyse is the criterion of instant recognizing of the hypotext in the hypertext: from the reuse of the subject, of the characters or of the narrative pattern, or because the debt is clearly stated in the hypertext.

Each of these categories that concern the repositioning opens new levels of analysis, such as:

  •  textual level
  •  socio-cultural level
  •  encyclopaedic level (since this kind of product exploits and needs a continuous and stable extension of references)
  •  editorial level (since the publishing channel that disseminates the work finds itself in a complex system)
  •  economic level

Main themes

We will take into consideration proposals on the following themes:

1) the configuration of the phenomenon from a theoretical point of view, following Genette’s researches but going further than the narratological account and the categories established by the scholar in the 80s, since his work cannot explain the artistic outcomes which are not exclusively textual.   

2) the mapping of the poetics that have dealt explicitly with the subject and of the modalities that go beyond Genette’s formalization, today unable to represent all the existent typologies.

3) the application studies on the subject.

Submission Guidelines

Please submit abstracts (max 500 words)

by 31 March 2018

to interartes.iulm@gmail.com together with a bibliography and a brief biography of the author (150 words). We accept papers in either Italian, French, English or Spanish.

Authors will receive confirmation of acceptance of their proposals by April 2018. The deadline for submission of the definitive papers is the end of November 2018. All contributions will be subsequently submitted to peer review.

The volume will be published by May 2019 and presented during an evening event of musical-literary character that will take place in May 2019.

The contact person for the project is prof. Laura Brignoli (laura.brignoli@iulm.it)

Organisers of the Scientific Committee

  • prof. Silvia Albertazzi (silvia.albertazzi@unibo.it)
  • Prof. Paolo Proietti (paolo.proietti@iulm.it)
  • Prof. Rémy Poignault (remy.poignault@uca.fr) 

Places

  • via Carlo Bo 1
    Milan, Italian Republic (20143)

Date(s)

  • Saturday, March 31, 2018

Keywords

  • transmédialité, transfictionnalité, réécriture, littérature, arts visuelles, musique, jeux vidéo

Contact(s)

  • Laura Brignoli
    courriel : laura [dot] brignoli [at] iulm [dot] it

Reference Urls

Information source

  • Laura Brignoli
    courriel : laura [dot] brignoli [at] iulm [dot] it

License

CC0-1.0 This announcement is licensed under the terms of Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal.

To cite this announcement

« Interarts - mimetic hypertextuality between rewritings and allographic continuity », Call for papers, Calenda, Published on Tuesday, January 09, 2018, https://doi.org/10.58079/z96

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