請用此 Handle URI 來引用此文件:
http://tdr.lib.ntu.edu.tw/jspui/handle/123456789/83470
標題: | 破影像:光學傳介與美國現代主義書寫 The Impoverished Picture: Optical Mediation and American Modernist Writing |
作者: | 謝伊柔 Yi-jo Hsieh |
指導教授: | 陳春燕 Chun-yen Chen |
關鍵字: | 二十世紀美國文學,現代主義,攝影,媒介理論,視覺研究, twentieth century American fiction,modernism,photography,media theory,visual studies, |
出版年 : | 2022 |
學位: | 博士 |
摘要: | 本論文以媒介理論為方法提出「破影像」概念,探討美國文學現代主義之形式發展與美學原則如何受到早期攝影技術之啟發,嘗試拓展文學研究既有的視覺分析方法。所謂的「破影像」爬梳銀版攝影、合成肖像、閃光燈攝影等凸顯影像生產需克服一系列技術難題之實踐,同時揭示可見性的歷史必然伴隨著肉眼無法直接觀察、人類行動者亦難以準確估算的物質基礎與技術條件。作為一個帶有反身性的美學概念,「破影像」雖然始於一系列影像內容模糊不清的照片所聚集的影像集合,論文卻側重於視覺化過程的技術與物質條件-從底片上/暗房裡的光化學作用到燈的控制技術等步驟,顯示視覺經驗的描繪仰賴各種尺度框架的疊加。
上述「破影像」所涵蓋的物質與技術條件提供我們一個解釋性的脈絡,有助於釐清「看見/理解世界」對於福克納(William Faulkner)、芭恩斯(Djuna Barnes)、多斯·帕索斯(John Dos Passos)三位美國現代主義作家意味著什麼。過往的文學研究雖然已經闡明光學媒介形塑並豐富了文學現代主義的語言與風格,但研究者多半將討論的範圍聚焦於電影論述,抑或是聚焦於照片內容本身與故事情節的對比。然而,本論文嘗試指出,這些作家之所以廣泛的使用攝影修辭,其目的不只是純粹模仿特定技術再現的視覺內容。反之,攝影引導他們更加關心視覺化過程中肉眼較難直接觀察的現象,並繼之以文字轉譯情感反應、熱、光運動、化學作用等一系列在影像生產裡較不受到重視的現象,取代小說的角色成為主導特定場景的特徵。這些作家往往虛擬、重置乃至於推論這些現象對於人與非人個體可能的影響,亦或是運用文字放大其中蘊含的感官效果,以提供讀者身歷其境的感覺。換言之,文學裡所描寫的攝影攝影未必關注什麼東西被具體拍下,重點在於形式的鋪陳如何使得讀者「感知」而非「看見」影像,指向視覺經驗本身與不可見性的交會。 This dissertation investigates American modernist writing’s negotiation with what I would like to call “the impoverished picture,” by which I mean the technical and figurative failures typical in the pictorial production of early photography. Previous studies suggest that optical media profoundly fashion the vocabulary and styles of literary modernism, but they tend to limit their exploration to the cinematic discourse. This study argues that the aesthetic principles of American literary modernism are embedded in the photography-dominated media ecology at the turn of the century: from the daguerreotype and the darkroom design to Francis Galton’s composite portraiture, and to flash photography and street’s illumination. These early photographic practices demand more critical attention because they show how the production of images is tantamount to a series of technical difficulties, often manifesting as the photographer’s inability to properly expose an image and overcome unfavorable picture-taking conditions. Photography is thus better understood as an exercise of representation delimited by its technical properties and the material conditions of possibility the image-making process is subject to, that is, by the hazard of not being perfect. Blending literary analysis and an examination of the technical history of photography from the mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth century, this dissertation seeks to broach the effects of the “impoverished picture” in American literary modernism. The impoverished picture provides not only the explanatory contexts but also material conditions for understanding what “making the world visible/legible” means exactly for American modernist writers, especially for William Faulkner, Djuna Barnes, and John Dos Passos. I argue that these writers translate the technical imperfections manifest in early photography into the sensory power facilitated by words. The attention to the fleeting effects of light, heat, and air in image-making enables them to highlight a series of sensory details in the affective responses that human and non-human characters show either in the encounter with the racial other, in the search for the intimacy in a relationship, or in the process of not succumbing to the utilitarian logic of capitalism. Their formal investment in the impoverished picture exhibits, for instance, in the characters’ failure to completely see through matters in the thick of life or in the dynamic relationship between their vision and the ambient conditions. These writers treat a literary work as an exploration process through which they expand the realm of visibility to include things not readily tangible. The first chapter of the dissertation reviews current studies on the rich intersections between literature and photography. It will also introduce the concept of “impoverished picture” in light of three sources: the unstable nature of daguerreotype, the pictorial blur in Galton’s composite photographs, and the disturbing effects of flash photography and street lighting. The second chapter explains how the difficulty of controlling exposure time in the daguerreotype is formally echoed in the narrative design of Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!. This chapter argues that spinning a story with speculation and rumor acts as the process of taking a picture in the early days of photography. Also, this chapter associates the strategies that photographers use to adjust the unfavorable conditions in the darkroom with the dynamic articulation of racial violence in the novel. The third chapter focuses on Galton’s composite method and its further applications. Specially, I argue that the way Barnes’s Nightwood presents the formation of expatriate identity and non-heterosexuality resembles the effects of the pictorial blur common in those “failed” early photographs. Lastly, the fourth chapter discusses how Dos Passos’s exploration of social hostility in Manhattan Transfer looks like a process of handling the unpredictable effects of light in flash photography and street lighting. |
URI: | http://tdr.lib.ntu.edu.tw/jspui/handle/123456789/83470 |
DOI: | 10.6342/NTU202203288 |
全文授權: | 未授權 |
顯示於系所單位: | 外國語文學系 |
文件中的檔案:
檔案 | 大小 | 格式 | |
---|---|---|---|
ntu-110-2.pdf 目前未授權公開取用 | 9.76 MB | Adobe PDF |
系統中的文件,除了特別指名其著作權條款之外,均受到著作權保護,並且保留所有的權利。