This book presents a synthesised framework for analysing archival poetics in multimodal literature, examining case studies from twenty-first-century American fiction towards elucidating the archival turn in contemporary literature more broadly. Ivansson turns her focus on multimodal archival fiction, here understood as works which engage with archival practices of collecting and organising both verbal text and visual inclusions of fictional and factual archival material, such as photographs, sketches, notes, and newspaper clippings.
The volume brings together work from multimodality, cognitive stylistics, and narratology with archival studies to demonstrate how contemporary archival fiction engages with archival themes through multimodal design. Case studies include works from Barbara Hodgson, Leanne Shapton, Valeria Luiselli, and Jacob Garbe and Aaron A. Reed. The selected examples allow for a detailed exploration of how to analyse the multimodal composition and reader experience of archival poetics. Furthermore, these case studies also elucidate how such a framework can be applied more broadly to the analysis of fictional works thematically and structurally concerned with the archive, or those that grapple with such areas of interest in contemporary research as materiality, bookishness, and ontological ambiguity.
This volume will appeal to students and scholars in multimodality, stylistics, American literature, and literary studies.
This book presents a synthesised framework for analysing archival poetics in multimodal literature, examining case studies from 21st-century American fiction toward elucidating the archival turn in contemporary literature more broadly.
1 Introducing the Archival Turn: 1.1 Introduction, 1.2 History,
Development, and Critique of the Archive, 1.2.1 The Early Foundations of the
Archive, 1.2.2 The Postmodern Critique of the Archive, 1.2.3 The Digital
Archive, 1.3 Visual Art and the Archive, 1.4 Literature and the Archive,
1.4.1 Representations of the Archive in Literature, 1.4.2 Manifestations of
the Archive in Literature, 1.4.3 The Centrality of Multimodality, 1.5 Scope
and Aims: The Need to Attend to Multimodal Archival Poetics, 1.6 Structure of
the Book; 2 Towards a Methodology for Analysing Archival Fiction: 2.1
Introduction, 2.2 The Pictorial Turn, 2.3 The Multimodal Turn, 2.3.1
Multimodal Stylistics, 2.3.1.1 Layout and Connectivity, 2.3.1.2 Photographs,
Drawings, and Graphic Elements, 2.3.1.3 Typography, 2.4 The Cognitive Turn,
2.4.1 Transmodal Narratology, 2.4.1.1 Conceptual Shifts, 2.4.1.2 Analysing
the Narrativity of Semiotic Modes, 2.4.2 Multimodal Cognitive Poetics,
2.4.2.1 Bistable Oscillation, 2.4.2.2 Doubly Deictic Subjectivity, 2.5
Towards a Multimodal Cognitive Stylistics Approach to Archival Fiction; 3
Hippolytes Island: Ontological Ambiguity and The Book as an Archive: 3.1
Introduction, 3.2 Hippolytes Island, 3.3 Analysing Hippolytes Island as
Archival Fiction, 3.3.1 Entering the Archive: A Cognitive Approach to
Multimodal Fictionality, 3.3.2 Exploring Books-within-the-Book: Archival
Bookishness and Doubly Deictic Subjectivity, 3.3.3 Navigating in the Archive:
Poly-Deictic Subjectivity, 3.3.4 Looking At/Through the Photographic Picture,
3.3.5 Conducting Further Research: Ontological Refreshment, 3.4 Conclusion; 4
Important Artifacts: Piecing Together a True(ly) Archived Love Story: 4.1
Introduction, 4.2 Important Artifacts, 4.3 Analysing Important Artifacts as
Archival Fiction, 4.3.1 Judging the Book by its Cover: A Schema Theory
Approach, 4.3.2 Entering the Archive: Intertextuality and Narrative
Interrelation, 4.3.3 Reading the List: Visual and Verbal Interrelations,
4.3.4 Navigating in the Analogue Database: Intratextual Cross-referencing,
4.3.5 Interpreting the Books within the Book: Verbal and Visual
Intertextuality, 4.3.6 Exploring the Gaps in the Archive: Interpreting
Interreferential Lacunas, 4.4 Conclusion; 5 Lost Children Archive: Descending
into an Inventory of Echoes: 5.1 Introduction, 5.2 Lost Children Archive, 5.3
Analysing Lost Children Archive as Archival Fiction, 5.3.1 Entering the
Archive: A Cognitive Deixis Approach, 5.3.2 Reading the Book-within-the-Book:
Free Direct Reading Presentation, 5.3.3 Shuffling in the Box-Archive:
Poly-Deictic Subjectivity, 5.3.4 Descending into Echo Canyon: Metalepsis in
the Archive, 5.3.5 The Photographic Archive: Blurring Ontological Boundaries,
5.4 Conclusion; 6 The Ice-bound Concordance: The Researcher Between Page and
Screen: 6.1 Introduction, 6.2 The Ice-bound Concordance, 6.3 Analysing The
Ice-bound Concordance as Archival Fiction, 6.3.1 Entering the Digital Archive
Together: Doubly Deictic You, 6.3.2 Writing the Book within the Book:
Dynarchival Bookishness, 6.3.3 Entering the Print Archive: The Reader as
Researcher, 6.3.4 Navigating the Archive: Ontological Blurring through
Archival Bookishness, 6.4 Conclusion; 7 Conclusion: 7.1 Introduction, 7.2
Methodological Contributions, 7.3 Theoretical and Analytical Contributions,
7.3.1 Archival Bookishness, 7.3.2 The Reader as Researcher, 7.3.3
Poly-Deictic Subjectivity, 7.3.4 Bistable Reading Modes, 7.3.5
Coreferentiality and Interreferential Lacuna, 7.3.6 Reading Presentation,
7.3.6 Commonalities Across Examined Works of Archival Fiction, 7.4 Directions
for Future Research, 7.5 Conclusion
Elin Ivansson is an Associate Lecturer in English at Sheffield Hallam University, UK, where she received her PhD in English in 2023.
