ISBN: 1243433523

Paperback, [EAN: 9781243433527], ProQuest, UMI Dissertation Publishing, ProQuest, UMI Dissertation Publishing, Book, [PU: ProQuest, UMI Dissertation Publishing], ProQuest, UMI Dissertatio… Plus…

Paperback, [EAN: 9781243433527], ProQuest, UMI Dissertation Publishing, ProQuest, UMI Dissertation Publishing, Book, [PU: ProQuest, UMI Dissertation Publishing], ProQuest, UMI Dissertation Publishing, Flaubert critics insist on the emergence of silence as the center and goal of his language. Critics particularly claim that his use of society's linguistic mannerisms most clearly shows Flaubert's own silence vis-a-vis language. The aim of locating silence in Flaubert's work is to prove that he is one of the 19th centuries most modern writers, aware of the linguistic turn before others and able to exploit it to his own creative ends. In silencing language, Flaubert is able to free it from social constraints. For this reason, Flaubert's language is often described as being musical: sound and rhythm acquire a heightened importance in the text through the diminution of sense, grammar is used in strange ways to deepen the alienation of the text from society. A few critics have lately been able to envision the possibility that silence is not the goal of Flaubert's language, but rather that it is a step towards reclaiming language and endowing it with some of the power that societal use has sapped from it. From this viewpoint, silence is not so much the highest expression of Art, as it is a methodological tool that aids in turning language into an artistic medium---if one accepts with Flaubert that language has become so corrupted through banal use that it is no longer fit for art. The way to reclaim language is indeed to push it to its furthest limits, to envelop it in a form of silence and yet to allow it to speak for itself. All language is therefore cited from previous sources, whether explicit or otherwise, which are brought to bear upon the new text while placing it and the citation under scrutiny. Both Flaubert and Kraus write pieces that present and expose, that cite, the words of others, both in the dialogue of novels and plays and in more self-reflective genres such as dictionaries and essays. In their work there is a clear distinction drawn between language that is self-aware, that takes into consideration the possible denotations and connotations into which it can be construed, and language that is unaware, used in only one register and for a specific purpose. Kraus is particularly adept at exposing unaware language, and at showing that it is the user who is unaware, rather than language itself. Language in itself is infinitely active, but is arrested in its natural course by the machinations of men. He uses the method of citationality with particular force, in the process separating the intentions behind the language from language itself; Kraus sees language exposing these intentions naturally, betraying hidden motives that nevertheless only become apparent to those readers who are capable of seeing language properly. What emerges is an aesthetics of language that relies on its historical and literary etymology as well as highly idiosyncratic ideas about the function of grammar, ideas that show grammar to be akin to founding principles in other artistic mediums. The notion of lyrical becomes redefined by both authors in the quest to endow prose with the kind of linguistic power that seems reserved for poetry. The lyrical also becomes a way of citing language, still clearly taken from societal structures and yet already altered by the awareness of its full implications. Citationality thus emerges as the driving process behind both authors' creative methods, in a form that, while coinciding with Jacques Derrida's and Judith Butler's uses of the term, is unique to each writer. It is nevertheless thanks to the concept of citationality as understood in contemporary performance studies that we are able to see the similarities in Flaubert's and Kraus's writing, and much more poignantly, the subversive aesthetic and political..., 10132, Literary, 17, Literature & Fiction, 1000, Subjects, 283155, Books<

2011, ISBN: 9781243433527

Softcover, Buch, [PU: Proquest, Umi Dissertation Publishing]