{"title":"Chronicle Conditions","authors":"Julie Singer","doi":"10.1215/00358118-9560716","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"\n Sociological research on chronic illness, and especially on the autobiographical writings of modern patients, has yielded insights into how chronic conditions alter fundamental relationships between notions of self, body, and time. The chronic part of “chronic illness” can disrupt perceptions of the linearity of time, yielding alternate temporalities grounded in bodily experience. In contemporary self-fiction, to chronicle a chronic condition is to juggle different kinds of time. But what about genres, like premodern historiography, that impose a linear, chronological framework? What is at stake when the narrative temporality of a medieval chronicle is filtered through the disrupted temporalities of a chronically impaired subject? This article interrogates these questions through the works of Gilles li Muisis (1272–1353). A Tournaisian abbot, Gilles authored both a Latin chronicle and of a set of vernacular poems situating his writerly activity within a very specific corporeal context: he writes both poetry and chronicle after cataracts have so impaired his vision that he can no longer carry out his administrative duties at the abbey of Saint-Martin—and, remarkably, he abandons his writing after a successful surgery restores his eyesight. The ways in which Gilles talks about his own bodily condition, in both the chronicle and the poems, constitute an elaborate metadiscursive frame whose ultimate effect is to construct the project of the chronicler as a kind of self-writing avant la lettre. With readings of both the Latin and the vernacular works, this essay shows that the chronicle is achieved through a series of subtle chronological and sensory displacements: Gilles’s chronic condition has enabled him to create an anachronic subject-position, outside of both linear historiographical time and the “body-time” of his impairment.","PeriodicalId":39614,"journal":{"name":"Romanic Review","volume":"37 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2000,"publicationDate":"2022-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Romanic Review","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1215/00358118-9560716","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LITERATURE, ROMANCE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Sociological research on chronic illness, and especially on the autobiographical writings of modern patients, has yielded insights into how chronic conditions alter fundamental relationships between notions of self, body, and time. The chronic part of “chronic illness” can disrupt perceptions of the linearity of time, yielding alternate temporalities grounded in bodily experience. In contemporary self-fiction, to chronicle a chronic condition is to juggle different kinds of time. But what about genres, like premodern historiography, that impose a linear, chronological framework? What is at stake when the narrative temporality of a medieval chronicle is filtered through the disrupted temporalities of a chronically impaired subject? This article interrogates these questions through the works of Gilles li Muisis (1272–1353). A Tournaisian abbot, Gilles authored both a Latin chronicle and of a set of vernacular poems situating his writerly activity within a very specific corporeal context: he writes both poetry and chronicle after cataracts have so impaired his vision that he can no longer carry out his administrative duties at the abbey of Saint-Martin—and, remarkably, he abandons his writing after a successful surgery restores his eyesight. The ways in which Gilles talks about his own bodily condition, in both the chronicle and the poems, constitute an elaborate metadiscursive frame whose ultimate effect is to construct the project of the chronicler as a kind of self-writing avant la lettre. With readings of both the Latin and the vernacular works, this essay shows that the chronicle is achieved through a series of subtle chronological and sensory displacements: Gilles’s chronic condition has enabled him to create an anachronic subject-position, outside of both linear historiographical time and the “body-time” of his impairment.
对慢性疾病的社会学研究,特别是对现代患者自传的研究,已经对慢性疾病如何改变自我、身体和时间概念之间的基本关系产生了深刻的见解。“慢性疾病”的慢性部分可以破坏对时间线性的感知,产生基于身体经验的交替时间。在当代的自编小说中,编年史记录一种慢性疾病就是在不同类型的时间中穿梭。但是,像前现代史学这样的体裁又如何呢?当中世纪编年史的叙事时间性被一个长期受损的主体的中断的时间性所过滤时,什么是危险的?本文通过Gilles li Muisis(1272-1353)的作品来探究这些问题。吉尔斯是一名图尔奈修道院院长,他既写了一部拉丁文编年史,也写了一套白话诗,把他的写作活动置于一个非常具体的物质环境中:他在白内障严重损害了他的视力,无法再在圣马丁修道院履行行政职责后,既写诗又写编年史,而且值得注意的是,他在一次成功的手术恢复视力后,放弃了写作。吉尔斯在编年史和诗歌中谈论自己身体状况的方式,构成了一个精心设计的元话语框架,其最终效果是将编年史作者的项目构建为一种自我写作的先锋书信。通过对拉丁文和白话作品的阅读,本文表明编年史是通过一系列微妙的时间和感官位移来实现的:吉尔斯的慢性疾病使他能够在线性历史编纂时间和他的“身体时间”之外创造一个错误的主体位置。
Romanic ReviewArts and Humanities-Arts and Humanities (all)
CiteScore
0.20
自引率
0.00%
发文量
23
期刊介绍:
The Romanic Review is a journal devoted to the study of Romance literatures.Founded by Henry Alfred Todd in 1910, it is published by the Department of French and Romance Philology of Columbia University in cooperation with the Departments of Spanish and Italian. The journal is published four times a year (January, March, May, November) and balances special thematic issues and regular unsolicited issues. It covers all periods of French, Italian and Spanish-language literature, and welcomes a broad diversity of critical approaches.