¡Bemsha SWING!

7 abr 2006

I find Jerome McGann's notion of "performative interpretation" helpful. (The Scholar's Art, U of Chicago P, 06) I had come up with a similar concept myself at one time, but without that handy label. A performative interpretation of a poem or any other literary performance might be

translation
parody
pastiche
homage, implicit or explicit
oral recitation / dramatic performance
song setting / sung performance of the song so set
musical setting of the text without words?
illustration (in any visual medium: drawing, photography, sculpture)
etc... [add your own examples]

(This list is my own, not McGann's).

What's NOT performative interpretation? Scholarly interpretation: presmably it is the typical scholarly article in discursive prose. Yet that too is performative, since "All interpretive action is performative/deformative" (McGann). So is scholarship *less* performative?

Don't we still need some form of scholarship (discursive prose) to explain what the interpretation implicit in the performance consists of? Does the scholarly performance include a specifically performative aspect alongside its discursivity?

2 comentarios:

Dan Coffey dijo...: Yes, in answer to the last question. I don't see how we could ever get out of the performative mode when engaging with either the text or the performative interpretation. Whether dealing with the "original" or an interpretation once removed, there will be a performance, and, for better or worse, discursivity must be performative. Mustn't it?; 4:19 a. m.
Jonathan dijo...: Yes, I agree Dan. Very good. I was just wondering what that does to the distinction between these two modes.; 8:01 a. m.

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"Jonathan Mayhew’s new work belongs to a certain class of surprising books: those so obviously necessary once they appear that it apparently required a stroke of genius to come up with the idea for them."

--Daniel Katz

"Jonathan Mayhew's Lorca is less the distinctive Spanish poet, whose murder in 1936 marked the beginning of the Civil War, than he is an American invention. From the 1940s to the end of the century, our poets have invoked Lorca-in translation, of course-as a Romantic, exotic, radical, and, in many cases, gay icon-the poet of mystery and the duende. The Lorca myth, Mayhew argues persuasively, has enriched American lyric, but it has also been an obstacle to a more adequately grounded understanding of Spanish poetry in the 20th century. Apocryphal Lorca is revisionist criticism at its most acute."

-Marjorie Perloff

"Enhanced by copious notes and an excellent bibliography, this book offers a perceptive, intriguing assessment of the Garcia Lorca created by the postwar generation of American poets." (Choice )

"Mayhew is a critic who is at the top of his game; he combines a breadth of knowlege of the field with acute analysis."

--John C. Wilcox, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

"Let me just cut through all the usual, boring book review preliminaries and say the following thing: Jonathan Mayhew has, in Apocryphal Lorca, written an amazing book. "

--Brandon Holmquest, Calque

"The great merit of Mayhew's study is his sustained effort to document and interrogate Lorca's reception, unique among American encounters with foreign literatures in its nature and extent."

--Lawrence Venuti, TLS.

"Se trata de Jonathan Mayhew y su extraordinario estudio Apocryphal Lorca. Translation, Parody, Kitsch. Esta obra se ocupa no de García Lorca sino de cómo los escritores estadounidenses han reinventado a Lorca, desde Spicer y Rothenberg hasta O’Hara y Koch. Asimismo, es una discusión de la Deep Image —¡cuánto hay que desmenuzar de ese capítulo!— y la manera en que la poética norteamericana se ha apropiado de lo lorqueano (o lorcaesco) y del concepto de lo 'otro' que éste representa. Éste es un libro repleto de sutilezas, de tesis, apuntes, datos."

--Heriberto Yépez

"Apocryphal Lorca, sin embargo, es mucho más que un estudio de las vidas posteriores de Lorca en la poesía americana entre principios de los años 50 y 70. También ofrece un acercamiento histórico a la traducción de su obra, descubriendo reseñas de prensa significativas y discurriendo acerca de reconocimientos críticos. El texto es elegante y fresco; el análisis amplio e históricamente específico."

--María Delgado, Revista de Literatura

¡Bemsha SWING!

7 abr 2006

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