Between Aura and Access: Artefactuality, Institutionality, and the Allure of the Archival
-
Tim Sommer
Abstract
This article analyses narratives inspired by the institutional emergence of the literary archive. It focuses in particular on what historian Arlette Farge has described as the “allure of the archives”: the elusive immediacy of encounters with artefactual remnants of the past. Key to this experience is what has often been described as the ability of archival objects to conjure up the presence of their creators – a process that at the same time paradoxically depends on the uniqueness and fundamental ‘unapproachability’ of the artefact. Through regulating and restricting access to documents, the archive thus maintains their distance and simultaneously makes them available for acts of reverential consumption. Focusing on such forms of gatekeeping and consecration, the article reads Henry James’s novella “The Aspern Papers” (1888) and Martha Cooley’s novel The Archivist (1998) to enquire how the literary archive – both as an idea and as an institution – has shaped ways of thinking about the relationship between physical absence and auratic presence.
Works Cited
Anesko, Michael. 2016. “‘Too Intimate to Publish, Too Rare to Suppress’: Henry James in His Letters”. In: Celeste-Marie Bernier, Judie Newman and Matthew Pethers (eds.). The Edinburgh Companion to Nineteenth-Century American Letters and Letter-Writing. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. 696–708.10.1515/9780748692934-048Suche in Google Scholar
Benjamin, Walter. 1936/1969. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”. In: Walter Benjamin. Illuminations. Trans. Harry Zohn. Ed. Hannah Arendt. New York: Schocken. 217–251.Suche in Google Scholar
Bishop, Ted. 2005/2007. Riding with Rilke: Reflections on Motorcycles and Books. New York: W. W. Norton.Suche in Google Scholar
Brown, Bill. 2008. “Jamesian Matter”. In: Greg W. Zacharias (ed.). A Companion to Henry James. Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell. 292–308.10.1111/b.9781405110440.2008.xSuche in Google Scholar
Brown, Ellen. 1991. “Revising Henry James: Reading the Spaces of The Aspern Papers”. American Literature 63.2: 263–278.10.2307/2927165Suche in Google Scholar
Cooley, Martha. 1998/1999. The Archivist. Boston, MA: Little, Brown.Suche in Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. 1995. “Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression”. Trans. Eric Prenowitz. Diacritics 25.2: 9–63.10.2307/465144Suche in Google Scholar
Edel, Leon. 1963. Henry James: The Middle Years, 1884–1894. London: Rupert Hart-Davis.Suche in Google Scholar
Farge, Arlette. 1989/2013. The Allure of the Archives. Trans. Thomas Scott-Railton. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.10.12987/yale/9780300176735.001.0001Suche in Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1969/1972. The Archaeology of Knowledge and The Discourse on Language. Trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith. New York: Pantheon.Suche in Google Scholar
Franchot, Jenny. 1994. Roads to Rome: The Antebellum Protestant Encounter with Catholicism. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.10.1525/9780520310308Suche in Google Scholar
Fussell, Edwin Sill. 1993. The Catholic Side of Henry James. New York: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511666599Suche in Google Scholar
Geary, Patrick J. 1986. “Sacred Commodities: The Circulation of Medieval Relics”. In: Arjun Appadurai (ed.). The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 169–191.10.1017/CBO9780511819582.008Suche in Google Scholar
Gumbrecht, Hans Ulrich. 2004. Production of Presence: What Meaning Cannot Convey. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.10.1515/9780804767149Suche in Google Scholar
Hahn, Cynthia. 2017. The Reliquary Effect: Enshrining the Sacred Object. London: Reaktion Books.Suche in Google Scholar
Hamilton, Ian. 1992. Keepers of the Flame: Literary Estates and the Rise of Biography. London: Hutchinson.Suche in Google Scholar
James, Henry. 1872. “A European Summer, VI: From Chambéry to Milan”. The Nation 386 (21 November): 332–334.Suche in Google Scholar
James, Henry. 1888/1999. “The Aspern Papers”. In: Henry James. Complete Stories, 1884–1891. Ed. Edward Said. New York: Library of America. 228–320.Suche in Google Scholar
James, Henry. 1908/1984. “[Preface to] The Aspern Papers, The Turn of the Screw, The Liar, The Two Faces”. In: Henry James. Literary Criticism: French Writers, Other European Writers, The Prefaces to the New York Edition. Ed. Leon Edel. New York: Library of America. 1173–1191.Suche in Google Scholar
James, Henry. 1987. The Complete Notebooks of Henry James. Eds. Leon Edel and Lyall H. Powers. New York: Oxford University Press.Suche in Google Scholar
Larkin, Philip. 1979/1983. “A Neglected Responsibility: Contemporary Literary Manuscripts”. In: Philip Larkin. Required Writing: Miscellaneous Pieces 1955–1982. London: Faber and Faber. 98–108.Suche in Google Scholar
Lütteken, Anett. 2018. “Das Literaturarchiv: Vorgeschichte(n) eines Spätlings”. In: Petra-Maria Dallinger, Georg Hofer and Bernhard Judex (eds.). Archive für Literatur: Der Nachlass und seine Ordnungen. Berlin: De Gruyter. 63–88.10.1515/9783110594188-005Suche in Google Scholar
Manoff, Marlene. 2004. “Theories of the Archive from Across the Disciplines”. portal: Libraries and the Academy 4.1: 9–25.10.1353/pla.2004.0015Suche in Google Scholar
Otten, Thomas J. 2006. A Superficial Reading of Henry James: Preoccupations with the Material World. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press.Suche in Google Scholar
Penn, Michael Philip. 2005. Kissing Christians: Ritual and Community in the Late Ancient Church. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.10.9783/9780812203325Suche in Google Scholar
Rawlings, Peter. 2005. Henry James and the Abuse of the Past. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.10.1057/9780230504967Suche in Google Scholar
Saunders, Max. 2011. “Archive Fiction”. Comparative Critical Studies 8.2/3: 169–188.10.3366/ccs.2011.0017Suche in Google Scholar
Savoy, Eric. 2010. “Aspern’s Archive”. Henry James Review 31.1: 61–67.10.1353/hjr.0.0074Suche in Google Scholar
Schmuland, Arlene. 1999. “The Archival Image in Fiction: An Analysis and Annotated Bibliography”. American Archivist 62.1: 24–73.10.17723/aarc.62.1.v767822474626637Suche in Google Scholar
Schöttker, Detlev. 2016. “Posthume Präsenz: Zur Ideengeschichte des literarischen Archivs”. In: Marcel Lepper and Ulrich Raulff (eds.). Handbuch Archiv: Geschichte, Aufgaben, Perspektiven. Stuttgart: Metzler. 237–246.Suche in Google Scholar
Steedman, Carolyn. 2001/2002. Dust: The Archive and Cultural History. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.Suche in Google Scholar
Steedman, Carolyn. 2011. “After the Archive”. Comparative Critical Studies 8.2/3: 321–340.10.3366/ccs.2011.0026Suche in Google Scholar
Stougaard-Nielsen, Jakob. 2012. “‘No Absolute Privacy’: Henry James and the Ethics of Reading Authors’ Letters”. Authorship 1.2: 1–20.10.21825/aj.v1i2.765Suche in Google Scholar
“T. S. Eliot Letters to Emily Hale, 1930–1956: Finding Aid”. 2008. Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library. <https://findingaids.princeton.edu/collections/C0686.pdf> [accessed 17 September 2019].Suche in Google Scholar
Taylor, Charles. 2007. A Secular Age. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Suche in Google Scholar
Tsimpouki, Theodora. 2018. “Henry James’s ‘The Aspern Papers’: Between the Narrative of an Archive and the Archive of Narrative”. Henry James Review 39.2: 167–177.10.1353/hjr.2018.0012Suche in Google Scholar
Voss, Paul J. and Marta L. Werner. 1999. “Toward a Poetics of the Archive: Introduction”. Studies in the Literary Imagination 32.1: i-viii.Suche in Google Scholar
Wiśniewski, Robert. 2019. The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/oso/9780199675562.001.0001Suche in Google Scholar
Wolff, Sharon. 2018. “People of the Stacks: ‘The Archivist’ Character in Fiction”. disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory 27: 127–133.Suche in Google Scholar
© 2020 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- What’s in an Archive? Cursory Observations and Serendipitous Reflections
- Archive Fever and British Romanticism: Blake, Byron, and Keats
- Between Aura and Access: Artefactuality, Institutionality, and the Allure of the Archival
- The Document as Epistemic Object: Notes on Archival Knowledge Cultures
- Of Gaps and Gossip: Intimacy in the Archive
- Words, Wares, Names: Dave the Potter as American Archive
- From Parchment to Podcast: The Collaborative Process of Building and Unlocking an Archive
- “The People Shall Continue”: Native American Museums as Archives of Futurity
- Speculative Bibliography
- Reviews
- Thijs Porck. 2019. Old Age in Early Medieval England: A Cultural History. Anglo-Saxon Studies 33. Woodbridge: Boydell, x + 278 pp., £ 60.00/$ 99.00.
- Francis Leneghan. 2020. The Dynastic Drama of Beowulf. Anglo-Saxon Studies 39. Cambridge: Brewer, xxi + 300 pp., 1 illustr., £ 60.00.
- Irina Dumitrescu and Eric Weiskott (eds.). 2019. The Shapes of Early English Poetry: Style, Form, History. Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Culture 51. Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, xix + 281 pp., $ 109.99.
- Mary Clayton and Juliet Mullins (eds. and trans.). 2019. Ælfric: Old English Lives of Saints. Volumes I-III. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 58–60. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, vol. I: xxxii + 384 pp.; vol. II: vi + 426 pp.; vol. III: vi + 402 pp., each volume $ 35.00/£ 28.95/€ 31.00.
- Christian Kloeckner, Simone Knewitz and Sabine Sielke (eds.). 2016. Knowledge Landscapes North America. Heidelberg: Winter, 305 pp., € 58.00.
- T. R. Johnson (ed.). 2019. New Orleans: A Literary History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 379 pp., £ 35.00.
- Christian B. Long. 2017. The Imaginary Geography of Hollywood Cinema 1960–2000. Bristol/Chicago, IL: Intellect, 300 pp., £ 70.00.
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- What’s in an Archive? Cursory Observations and Serendipitous Reflections
- Archive Fever and British Romanticism: Blake, Byron, and Keats
- Between Aura and Access: Artefactuality, Institutionality, and the Allure of the Archival
- The Document as Epistemic Object: Notes on Archival Knowledge Cultures
- Of Gaps and Gossip: Intimacy in the Archive
- Words, Wares, Names: Dave the Potter as American Archive
- From Parchment to Podcast: The Collaborative Process of Building and Unlocking an Archive
- “The People Shall Continue”: Native American Museums as Archives of Futurity
- Speculative Bibliography
- Reviews
- Thijs Porck. 2019. Old Age in Early Medieval England: A Cultural History. Anglo-Saxon Studies 33. Woodbridge: Boydell, x + 278 pp., £ 60.00/$ 99.00.
- Francis Leneghan. 2020. The Dynastic Drama of Beowulf. Anglo-Saxon Studies 39. Cambridge: Brewer, xxi + 300 pp., 1 illustr., £ 60.00.
- Irina Dumitrescu and Eric Weiskott (eds.). 2019. The Shapes of Early English Poetry: Style, Form, History. Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Culture 51. Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, xix + 281 pp., $ 109.99.
- Mary Clayton and Juliet Mullins (eds. and trans.). 2019. Ælfric: Old English Lives of Saints. Volumes I-III. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 58–60. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, vol. I: xxxii + 384 pp.; vol. II: vi + 426 pp.; vol. III: vi + 402 pp., each volume $ 35.00/£ 28.95/€ 31.00.
- Christian Kloeckner, Simone Knewitz and Sabine Sielke (eds.). 2016. Knowledge Landscapes North America. Heidelberg: Winter, 305 pp., € 58.00.
- T. R. Johnson (ed.). 2019. New Orleans: A Literary History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 379 pp., £ 35.00.
- Christian B. Long. 2017. The Imaginary Geography of Hollywood Cinema 1960–2000. Bristol/Chicago, IL: Intellect, 300 pp., £ 70.00.
