Limits of Orality and Textuality in Ciaran Carsons Poetry (Mediated Fictions Book 3)

Following the evolution of Ciaran Carson’s work, this book aims to trace the tension between orality and textuality, which can be discerned in the poetry of the Northern-Irish writer. Assuming these forces to be the two major sources of all literature, the author delineates, using deconstruction, how they inform and structure Carson’s poetic œuvre. Further thematic analyses focus on three major themes: memory, city and history, adopting various critical approaches, among them New Historicism and psychoanalysis. Finally, taking cue from Carson’s later work, an epistemological and metaphysical dimension of his poetry is revealed. This serves as the final vantage point from which the author offers a potential glimpse beyond the said dialectic, unveiling Carson’s broadly ethical project. Cover Table of contents Introduction Chapter One – The dialectics of orality and textuality I Aspects of orality in The Irish For No The turn The revival of the oral tradition The dialectic The Irish For No The ends of discourse Locality and the reservoir The image of speech Ying-yang, I-Ching and politics II Aspects of textuality in The Irish For No The scene of writing The human spoor and the typing machine The webs of discourse The Smithfield labyrinth III Reversed dialectics in First Language The tower of Babel The Second Language? Carson’s archi-writing Tak – yes The Rhizomatic Underground The answers and the contract Chapter Two – The three mazes: city, memory and history I City The Belfast flâneur The transient city Mapping out The rhizomatic map The urban neurosis Playing with the panopticon – Carson as psychogeographer The mouth of the poem The poetics of loss and junk The Belfast Ballad II Memory Obsession Proust’s souvenir involontaire Bergson’s expansions Deleuze’s boxes Phenomenological memory The aura and its geology The textile garden of memory III History The breakdown of History Storyteller’s dissemi(nation) The War Correspondent from Belfast Chapter Three – The limits of knowledge and the space of the poem I Revision of epistemology in For All We Know The subject of the book The architecture of the book Strangers, doppelgangers and identity Linguistic mediation Time The Art of Fugue Signs and the limits of language Love Causality II Approaching the subject of death in On The Night Watch and Until Before After The great shortening of the line From in Behind The language of Being The death-poem Poetic dwelling Homecoming Radical alterity – Emmanuel Levinas Until Before After – the coda Conclusions Bibliography Primary sources Secondary sources "I consider this study to be an erudite, sensitive and insightful reading of Ciaran Carson's poetry." (Małgorzata Grzegorzewska, University of Warsaw) "With his pioneering, up-to-date study, founded in a variety of theoretical sources, Grzegorz Czemiel establishes himself as an acute literary scholar, displaying creative temperament and intellectual inquisitiveness, well-versed in the most important currents of today's humanities, and offering us often ingenious and thoughtful interpretations of modern literary texts." (Jerzy Jarniewicz, University of Łódź) This book analyses the poetry of Ciaran Carson, a Northern-Irish writer. In particular, it discusses the tension between orality and textuality. The author shows how it operates in Carson's major subjects: memory, city and history. Finally, the limits of this dialectic are sketched from an epistemological and metaphysical perspective.