Ebook225 pages5 hours
Salome and the Dance of Writing: Portraits of Mimesis in Literature
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
3/5
()
About this ebook
How does literature imagine its own powers of representation? Françoise Meltzer attempts to answer this question by looking at how the portrait—the painted portrait, framed—appears in various literary texts. Alien to the verbal system of the text yet mimetic of the gesture of writing, the textual portrait becomes a telling measure of literature's views on itself, on the politics of representation, and on the power of writing.
Meltzer's readings of textual portraits—in the Gospel writers and Huysmans, Virgil and Stendhal, the Old Testament and Apuleius, Hawthorne and Poe, Kafka and Rousseau, Walter Scott and Mme de Lafayette—reveal an interplay of control and subversion: writing attempts to veil the visual and to erase the sensual in favor of "meaning," while portraiture, with its claims to bringing the natural object to "life," resists and eludes such control. Meltzer shows how this tension is indicative of a politics of repression and subversion intrinsic to the very act of representation. Throughout, she raises and illuminates fascinating issues: about the relation of flattery to caricature, the nature of the uncanny, the relation of representation to memory and history, the narcissistic character of representation, and the interdependency of representation and power.
Writing, thinking, speaking, dreaming, acting—the extent to which these are all controlled by representation must, Meltzer concludes, become "consciously unconscious." In the textual portrait, she locates the moment when this essential process is both revealed and repressed.
Meltzer's readings of textual portraits—in the Gospel writers and Huysmans, Virgil and Stendhal, the Old Testament and Apuleius, Hawthorne and Poe, Kafka and Rousseau, Walter Scott and Mme de Lafayette—reveal an interplay of control and subversion: writing attempts to veil the visual and to erase the sensual in favor of "meaning," while portraiture, with its claims to bringing the natural object to "life," resists and eludes such control. Meltzer shows how this tension is indicative of a politics of repression and subversion intrinsic to the very act of representation. Throughout, she raises and illuminates fascinating issues: about the relation of flattery to caricature, the nature of the uncanny, the relation of representation to memory and history, the narcissistic character of representation, and the interdependency of representation and power.
Writing, thinking, speaking, dreaming, acting—the extent to which these are all controlled by representation must, Meltzer concludes, become "consciously unconscious." In the textual portrait, she locates the moment when this essential process is both revealed and repressed.
Read more from Françoise Meltzer
Seeing Double: Baudelaire's Modernity Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFor Fear of the Fire: Joan of Arc and the Limits of Subjectivity Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dark Lens: Imaging Germany, 1945 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to Salome and the Dance of Writing
Related ebooks
Sexed Universals in Contemporary Art Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsKing Candaules Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRussian Impressionists and Post-Impressionists Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWomen, Sex and Betrayal at the Met Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsShades—Of Painting at the Limit Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFrench Literature: A Beginner's Guide Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe American Journal of Archaeology, 1893-1 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAnthony van Dyck: Selected Paintings (Colour Plates) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Steampunk Valentine Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Schiele Slaughters: A Megan Crespi Mystery Series Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Art & Morality: “Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.” Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAlbrecht Dürer and the Epistolary Mode of Address Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Men with the Movie Camera: The Poetics of Visual Style in Soviet Avant-Garde Cinema of the 1920s Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Letters of a Post-Impressionist Being the Familiar Correspondence of Vincent Van Gogh Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGainsborough: Masterpieces in Colour Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Otto Van Veen: Drawings & Paintings (Annotated) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGiovanni Segantini: 96 Masterpieces Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsArrows of the Chace - a collection of scattered n the daily newspapers 1840-1880 I Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe ultimate book on Rembrandt Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Words for Trees Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLectures on Landscape Delivered at Oxford in Lent Term, 1871 Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Stargazing in the Atomic Age: Essays Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsArt and Artifact in Austen Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsReading 1759: Literary Culture in Mid-Eighteenth-Century Britain and France Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEnchantment the Art and Life of Lilian Westcott Hale: America's Linear Impressionist Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Venetian Painters of the Renaissance Third Edition Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Portable Italian Mamma: Guilt, Pasta, and When Are You Giving Me Grandchildren? Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsModern Art Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTissot: 248 Colour Plates Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMy Private Menagerie from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Literary Criticism For You
One Hundred Years of Solitude: A Novel by Gabriel Garcia Márquez | Conversation Starters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Art of Seduction: by Robert Greene | Conversation Starters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/512 Rules For Life: by Jordan Peterson | Conversation Starters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The 48 Laws of Power: by Robert Greene | Conversation Starters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Letters to a Young Poet Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Behold a Pale Horse: by William Cooper | Conversation Starters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Great Alone: by Kristin Hannah | Conversation Starters Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Court of Thorns and Roses: A Novel by Sarah J. Maas | Conversation Starters Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself by Michael A. Singer | Conversation Starters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5As I Lay Dying Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts.by Brené Brown | Conversation Starters Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Man's Search for Meaning: by Viktor E. Frankl | Conversation Starters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Gulag Archipelago [Volume 1]: An Experiment in Literary Investigation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of '70s and '80s Horror Fiction Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Circe: by Madeline Miller | Conversation Starters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Verity: by Colleen Hoover | Conversation Starters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Moby Dick (Complete Unabridged Edition) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5My Year of Rest and Relaxation: by Ottessa Moshfegh | Conversation Starters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Gulag Archipelago: The Authorized Abridgement Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Book of Virtues Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5SUMMARY Of The Plant Paradox: The Hidden Dangers in Healthy Foods That Cause Disease and Weight Gain Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Salome and the Dance of Writing
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
3/5
2 ratings1 review
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5An interesting examination of portraiture in literature and the relationship of painting to writing. The author delves into the history of representation and it's use in various periods through history.This is a very academic book and reads like a thesis or scholarly article. It's dense.
Book preview
Salome and the Dance of Writing - Françoise Meltzer
Enjoying the preview?
Page 1 of 1