Silence and the Silenced: Interdisciplinary Perspectives

✍ Scribed by Leslie Boldt (editor), Corrado Federici (editor), Ernesto Virgulti (editor)

• Publisher: Peter Lang Inc., International Academic Publishers
• Year: 2013
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 269
• Series: Studies on Themes and Motifs in Literature
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Silence and the Silenced: Interdisciplinary Perspectives comprises a collection of essays from North American and European scholars who examine the various ways in which the theme of silence is developed in literary narratives as well as in such visual media as photography, film, painting, and architecture. The questions of silence and the presence or absence of voice are also explored in the arena of performance, with examples relating to pantomime and live installations. As the book title indicates, two fundamental aspects of silence are investigated: silence freely chosen as a means to deepen meditation and inner reflection and silence that is imposed by external agents through various forms of political repression and censorship or, conversely, by the self in an attempt to express revolt or to camouflage shame. The approaches to these questions range from the philosophical and the psychological to the rhetorical and the linguistic. Together, these insightful reflections reveal the complexity and profundity that surround the function of silence and voice in an aesthetic and social context.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover
Contents
Introduction
Part I. Silence that Speaks through Codes
1.Rhetorical Uses of Silence and Spaces Keith Grant-Davie
2.Sounding Silence, Composing Absence on Screen and Stage: Gus Van Sant’s Gerry and Samuel Beckett’s Not I Ariel Harrod
3.The Visiting Muse: Antiquity and the Suggestive Power of Silence in the Chamber Frescoed by Correggio Maria Cristina Chiusa
4.Muted Epigraphs in Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling Lori Yamato
Part II. Political and Cultural Silencing
5.Cartographic Silences in Brian Friel’s Translations Matthew Dwight Moore
6.Power of the Void: Fascism and Silence in the Poetry of Bertolt Brecht and Paul Celan Paul Peters
7.“To have him all in black”: The “Absence” of Havel in Samuel Beckett’s Catastrophe: A Late Cold War Text Sheelagh Russell-Brown
Part III. Silencing One’s Own Voice
8.When the Silencer is also the Silenced: The Mechanisms of Self-censorship Magda Stroińska and Vikki Cecchetto
9.Milutin Gubash’s Which Way to the Bastille? Or How to Foster Silence Catherine Parayre
Part IV. Fascination with the Void
10.The Image of the Falling Man Revisited Sandra Singer
11.Reflections on the Violence of Art R. Bruce Elder
Part V. Body Language
12.The A/porias of Skin: Secrets and Secretions of Self and Other Mark Cauchi (with Wrik Mead and Rui Pimenta)
13.Listening to the Pines: Japanese Tea Ceremonyas a Form of Contemplative Ellipsis Alexander Avdulov
14.A Silent Language: Reflections on ‘Pure’and ‘Uncorrupted’ Pantomime Elena Segnini
Part VI. Classical and Medieval Silence: Poets, Saints, Mistresses
15.When Must a Singer Be Silenced? Anton Jansen
16 Keeping Your Mouth Shut: How to be a Good Mistress (Silenced Women in Latin Elegy) Carol Merriam
17.Speaking Saintly Silence in the Thirteenth Century:The Case of Elizabeth of Hungary Kathleen Garay
Index