Book Section
What if one thinks not in terms of shared meanings or contents, but rather in terms of iterable gestures available for re-enactment in different times and places in order to conceive of a cross-cultural world of literature? This essay sets out to explore, within the discursive mode of the lyric, whether the notion of gesture could be more helpful than meaning-based translation to account for the transferability of literary texts and for envisioning a form of community based on the shareability of certain gestures. To do so, it will look at how the act-event of reading described by Derek Attridge is processed in two cases in which poems are transferred from an earlier authoritative tradition into a new one.
Keywords: gesture; lyric; transferability; world literature; community; transcontextual; translation; re-enactment
Title
Transcontextual Gestures
Subtitle
A Lyric Approach to the World of Literature
Author(s)
Francesco Giusti
Identifier
Description
What if one thinks not in terms of shared meanings or contents, but rather in terms of iterable gestures available for re-enactment in different times and places in order to conceive of a cross-cultural world of literature? This essay sets out to explore, within the discursive mode of the lyric, whether the notion of gesture could be more helpful than meaning-based translation to account for the transferability of literary texts and for envisioning a form of community based on the shareability of certain gestures. To do so, it will look at how the act-event of reading described by Derek Attridge is processed in two cases in which poems are transferred from an earlier authoritative tradition into a new one.
Is Part Of
Place
Berlin
Publisher
ICI Berlin Press
Date
27 April 2021
Subject
gesture
lyric
transferability
world literature
community
transcontextual
translation
re-enactment
Rights
© by the author(s)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Language
en-GB
page start
75
page end
103
Source
The Work of World Literature, ed. by Francesco Giusti and Benjamin Lewis Robinson, Cultural Inquiry, 19 (Berlin: ICI Berlin Press, 2021-04-27), pp. 75–103

References

  • Agamben, Giorgio, ‘Notes on Gesture’, in his Means without End: Notes on Politics, trans. by Vincenzo Binetti and Cesare Casarino (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), pp. 49–61
  • Agamben, Giorgio, ‘Che cos’è un comando?’, in his Creazione e anarchia. L’opera nell’età della religione capitalista (Vicenza: Neri Pozza, 2017), pp. 91–112
  • Antonelli, Roberto, ‘L’“invenzione” del sonetto’, Cultura neolatina, 47 (1987), pp. 19–59
  • Antonelli, Roberto, ‘Canzoniere Vaticano latino 3793’, in Letteratura italiana: Le Opere, ed. by Alberto Asor Rosa, 4 vols (Turin: Einaudi, 1992–96), I: Dalle Origini al Cinquecento (1992), pp. 27–44
  • Antonelli, Roberto, ed., I poeti della scuola siciliana, 3 vols (Milan: Mondadori, 2008), I: Giacomo da Lentini
  • Apter, Emily, Against World Literature: On the Politics of Untranslatability (London: Verso, 2013)
  • Attridge, Derek, The Singularity of Literature (London: Routledge, 2004) <https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203420447>
  • Attridge, Derek, The Work of Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015) <https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198733195.001.0001>
  • Austin, J. L., How to Do Things with Words (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975) <https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198245537.001.0001>
  • Barthes, Roland, How to Live Together: Novelistic Simulations of Some Everyday Experience, trans. by Kate Briggs (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012)
  • Benjamin, Walter, Selected Writings, 4 vols (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996–2003)
  • Benjamin, Walter, ‘Notes from Svendborg, Summer 1934’, trans. by Rodney Livingstone, in his Selected Writings, II.2: 1931–1934, ed. by Michael W. Jennings, Howard Eiland, and Gary Smith (1999), pp. 783–91
  • Benjamin, Walter, ‘Commentary on Poems by Brecht’, trans. by Edmund Jephcott, in his Selected Writings, IV: 1938–1940, ed. by Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings (2003), pp. 215–50
  • Benjamin, Walter, ‘What is Epic Theatre? (II)’, trans. by Harry Zohn, in his Selected Writings, IV: 1938–1940, ed. by Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings (2003), pp. 302–09
  • Brugnolo, Furio, ‘I siciliani e l’arte dell’imitazione: Giacomo da Lentini, Rinaldo d’Aquino e Iacopo Mostacci ‘traduttori’ dal provenzale’, La parola del testo, 3 (1999), pp. 45–74
  • Culler, Jonathan, ‘Apostrophe,’ in Jonathan Culler, The Pursuit of Signs: Semiotics, Literature, Deconstruction, 2nd edn (London: Routledge, 2001), pp. 149–71
  • Culler, Jonathan, Theory of the Lyric (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015) <https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674425781>
  • Damrosch, David, What Is World Literature? (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003) <https://doi.org/10.1515/9780691188645>
  • Delle Donne, Fulvio, La porta del sapere: Cultura alla corte di Federico II di Svevia (Rome: Carocci, 2019)
  • Felski, Rita, The Limits of Critique (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015) <https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226294179.001.0001>
  • Folchetto di Marsiglia, Le poesie di Folchetto di Marsiglia, ed. by Paolo Squillacioti (Pisa: Pacini, 1999)
  • Giusti, Francesco, ‘Literature at Work: A Conversation with Derek Attridge’, Los Angeles Review of Books, 11 June 2018 <https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/literature-at-work-a-conversation-with-derek-attridge/> [accessed 23 May 2020]
  • Giusti, Francesco, ‘Temporalità liriche. Ripetizione e incompiutezza tra Dante e Caproni, Montale e Sanguineti’, California Italian Studies, 8.1 (2018) <https://escholarship.org/uc/item/87x199p7> [accessed 23 May 2020]
  • Giusti, Francesco, ‘Reversion: Lyric Time(s) II’, in Re-: An Errant Glossary, ed. by Christoph F. E. Holzhey and Arnd Wedemeyer (Berlin: ICI Berlin, 2019), pp. 151–61 <https://doi.org/10.25620/ci-15_19>
  • Hamilton, John T., Security: Politics, Humanity, and the Philology of Care (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013) <https://doi.org/10.23943/princeton/9780691157528.001.0001>
  • Hayot, Eric, ‘World Literature and Globalization’, in The Routledge Companion to World Literature, ed. by Theo D’haen, David Damrosch, and Djelal Kadir (London: Routledge, 2012), pp. 223–31 <https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203806494>
  • Heaney, Seamus, District and Circle (London: Faber, 2006)
  • Horace, Odes and Epodes, ed. and trans. by Niall Rudd (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004) <https://doi.org/10.4159/DLCL.horace-odes.2004>
  • Leonardi, Lino, ed., I canzonieri della lirica italiana delle origini, 4 vols (Florence: SISMEL-Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2000), I: Il Canzoniere Vaticano
  • Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, trans., with introduction and notes by Martin Ferguson Smith (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 2001)
  • Maslov, Boris, ‘Lyric Universality’, in The Cambridge Companion to World Literature, ed. by Ben Etherington and Jarad Zimbler (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), pp. 133–48 <https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108613354.010>
  • Murray, David, ‘Telling the Difference: Linguistic Differentiation and Identity in Guillem de Berguedà, Giacomo da Lentini and Bonifacio Calvo’, Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie, 134.2 (2018), pp. 381–403 <https://doi.org/10.1515/zrp-2018-0024>
  • Picone, Michelangelo, ‘Aspetti della tradizione/traduzione nei poeti siciliani’, in Percorsi della lirica duecentesca. Dai siciliani alla ‘Vita nova’ (Fiesole: Cadmo, 2003), pp. 17–31
  • Puchner, Martin, The Written World: The Power of Stories to Shape People, History, and Civilization (New York: Random House, 2017)
  • Ramazani, Jahan, A Transnational Poetics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009) <https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226703374.001.0001>
  • Ramazani, Jahan, Poetry and its Others: News, Prayer, Song, and the Dialogue of Genres (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014) <https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226083421.001.0001>
  • Rilke, Rainer Maria, Werke, ed. by Manfred Engel, Ulrich Fülleborn, Horst Nalewski, and August Stahl, 4 vols (Frankfurt a.M.: Insel, 1996), II: Gedichte 1910 bis 1926, ed. by Manfred Engel and Ulrich Fülleborn
  • Tiffany, Daniel, ‘Lyric Poetry and Poetics’, in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature, 30 April 2020, Oxford University Press <https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190201098.013.1111>
  • Tiffany, Daniel, My Silver Planet: A Secret History of Poetry and Kitsch (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014)
  • Waters, William, Poetry’s Touch: On Lyric Address (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003) <https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501717062>
  • Weber, Samuel, Benjamin’s -abilities (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008)
  • de Man, Paul, ‘Lyrical Voice in Contemporary Theory’, in Lyric Poetry: Beyond New Criticism, ed. by Chaviva Hošek and Patricia Parker (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985), pp. 55–72

Cite as: Francesco Giusti, ‘Transcontextual Gestures: A Lyric Approach to the World of Literature’, in The Work of World Literature, ed. by Francesco Giusti and Benjamin Lewis Robinson, Cultural Inquiry, 19 (Berlin: ICI Berlin Press, 2021), pp. 75-103 <https://doi.org/10.37050/ci-19_04>