Session I: Aspects of epistolarity

Transcription

1 Session I: Aspects of epistolarity 1 The evolution of epistolarity: conceptual blending in genre transformation Michael Sinding (Osnabrück) Genre mixture and change are among the most vital issues in current genre theory and literary history (Cohen, Luke). One main view of the origin of literary genres sees them as developments (amplifications, transformations) of primary extraliterary acts or genres of everyday discourse, like assertion, description, etc. (Bakhtin; Todorov; Traugott and Pratt). A cognitive approach to this thesis can consider genres as schemas or cognitive models, and genre mixture in terms of conceptual blending theory. The epistolary novel furnishes a rich example. This major subgenre of the novel is distinguished primarily by its fictional rhetorical situation, so its evolution from speech genre (conversation) to written genre (letter, letter collection, letter manual) to literary genres (literary letter, epistolary novel) is unusually clear. Mark Turner points out that Our concept of letter is based upon our concept of conversation. (Reading 243); and Herman has analyzed some of the blending involved in epistolarity. But they have not focused on generic aspects of the topic. Claudio Guillén sketches an approach to epistolary genres that suggests blending theory avant la lettre. Prototypically the letter is a halved dialogue implying themes of friendship and absence and a clear, swift, loose style. Yet in relation to literary developments of epistolary poems and novels, it is a conceptual model belonging to the ideal spaces of poetics, and [the poem is] an activity taking into consideration that model, but in practice not coinciding with it fully, or only in some degree, and not without reference to other paradigms, through either acceptance or rejection. I characterize the genre models of conversation and letter, and analyze how in the process of becoming literature (through the intermediate genres of collection and manual) their various dimensions of form (rhetorical situation, discourse structure, style) and function (communicative, emotional, social, ideological) are transformed through blending with literary form- function models. I concentrate on the early history of the English epistolary novel, specifically Richardson's transformations of model letter sequences (in Familiar Letters) into new forms of the novel in Pamela and Clarissa. Bakhtin, Mikhail, The Dialogic Imagination, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin, 1981) , Speech Genres and Other Late Essays, trans. Vern W. McGee, ed. by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin, 1986). Bannet, Eve Tavor, Empire of Letters: Letter Manuals and Transatlantic Correspondence, (Cambridge, 2005). Bazerman, Charles, Letters and the Social Grounding of Differentiated Genres, in Letter Writing As a Social Practice, ed. by David Barton and Nigel Hall (Amsterdam, 2000), pp , Systems of Genres and the Enactment of Social Intentions, in Genre and the New Rhetoric, ed. by Aviva Freedman and Peter Medway (London, 1994), pp Beebee, Thomas O., Epistolary Fiction in Europe (Cambridge, 1999) , The Ideology of Genre: A Comparative Study of Generic Instability (University Park, 1994).

2 Berkenkotter, Carol, and Huckin, Thomas N., Rethinking Genre from a Sociocognitive Perspective, in Written Communication, 10/4 (1993), Cornbleet, Sandra, and Carter, Ronald, The Language of Speech and Writing (London, 2001). Cohen, Ralph, Introduction: Notes Toward a Generic Reconstitution of Literary Study, in Theorizing Genres II, Special issue of New Literary History, 34/3 (2003), v xvi. Day, Robert Adams, Told in Letters: Epistolary Fiction before Richardson (Ann Arbor, 1966). Modern Genre Theory, ed. by David Duff (Essex, 2000). Fauconnier, Gilles, and Turner, Mark, The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind s Hidden Complexities (New York, 2003). Genre and the New Rhetoric, ed. by Aviva Freedman and Peter Medway (London: 1994). Frow, John, Genre. The New Critical Idiom, ed. by John Drakakis (London, 2006). Guillén, Claudio, Notes toward the Study of the Renaissance Letter, in Renaissance Genres: Essays on Theory, History, and Interpretation, ed. by Barbara K. Lewalski, Harvard English Studies 14 (Cambridge, 1986). Herman, Vimala, Deictic Projection and Conceptual Blending in Epistolarity, in Poetics Today, 20/3 (1999), The Oxford Book of Letters, ed. by Frank Kermode and Anita Kermode (Oxford, 2003). Keymer, Tom, Richardson s Clarissa and the Eighteenth- Century Reader (Cambridge, 1992). Luke, Allan, Series Editor s Preface, in Genre and the New Rhetoric, ed. by Aviva Freedman and Peter Medway (London, 1994), vii xi. Miller, Carolyn R., Genre as Social Action, in Quarterly Journal of Speech, 70 (1984), Richardson, Samuel, Clarissa, or The History of a Young Lady , ed. by Angus Ross (London, 1985) , Familiar Letters on Important Occasions. 1741, ed. by Brian W. Downs (Folcroft, 1974) , Pamela , Riverside Editions, ed. by T. C. Duncan Eaves and Ben D. Kimpel (Boston, 1971). Swales, John M., Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings (Cambridge, 1990). Todorov, Tzvetan, Genres in Discourse, trans. Catherine Porter (Cambridge, 1990). Traugott, Elizabeth Closs, and Pratt, Mary Louise, Linguistics for Students of Literature (San Diego, 1980). Turner, Mark, Reading Minds: The Study of English in the Age of Cognitive Science (Princeton, 1991). Tynyanov, Yury, The Literary Fact, in Modern Genre Theory, ed. by David Duff, pp Würzbach, Natascha, The Novel in Letters: Epistolary Fiction in the Early English Novel (London, 1969). 2 Die Poesie des Briefes. Eine literaturanthropologische Skizze [The poetry of the letter: an outline from the perspective of literary anthropology] Robert Vellusig (Graz) This paper connects the question of how to define the letter in terms of theory of genre with reflections on its poetic qualities. For this purpose I differentiate, as a first step, between the letter as a medium, as a form of communication, and as a text type (or genre). The letter can only be adequately defined as a medium if it is understood as a means of transmission, that is, as a message which is encoded in written form and individually addressed, and is conveyed closed via post or a messenger. The materiality of the letter, which recent research into letters has uncovered as a fundamental part of its message, is one aspect of this

3 status as a medium. It has been said of this medium: As soon as letters are texts, letters are no longer letters ( Sobald Briefe Texte sind, sind Briefe keine Briefe mehr ; Bohnenkamp/Wiethölter). The letter, as a form of communication, is shaped by the preconditions of a medium of communication which is devoid of interaction and individually addressed. Unlike spoken utterances in conversations, letters are not parts of discourse which cannot exist in isolation, but rather are more or less autonomous texts. They can be identified as functional equivalents of an interpersonal encounter through features such as formulaic expressions of address, greeting, and valediction. As texts, they outlast the specific event of communication they represent. The letter can only be called a text type in the proper meaning of the word if reasons and motives for writing are sufficiently uniform that, as a result, specific patterns develop. Text types (or communicative genres [ kommunikative Gattungen, Luckmann]) are communicative routines, which, to a greater or lesser extent, provide mandatory solutions to particular communicative problems. If I as a second step make an attempt to define the letter as a form of extraliterary poetry, then the topic of discussion is not a medium or text type, but rather the specific manifestation of a form of communication which is, as such, multifunctional and not restricted to particular themes. I define those utterances (and texts) as poetic in which a person assumes linguistic form because these utterances can be imagined to be an expression of that person. As a form of poetic expression, letters have a voice, a face, a soul which communicates with the reader in the manner of demeanour and gesture in the form of linguistic articulation; they establish intimacy and shape social distance. To the unintended reader, letters which seem to be poetic demonstrate how an individual opens himself up in relation to an absent you (and conceals himself from this you ) and, through this process, positions himself in relation to himself. The paper aims to ground this perspective by no means a novel one in terms of anthropology and situate it in relation to similar theoretical positions on the letter. Der Brief: Ereignis und Objekt, ed. by Anne Bohnenkamp and Waltraud Wiethölter (Frankfurt a.m. and Basle, 2008). Luckmann, Thomas, Grundformen der gesellschaftlichen Vermittlung des Wissens: Kommunikative Gattungen, in Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, Special issue, 27 (1986), Voltaire s correspondence: When is a letter not a letter? Nicholas Cronk (Oxford) Our sense of what a letter might be is of course powerfully shaped by the edition we use; and in the case of Voltaire s correspondence, Theodore Besterman s monumental definitive edition in 51 volumes (Voltaire Foundation, ) has created an intimidating corpus, bringing together a wide range of heterogeneous documents. My aim in this paper is to think further about how these documents might be categorized.

4 To begin with, Voltaire has a large number of correspondents of very different types, and the letters can be placed on a spectrum ranging from the completely private to the entirely public. At one extreme, we could cite a letter written to one correspondent about a purely personal matter, like the loan of a horse; and at the other extreme, a letter written from Ferney to a contact in Paris commenting on the Calas affair and intended to be widely circulated. Then there is the case of the public letter (lettre ostensatoire), designed purely for public consumption, for example when Voltaire writes to a publisher disclaiming all knowledge of one of his own publications. In addition to these real letters, there are the so- called letters published, for example, in journals, which are, in effect, articles. The use of the term letter to characterize a short prose article is well attested, and this genre would seem to be entirely distinct from personal correspondence. There is however more overlap than one might expect between these two categories; in the Œuvres complètes de Voltaire, we find a certain confusion between letters categorized as correspondence and others that have been classified together with polemical writings. This confusion may derive in part from editiorial decisions and the weight of editorial tradition there is an understandable tendency, in complex cases, to follow the practice of earlier editions. But the ambiguity perhaps it is not a confusion may derive in part from Voltaire s own practice, and his deliberate attempt to fudge the distinction between private and public. I propose to examine some specific examples, such as the Lettre au sieur Fez, libraire d Avignon (1762) and the Lettres à Foucher (1769), which straddle this divide between private communication and public polemic. In examining Voltaire s use of the form of the letter, we are also studying his manipulation of the different genres of polemcial writing. 4 From post to post : epistolary valediction and the horror of the last Grace Egan (Oxford) The last letters sent between Hester Thrale (15 th July 1784) and Samuel Johnson (8 th July 1784) offer a chance to examine the formal expression and social implications of epistolary valediction. Johnson ended his correspondence, and friendship, with Thrale following her marriage to Gabriel Piozzi. These two letters form the end of a complicated series, in which postscripts twist revocation into the re- pledging of loyalties. Both correspondents use their letters to create convenient fictions. Johnson draws on a myth about Mary Queen of Scots as a parallel to Thrale s imminent marriage to Piozzi. Thrale s letter bears a Bath postmark, but she was in London at the time. She aimed to avoid meeting with Johnson until she was married; likewise, her signature, now erased, read Piozzi, when in fact the ceremony had not yet taken place. Thrale uses the time bought her by epistolary communication to manipulate her correspondent. The function of the letter is tied to its physical deployment, its meaning extending beyond words.

5 5 Letters, performance and performativity Oliver Herford (Oxford) Quotation from the plays of Shakespeare is habitual to nineteenth- century literary correspondents. My paper uses this practice to test the coherence and aptness of a common analogy in critical discussions of letters, whereby the rhetoric of epistolary self- presentation is likened to a theatrical performance. This way of talking is at least contemporary with the earliest letters I shall be considering, but recent theoretical attention to the conditions of linguistic and social performativity deriving from J. L. Austin s work on performative utterances has complicated the analogy in ways that will be pertinent to my project too. By analysing examples of Shakespearean quotation in letters by nineteenth- century poets and novelists, I restore the figure of epistolary performance/performativity to a particular textual source, and try to indicate some of the kinds of help that theory might receive from historically situated close reading, in epistolary situations especially. The point to determine in each case will be how the literary and theatrical contexts of the source- passage interact with the interpersonal, social and stylistic contexts of the letter it reappears in. Several questions arise here: while each will receive a limited, particular answer, I hope that those answers will cumulatively suggest some working conclusions or principles. So, who speaks when a letter- writer brings into play words that belong not just to another writer but also to a dramatic character, and how does a letter s representation of the writing self respond to meta- theatrical instances where conscious performance already shapes personal identity? How is the illocutionary force of a letter its capacity to produce real effects for its recipients modified by its incorporation of words and phrases carried over from a work of literature, especially given that Austin rules all utterances issued in a literary context hollow or void with regard to performative effect? How does common cultural knowledge of an author like Shakespeare cross with the common knowledge that is either assumed or established by an exchange of letters? And how might the privacy of a personal correspondence be modified by its encounter with the different types and degrees of publicity that mark a dramatic text, whose fullest public existence requires some kind of staging as well as circulation in print? Letters 2.0? Linguistic insights into the extent to which social media are a substitute for personal letters Alan Scott (Nottingham) As a form of personal communication, the letter faces strong competition, particularly from electronic communication (Garfield 2013). While the parallels between and letters are clear (Kilian 2010 [2001]: 73 74), the parallels between letters and more recent social media deserve closer investigation. This paper therefore addresses the question of the extent to which social media can be regarded as substitutes for personal letters. Following the methodology of Bergs (2007), who identified socio- pragmatic sub- types of letters on the basis of linguistic variables, the shared characteristics (and the divergences) of letters and social media are assessed by focusing on the occurrence in social media of linguistic variables known to characterise canonical letters. One parallel between social media and canonical personal letters is clear: both

6 constitute written- down colloquial language. While forms of social media which afford synchronous communication between participants, e.g. internet relay chat, WhatsApp?, can be regarded as parallel to or possibly substitutes for spoken interaction, other, asynchronous media, seem at least superficially to be more letter- like, albeit potentially offering a greater immediacy than that of a posted letter. Three asynchronous types of social media are investigated here, namely a microblogging platform, a special interest discussion forum, and the customer comments facility on a commercial website. The analysis, which is carried out within a Text Linguistics framework (e.g. Brinker 2010), evaluates a representative sample of each of the three social media against pragmatic and structural features known to characterise canonical letters, for instance: dialogicity and conveying shared experience, and a focus on the first person (Barton & Hall 2000: 6) intertextuality (Tanskanen 2007) orthographic representation of prosody, the use of lexical items associated with spoken language, and regionalisms (Kilian 2010 [2001: 74]) It is concluded that, to varying extents, the forms of social media investigated can be considered Letters 2.0, exhibiting functional, structural, and linguistic characteristics of canonical personal letters, but also offering possibilities beyond those of canonical letters. Barton, David and Hall, Nigel, Introduction, in: Letter Writing as a Social Practice, ed. by David Barton and Nigel Hall (Amsterdam, 2000), pp Bergs, Alexander T., Letters: A new approach to text typology, in Letter Writing, ed. by Terttu Nevalainen and Sanna- Kaisa Tanskanen (Amsterdam, 2007), pp Garfield, Simon, To the Letter: A Journey through a Vanishing World (Edinburgh, 2013). Kilian, Jörg, T@stentöne. Geschriebene Umgangssprache in computervermittelter Kommunikation. Historisch- kritische Ergänzungen zu einem neuen Feld der linguistischen Forschung, in Deutsche Gegenwartssprache. Globalisierung. Neue Medien. Sprachkritik, ed. by Iris Forster and Tobias Heinz (Stuttgart: 2010 [2001]), pp Tanskanen, Sanna- Kaisa, Intertextual networks in the correspondence of Lady Katherine Paston, in Letter Writing, ed. by Terttu Nevalainen and Sanna- Kaisa Tanskanen (Amsterdam, 2007), pp