Full Description
Even before the biblical canon became fixed, writers have revisited and reworked its stories. The author of Joshua takes the haphazard settlement of Israel recorded in the Book of Judges and retells it as an orderly military conquest. The writer of Chronicles expurgates the David cycle in Samuel I and II, offering an upright and virtuous king devoid of baser instincts. This literary phenomenon is not contained to inner-biblical exegesis. Once the telling becomes known, the retellings begin: through the New Testament, rabbinic midrash, medieval mystery plays, medieval and Renaissance poetry, nineteenth century novels, and contemporary literature, writers of the Western world have continued to occupy themselves with the biblical canon. However, there exists no adequate vocabulary-academic or popular, religious or secular, literary or theological-to describe the recurring appearances of canonical figures and motifs in later literature.
Literary critics, bible scholars and book reviewers alike seek recourse in words like adaptation, allusion, echo, imitation and influence to describe what the author, for lack of better terms, has come to call retellings or recastings. Although none of these designations rings false, none approaches precision. They do not tell us what the author of a novel or poem has done with a biblical figure, do not signal how this newly recast figure is different from other recastings of it, and do not offer any indication of why these transformations have occurred. Sustaining Fictions sets out to redress this problem, considering the viability of the vocabularies of literary, midrashic, and translation theory for speaking about retelling.
Contents
Chapter 1: Tellings Beget Retellings
I. The Question(s) of Retelling
II. The Exploding Canon
A. The Example of Timothy Findley and the Wester Classics
B. The First Theoretical Paradigm: Intertextuality
III. Exploding The Canon
A. The Example of Timothy Findley and the Bible
B. The Second Theoretical Paradigm: Midrash
IV. Theorizing Retelling
A. Critical Dimensions: Approach, Stance, and Filter
B. The Third Theoretical Paradigm: Translation Theory
V. The Project: Talking about Retelling
Chapter 2: Speaking of the Silence
I. It Ain't Nothin': What the Critics are Saying
II. The Pervasiveness of Retelling and the Paucity of Terms
III. The Paucity Examined
A. Retelling and the Western Canon
B. Retelling and the Biblical Canon
Compiling Biblical Retellings
Compiling Biblical Influences
Confronting Biblical Influences
The Art of Biblical Retelling
IV. The Shadows of a Language
Chapter 3: Naming the Animals: The Languages of Literary Criticism and Theory
I. Imitation
II. Invention
III. Influence
V. Intentiveness
VI. Intentional Interrelationships
Gerard Genette's Palimpsests
Varieties of Transtextual Relationship
The Place of Genre
A Hypertextual Taxonomy
Thematic Transpositions
Semantic Transpositions
Naming the Animals
"Hypertexts, as it is well known, generate hypertexts"
Chapter 4: Words of Torah Need Each Other
I. Midrash in the Service of Literature
What is Midrash?
The Two Faces of Midrash: Halakhah and Aggadah
The Nature of the Aggadah
The Inner Logic of Aggadic Midrash
II. Post-Modern Midrash: Midrash Meets Theory
Why is Midrash Part of the Language of Literary Theory?
What is the Midrash of the Literary Theorists?
Midrash and Indeterminancy?
Lo B'Shamayim Hi: The Problem with the Midrash of the Literary Theorists
III. The Retelling as Modern Midrash
The Jewish Question
Bringing Tradition and Time: The Problem with Designating Retelling as Midrashic
IV. From Aggadah to Halakhah: Co-opting the Vocabulary of Midrash
Thinknig in Terms of Midrash's Approach and Stance
V. Co-opting Anew the Vocabulary of Midrash
The Middot: Principles of Rabbinic Exegesis
i. Kal vaHomer
ii. Gezerah Shavah
iii. Binyan Av MiKatuv Echad
iv. Binyan Av MiShnei Ktuvim
v. Clal Ufrat
vi. Ke-yotsei Bo BiM'kom Aher
vii. Davar Halamed Mi-Inyano
The Viability of the Co-option
Chapter 5: Radical Translation?
I. The Disease of Translation
The Literary Afterlife: Where Retelling and Translation Intersect
II. Histories (if not Theories) of Translation
The Translator's Approach
The Translator's Stance
Translating the Language of Translation
III. Vocabularies of Translation
Dryden: Metaphrase, Paraphrase and Imitation
Goethe's Epochs of Translation
The Family "Trans"
Jakobson and the Translation of Verbal Signs
IV. Theories of Translation
V. Theoretical Vocabularies
The Science of Translation
Early Translation Studies
Polysystem Theory
Deconstruction (Or, Translation and the Vocabulary of Deformation)
VI. Translation as Cure
Chapter 6: Literary Afterlives, Literary Afterthoughts
Sustaining Fictions
Wither Thou Goest, I will Go
Bibliography
