The New York Trilogy

Il contributo discute dell'uso dei nomi nella narrativa di Paul Auster, soffermandosi sui romanzi contenuti nella "Trilogia di New York", che presentano interessanti aspetti sull'origine della lingua e sulla diatriba, inquadrata dal punto di vista linguistico, semiotico e letterario, concernente il NP e il significante considerato come un segno arbitrario, in opposizione alla convinzione che si trattasse di un segno motivato. Con la struttura aperta della "Trilogia", secondo David Lodge, Auster sembra voler riproporre allegoricamente l'idea che, dopo la "Caduta", sia impossibile ricostituire il legame fra significante e significato presupposto antecedentemente, propendendo per l'assoluta arbitrarietà nell'associazione del nome proprio con il senso al quale dovrebbe rinviare. Il testo del saggio (in maniera indiretta nella sua versione in inglese e diretta in quella italiana, successiva e ampliata) propone invece l'idea che in qualche modo tale legame esista ancora, anche se spesso mantenuto o evocato in maniera casuale, o imprevedibile, nella vita reale, mentre la medesima idea fa comunemente parte del processo di nominazione che sottende alle convenzioni letterarie, secondo un approccio al quale lo stesso Auster non si sottrae, seguendo l'esempio di ciò che racconta nell'ultimo dei romanzi della "Trilogia" ("The locked Room"), dove ricorda con quale criterio aveva associato dei nomi reali a individui fittizi per un lavoro di censimento svolto per il Governo.

Seeking to free us from the clutches of our self-made rigid conventions, postmodernism criticizes the metanarratives of modern times, while metafiction seems a better spokesman of it. New York Trilogy, Paul Auster’s debut composition and a meta-detective novel, has secured its fame in the postmodern fiction. It uses and abuses the conventions of detective novel, and lays bare the conventions of objective historiography. In doing this, Auster has given a self-reflective and equally historical dimension to his oeuvre through the technique of “historiographic metafiction”. Linda Hutcheon sees “historiographic metafiction” as a way to rewrite history in postmodern fiction. Postmodernism seeks to embrace a plurality of truths, and history is no longer monolithic and objective. Hutcheon contends that the postmodernist fiction is characterized by intense self-reflexivity and overtly parodic intertextuality. Utilizing historical accounts as intertextual effects, the writers of postmodernist fiction distrust in history. The present article will attempt to analyze New York Trilogy as a “historiographic metafiction”. Firstly, and insofar as it is within the scope of the article, it will attempt to offer a critical analysis of “postmodernism”, “metafiction”, and “metaphysical detective fiction”. Then, it will examine Auster’s novel as a “historiographic metafiction” in the light of Hutcheon’s theories.

This is an updated version of a paper I first presented at the International Arthur Miller Centennial Conference at the Universidad de Extremadura Cáceres, Spain on November 19, 2015. In this paper, I present an alternative reading of two late Arthur Miller plays, Some Kind of Love Story and Clara. Both concern detective who are not, I contend, real detectives, and so are similar to Paul Auster's New York Trilogy, released the same year that Clara was first staged. I argue that this similarity can, and should, prompt a re-evaluation of Miller's later work , specifically in relation to postmodernism. I also go back to Miller's earlier play from the late-1970s, The Archbishop's Ceiling, and, using Andrew Sofer's "From Technology to Trope: The Archbishop's Ceiling and Arthur Miller's Prismatic Drama" as a key text, argue that we can see the development of a postmodernist viewpoint in Miller's theatre from there

Abstract


In line with the strong emphasis on visuality in the wake of the “visual turn” in literary and cultural studies, graphic novel adaptations of literary texts have recently been the objects of scholarly study and narratological theory building. Much less attention, if any, has been accorded to radio play adaptations of novels like Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy. An analysis of radio play adaptations acquires a special significance in the case of this highly enigmatic work, which makes a seriously playful use of postmodern narrative strategies. It is perhaps above all this feature which made the adaptation of the novel’s first instalment, City of Glass, into a graphic novel by Paul Karasik and David Mazucchelli so successful. While the graphic novel visualizes characteristic features of its mother text, this paper explores the different modes of narrative sound in three German radio play adaptations of Auster’s novel. Alfred Behrens’ Stadt aus Glas, Katharina Bihler’s Schlagschatten, and Norbert Schaeffer’s Hinter verschlossenen Türen employ narrative devices like voices in both German and English, the evocation of city soundscapes, the narrative uses of music as well as issues of the simultaneity and/or difference of story and discourse time. The narrative auralization of Auster’s novels in the radio plays under discussion can be shown to foreground non-visual aspects of the pre-texts and to add further dimensions for interpretation that underline the usefulness of audionarratological analysis for adaptation studies.

Проводится краткий обзор зарождения нового этап развития американской литературы, выраженный, в частности, в появлении нового типа героя с характерными признаками «коллективного индивида». Его появление характеризуется слиянием философский и литературоведческих категорий, что наиболее ярко проявляется в «Нью-Йоркской трилогии» Пола Остера. Исследование представляет новый взгляд на человека (персонажа) в обществе таких же как он субъектов. Представлена инновационная для американской литературы точка зрения на читателя как человека, способного совершать духовный скачок от веры в истинность своего бытия (избранность США среди всего человечества) до сакральной истины (видение американской нации как части человечества). Работа базируется на трудах российских философов, сторонников интуитивизма (Н.О. Лосский) и гносеологии (Н.А. Бердяев).