Anne Carson: Antiquity

Description

From her seminal Eros the Bittersweet (1986) to her experimental Float (2016), Bakkhai (2017) and NormaJeaneBaker of Troy (2019), Anne Carson’s engagement with antiquity has been deeply influential to generations of readers, both inside and outside of academia. One reason for her success is the versatile scope of her classically-oriented oeuvre, which she rethinks across multiple media and categories. Yet an equally significant reason is her profile as a classicist. In this role, Carson unfailingly refuses to conform to the established conventions and situated practices of her discipline, in favour of a mode of reading classical literature that allows for interpretative and creative freedom. From a multi-praxis, cross-disciplinary perspective, the volume explores the erudite indiscipline of Carson’s classicism as it emerges in her poetry, translations, essays and visual artistry. It argues that her classicism is irreducible to a single vision, and that it is best approached as integral to the protean character of her artistic thought. Anne Carson/Antiquity collects twenty essays by poets, translators, artists, practitioners and scholars. It offers the first collective study of the author’s classicism, while drawing attention to one of the most avant-garde, multifaceted readings of the classical past. Cover page Picture Halftitle page Series page Title page Copyright page CONTENTS FIGURES CONTRIBUTORS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS TIMELINE OF ANNE CARSON’S WORKS AND DISTINCTIONS INTRODUCTION: ON ANNE CARSON/ANTIQUITY Notes CHAPTER 1 THE BEGINNING OF NOW now – then The stereoscopic moment Notes CHAPTER 2 CHIMERAS: EMPTY SPACE AND MELTING BORDERS Preamble Chimera I: definition Chimera II: self Chimera III: books Chimera IV: assemblage Chimera V: mechanisms in epic, formula and simile Chimera VI: empty space and contingency Chimera VII: wings, melting, the self Chimera VIII: epilogue Notes CHAPTER 3 CARSON FOR THE NON-CLASSICIST Notes CHAPTER 4 ÉCRITURE AND THE BUDDING CLASSICIST Euphoric urge Essay: a tryout Amalgams Poems lived-in Notes CHAPTER 5 ERRING AND WHATEVER Notes CHAPTER 6 THE GIFT OF RESIDUE Hölderlin’s gymnastics and ‘the third place to be’ Sappho’s lacunae and Benjamin’s intention Homer’s silences and Francis Bacon’s screams Epilogue: the gift of residue and the stains of antiquity Notes CHAPTER 7 CARSON FRAGMENT Notes CHAPTER 8 SHADES Translating thresholds Rip in time Shades Notes CHAPTER 9 THE PARATEXTUAL COSMOS Between creativity and criticism Paratextual selves and imagined voices Spaces for a poet-translator’s thinking Art of collaboration: visual understandings Poetry out of the process A way forward Notes CHAPTER 10 AN ESSAY ON AN ESSAY ON IRONY Notes CHAPTER 11 THE STESICHOREAN ETHOS Notes CHAPTER 12 CUNNING INTELLIGENCE Notes CHAPTER 13 MYTHOPOETIC IMMERSIONS Notes CHAPTER 14 DEADLY EROTIC TANGOS AND ANIMAL AFFINITY1 Abject eros and Carson’s poetics of shame Words and wounds: linguistic vulnerability From ‘TENDERLOIN’35 to ‘tender care’ Notes CHAPTER 15 POETRY AND PROFIT Exaptation Economics Exorbitance Apting and orbiting: exit strategies Classical interest, classical debt Notes CHAPTER 16 MORE SPECTRES OF DYING EMPIRE The ‘black cloth’ of interjection Primitivism, modernism, philhellenism Dwelling in Greek Autobiography of White Conclusion Notes CHAPTER 17 TRANSLATION, TRANSCREATION, TRANSGRESSION Rethinking translation Revoicing the dead Re-engaging with the ancients Translation and transgression Pushing the boundaries of translation Notes CHAPTER 18 TRANSLATING THE CANON, FILLING THE ABSENCE Poem 101 Between literary translation and creative writing Conclusion Notes CHAPTER 19 TRANSLATION CATASTROPHES: PINPLAY Translation and catastrophe Through the lacuna Notes CHAPTER 20 THERE IT LIES UNTRANSLATABLE The epigraphs The poems Notes BIBLIOGRAPHY INDEX OF TERMS INDEX OF TEXTUAL REFERENCES