Performativity in literature: The Lund-Nanjing seminars

Description

IN RECENT YEARS, the importance of performative processes to the history of European culture has increasingly been recognized. This awareness is most evident in the academic discipline of performance studies and the fact that performativity is now widely discussed in the humanities and social sciences. Yet the question remains whether it is a theory that usefully allows us to analyse individual aesthetic phenomena, or a field of research that comprises all such phenomena. Performativity has known implications for literary and cultural studies, yet scholarly research in this area is still rare. By drawing on the literature of China, Sweden, and the English-speaking world, the contributors to Performativity in Literature do much to redress this. In a series of wide-ranging essays, they seek answers to the fundamental question of what the text does in certain situations. And, in answering, each essay conceives of the text not only as meaning but as action. I. Introduction Eva Hættner Aurelius, He Chengzhou & Jon Helgason: Performativity in Literature: The Lund–Nanjing Seminars 9 II. Identity He Chengzhou: Rural Chineseness: Mo Yan’s Work, and World Literature 29 Peter Henning: Autobiographical Performances, Theatrical Aesthetics, and the Gaze of the Crowd: The Case of Henriette Widerberg and her ‘Memories of an Actress’ 43 Jiang Yuxing: The Eventness of Thoreau’s ‘A Plea for Captain Brown’ 55 Evelina Stenbeck: The Materiality of Poetry in Athena Farrokhzad’s White Blight 67 Luo Xiaoli: Performing an Eccentric Public Image: Autobiographical Narrative in Edgar Allan Poe’s Detective Tales 80 Nina Ernst: Performing Rituals and the Process of Healing through Art: A Graphic Memoir Example 93 Chen Xi: Perform to Empower: August Wilson’s Public Persona and Social Performances 106 Eva Hættner Aurelius: Performing Selves: Roles in Queen Christina of Sweden’s Autobiography 121 III. Changing Reality (Performanz) Dan Hansong: From Oral History Performance to Political Apology Performance: A Case Study of Wang Youqin and Song Binbin 137 Erik Erlanson: Lyric and Subjection: On the Passionate Reading of Helen Vendler and the Performanz of Lyric Poetry 150 Jiang Ningkang: From the Performative to the Normative: Root-seeking Narrative in A Dictionary of Maqiao 164 Lin Yi: Speech Acts and Ethics in King Lear 175 Rebecka Eriksson: Performing the ‘New Woman’: A Study of Shen Xiling’s 1935 Film Chuanjia nü 190 Yuan Xia: Performing Animal Rights and Environmental Protection in Farley Mowat’s Never Cry Wolf 199 Li Shuling: Performing an Individual Voice: Gao Xingjian and Bus Stop 213 IV. Beyond Eventness Solveig Daugaard: ‘I’m always wanting to collaborate with some one’: The Performative Poetics of Gertrude Stein and its Reception as Collaboration 231 Jon Helgason: Practical Aspects of Performance Theory in Literary Studies 247 References 259 Acknowledgements 277 The Authors 278