Joseph Brodsky and the visual arts: consumer, practitioner, interpreter
<p>Joseph Brodsky (1940–1996) was a highly visual writer. This thesis looks at his poems and essays, and a range of unpublished archival documentation to argue that he was an individual sensitive to visual stimuli in his environments, whose texts are in dialogue with non-literary worlds as muc...
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| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | English |
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2021
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| _version_ | 1797107349296513024 |
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| author | Xenophontos, P |
| author2 | Zorin, A |
| author_facet | Zorin, A Xenophontos, P |
| author_sort | Xenophontos, P |
| collection | OXFORD |
| description | <p>Joseph Brodsky (1940–1996) was a highly visual writer. This thesis looks at his poems and essays, and a range of unpublished archival documentation to argue that he was an individual sensitive to visual stimuli in his environments, whose texts are in dialogue with non-literary worlds as much as they are with literary ones. More generally, I foreground the importance of looking at literary texts from non-literary points of view.</p>
<p>My study is comprised of four main chapters, each dedicated to a different visual form: cinema, postcards, photography, and drawing. All were integral parts of Brodsky’s daily life and helped him express his personal experiences. These forms have been chosen as he worked directly with them all. He approached each form in a different manner and gave distinct values to each. For Brodsky, all four are united by the interdependent themes of imagination and memory.</p>
<p>I show how he associates cinema with imagination (Chapter One), postcards with documentation (Chapter Two), photography with perception (Chapter Three), and drawing with private dialogue (Chapter Four). As I move from Chapter One to Chapter Four, I also chart a move from forms Brodsky associates more with imagination than memory to those where memory is more prevalent. This move from imagination to memory proceeds in tandem with another development, namely one from forms that are more manufactured, and more resistant to personalisation, to those where the opposite is true. In my conclusion, I show how judgments about his treatment of visual forms, and visual experiences, more generally, can be articulated when medium-specific observations are seen comparatively.</p>
<p>Brodsky’s work about, and in, each of these forms gives us fresh insights into his biography and writings. The interplay between his biography, writings, and work in these visual forms, is central to each chapter. Archival documentation allows one to analyse anew each of these three components as well as the relationships between them.</p> |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-07T07:14:46Z |
| format | Thesis |
| id | oxford-uuid:10c19cb6-1153-4a50-b40e-cdd16f3cc360 |
| institution | University of Oxford |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-07T07:14:46Z |
| publishDate | 2021 |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | oxford-uuid:10c19cb6-1153-4a50-b40e-cdd16f3cc3602022-08-05T13:56:15ZJoseph Brodsky and the visual arts: consumer, practitioner, interpreterThesishttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_db06uuid:10c19cb6-1153-4a50-b40e-cdd16f3cc360Russian literatureEnglishHyrax Deposit2021Xenophontos, PZorin, A<p>Joseph Brodsky (1940–1996) was a highly visual writer. This thesis looks at his poems and essays, and a range of unpublished archival documentation to argue that he was an individual sensitive to visual stimuli in his environments, whose texts are in dialogue with non-literary worlds as much as they are with literary ones. More generally, I foreground the importance of looking at literary texts from non-literary points of view.</p> <p>My study is comprised of four main chapters, each dedicated to a different visual form: cinema, postcards, photography, and drawing. All were integral parts of Brodsky’s daily life and helped him express his personal experiences. These forms have been chosen as he worked directly with them all. He approached each form in a different manner and gave distinct values to each. For Brodsky, all four are united by the interdependent themes of imagination and memory.</p> <p>I show how he associates cinema with imagination (Chapter One), postcards with documentation (Chapter Two), photography with perception (Chapter Three), and drawing with private dialogue (Chapter Four). As I move from Chapter One to Chapter Four, I also chart a move from forms Brodsky associates more with imagination than memory to those where memory is more prevalent. This move from imagination to memory proceeds in tandem with another development, namely one from forms that are more manufactured, and more resistant to personalisation, to those where the opposite is true. In my conclusion, I show how judgments about his treatment of visual forms, and visual experiences, more generally, can be articulated when medium-specific observations are seen comparatively.</p> <p>Brodsky’s work about, and in, each of these forms gives us fresh insights into his biography and writings. The interplay between his biography, writings, and work in these visual forms, is central to each chapter. Archival documentation allows one to analyse anew each of these three components as well as the relationships between them.</p> |
| spellingShingle | Russian literature Xenophontos, P Joseph Brodsky and the visual arts: consumer, practitioner, interpreter |
| title | Joseph Brodsky and the visual arts: consumer, practitioner, interpreter |
| title_full | Joseph Brodsky and the visual arts: consumer, practitioner, interpreter |
| title_fullStr | Joseph Brodsky and the visual arts: consumer, practitioner, interpreter |
| title_full_unstemmed | Joseph Brodsky and the visual arts: consumer, practitioner, interpreter |
| title_short | Joseph Brodsky and the visual arts: consumer, practitioner, interpreter |
| title_sort | joseph brodsky and the visual arts consumer practitioner interpreter |
| topic | Russian literature |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT xenophontosp josephbrodskyandthevisualartsconsumerpractitionerinterpreter |