‘Camera is the Eye of History’: On the Genre-Forming Potential of Photographic Ekphrasis in G. Swift’s Novel ‘Out of This World’

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.17072/2073-6681-2024-2-110-119

Keywords:

G. Swift; genre; contemporary novel; photo; photographic ekphrasis; photo-ekphrastic novel; history; novel-photoreflection.

Abstract

The article deals with the role of photography in the novel Out of This World (1988) by the contemporary British writer G. Swift, which is not translated into Russian. The changed socio-cultural status of photography as an artefact is traced: from the ‘pencil of nature’ (G. F. Talbot) in the middle of the 19th century. to ‘simulacrum’ (L. Hatcheon) in the postmodern paradigm, implying ambiguity and variability in the ‘reading’ of a photographic image. Photography is presented in the novel at the main poetological levels: level of the plot, of the characters, spatiotemporal, narrative, motive-thematic levels. Photography allows one to ‘tell’ different types of stories: both family ones and those related to the tragic events of the 20th century. The protagonist of the novel, professional war photographer Harry Beach, creates photographs while in hot spots: Vietnam, Oran, Congo, etc. He does not only capture, but philosophically comprehends what is happening on the world stage. Photographs taken by Harry (in the form of photo-ekphrasis) are a historical photo chronicle, and he himself is a photo chronicler, presenting to the world the truthful documents that have an accusatory status. Harry realizes that it is a crime to ‘smooth out’ the cruel reality, especially in the age of modern media that abuse photo manipulation and are guided by the principle of replacing reality with simulacra. It seems possible to define the genre form of G. Swift's novel, based on a series of photographs (both personal and public), as a photo-ekphrastic novel and classify it as a so-called novel-photoreflection, which has been developed since the late 1970s.

Author Biography

Tatiana A. Poluektova, Krasnoyarsk State Pedagogical University named after V. P. Astafyev

Associate Professor in the Department of World Literature and Methods of Teaching

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Logotheti A. From Storytelling to Historia: The Fiction of Graham Swift: Doctoral thesis, Goldsmiths, University of London, 2002. 256 р. (In Eng.)

Malcolm D. Understanding Graham Swift. Columbia, University of South Carolina Press, 2003. 238 р. (In Eng.)

Popova I. Just so stories: on the novels of Graham Swift. Footpath: A Journal of Contemporary British Literature In Russian Universities, 2008, issue 1, рр. 42–55. (In Eng.)

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Published

2024-07-09

How to Cite

Poluektova Т. А. . (2024). ‘Camera is the Eye of History’: On the Genre-Forming Potential of Photographic Ekphrasis in G. Swift’s Novel ‘Out of This World’. Perm University Herald. Russian and Foreign Philology, 16(2). https://doi.org/10.17072/2073-6681-2024-2-110-119

Issue

Section

LITERATURE IN THE CONTEXT OF CULTURE