Repeat the Important Words Until You Understand Them: Metaphor, Memory and Meaning in Anne Carson’s Essaying

IF 0.3 3区文学 0 LITERATURE Life Writing Pub Date : 2022-07-07 DOI:10.1080/14484528.2022.2093446

M. O’Rourke

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Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper considers essays from Canadian author Anne Carson’s Glass, Irony & God (1992) and Plainwater (1995). Carson has spoken of these as reshapings of her life experience and recollections on the page. I suggest that it is the essential quality of plasticity—inherent to the essay genre, evident in the workings of memory, and displayed in Carson’s hybrid and experimental writing—which makes these works so powerful and expressly suited to their purpose. By working through contemporary definitions of the essay, touching on the neuroscience of memory, and analysing key examples of Carson’s life writing, I will also suggest that the particular qualities of lyric essay, such as its reliance on metaphor, elision and allusion, echo the ambiguities and inconsistencies inherent to identity, interpersonal relationships and autobiographical memory. Thus, this paper shows Carson as reaching beyond traditional textual practices of remembering to develop a unique mode of life writing ideally suited to reshaping and thus handling emotionally and ethically charged material, in order to bring the experimental personal essay to its fullest expression.

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把重要的单词重复直到你理解它们：安妮·卡森散文中的隐喻、记忆和意义

摘要本文综合了加拿大作家安妮•卡森的《玻璃、讽刺与上帝》（1992）和《平原》（1995）。卡森在页面上说，这些是对她的生活经历和回忆的重塑。我认为，正是可塑性的本质——这是散文类型固有的，在记忆的运作中表现得很明显，并在卡森的混合和实验写作中表现出来——使这些作品如此强大，并明确地符合其目的。通过研究这篇文章的当代定义，触及记忆的神经科学，并分析卡森生活写作的关键例子，我还认为抒情文章的特殊品质，如对隐喻、省略和暗示的依赖，呼应了身份、人际关系和自传体记忆所固有的模糊性和不一致性。因此，本文表明，卡森超越了传统的记忆文本实践，发展了一种独特的生活写作模式，非常适合重塑和处理情感和道德方面的材料，以使实验性的个人文章得到最充分的表达。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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