Rezensionen 162 Johanna Hartmann, Literary Visuality in Siri Hustvedt’s Works: Phenomenological Perspectives (text & theorie 16). Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2016. Guido Isekenmeier In Nicola Graef‘s 2009 documentary about her life, Siri Hustvedt still remarked that she was ―always referred to as the wife of Paul Auster‖. But while the predicament of ―being considered the adjunct of her husband[s]‖ (275) has stayed with her artist-protagonists up until Harriet Burden in The Blazing World (2014), academic interest, it seems, might be gravitating away from Auster towards the artist formerly known as his wife. Hartmann, still noting the ―academic neglect of her works on both sides of the Atlantic‖ (13), refers to four other recent book-length studies of Hustvedt‘s œuvre published in Germany alone, two of them monographic, that testify to the fact that things are achanging, at least cisatlantically. One of the reasons for the well-deserved upsurge in interest in Hustvedt‘s novels (not so much her poetry, a fate she shares with her husband), is their sustained engagement with matters of visuality. And it is the merit of Hartmann‘s study to have approached this body of work from the wider perspective of literary visuality studies, instead of the more narrow confines of an inter-arts point of view. While the latter approach does find rich material in the novels‘ ekphrastic handling of paintings and photographs (both real and fictitious; cf. Reipen 2014), Hartmann justly recognises that visuality is also central to understanding other aspects of Hustvedt‘s texts. Thus, her study additionally addresses the ―characters‘ acting and interacting within the visual field‖ (19), the ―visual topographies‖ (33) of their dreams and memories, or the significance of ―impaired vision‖ (51) for an appreciation of the mediacy of their perception of the fictional world. Indeed, the major thrust of her argument is away from a strictly intermedial consideration of relations between (still) pictures and literary text(s) towards an appreciation of the ―representation of human experiences of the lifeworld as embodied and performative‖ (17), which amounts to what Hartmann calls a ―phenomenological reconfiguration‖ (60) of literary visuality. This phenomenological turn, ambiguously located between what Hustvedt‘s texts offer (a post-postmodernist concern with the ―concrete life realities of individual human beings‖, 15) and how Hartmann approaches them (in line with the ‗ethical‘ or ‗empathetic‘ turn in literary criticism), is aptly reflected in the theoretical part (―2. Literary Visuality as Theoretical Paradigm - The Visual Sense in Philosophy, Literature, and Culture‖) of her study, whose overall structure follows the established German dissertation formula (the other parts are: ―1. Introduction‖, ―3. Readings‖, and ―4. Conclusion‖). The theoretical toolbox of this second part includes a phenomenological account of ―Acting and Interacting in the Visual Field‖ (2.1) and a digest on ―Literary Visuality as Textual Phenomenon‖ (2.2) informed by intermediality studies. Rezensionen 163 The primary, if sometimes tacit, purpose of the phenomenological tour de force in 2.1 is to enable a reading of literary characters as valid textual proxies of human beings. It is this premise, now widely shared in cognitively informed literary studies (e.g. Zunshine 2006), that makes it possible to talk about the ―representation of human experience‖ or the ―concrete life realities of individual human beings‖, when we are in fact talking about textual ‗figures‘ (‗actants‘ in a structuralist terminology). Only when we ascribe intentionality (2.1.1.2) and embodiment (2.1.1.1) to literary characters can we go on to posit intersubjectivity (2.1.2.2) in their relations. Be that as it may, this stance turns out to be a very productive approach to character relations (read: ―the visual encounter between fictional characters‖, 54) in Hustvedt‘s novels, which do seem to stage intersubjective events in, for instance, the ―mutual looking at art and the dialogic exchange about this experience‖ (55). In her analyses of ―visual encounter[s] between human beings‖ (read: literary characters), which in Hustvedt are often ―tied to the notion of recognition‖ (304), or of the way in which ―intersubjectively negotiated processes‖ are ―relocated to the level of textual arrangement‖ (272), Hartmann‘s study is at its best. A second, more problematic outcome of the phenomenological detour is an alleged interest in reader response. Starting with the introductory proclamation that the ―phenomenological dimension‖ will be ―analyzed as a potential for visualized reading experiences‖ (14), the book returns mantralike to its concern with how showing ‗seeing‘ can ―become a form of seeing by the reader‖ (74), including a third theory chapter (2.3) on ―Transformational Processes and Creative Reading Experiences‖. What is meant to be a synthesis of the phenomenological approach (reading experiences) and the intermedial approach (transformational processes), in that the ―‗failure‘ of ekphrasis […] becomes a productive source for creativity when seen from a stance that takes into consideration the activity of the reader‖ (75), more often than not turns out to be a mere afterthought in the analyses of the novels, preferably given as the last sentence of a paragraph (266), of a chapter (200), or as reference to a section of text that does not even exist - except as that sentence just mentioned (167). The point of chapter 2.2 on the textual stage of literary visuality is, above all, to emphasise the centrality of description(s): ―It is the basic premise of this study that literary visuality manifests itself in the literary strategy of description‖ (19). As much as I agree with that premise, it is in this area that Hartmann‘s remarks sometimes lack clarity, sometimes scope. As for clarity, one may stumble across (and over) the following paragraph: In literary descriptions two phenomena coincide that have to be kept apart on an analytical level. On the one hand descriptions are results of the characters‘ staged acts of describing. On the other hand the description is a phenomenon of the literary text and determined by the subjective character of the described experience. This coincides with Iser‘s statement that quotidian description and fictional description have from a phenomenal point of view the same appearance but very different functions (62). Both are Rezensionen 164 necessarily interrelated as Dewey reminds us that ‗[e]xpression, like construction, signifies both an action and its result‘ (82). (33) Among all the phenomena (two in description and description itself), coincidences (of the two phenomena and of ‗this‘ with Iser‘s statement) and characters (the ones in the text and the one of the experience), one keeps wondering about what exactly it is that has to be kept apart by the contrastive conjunct (‗on the one hand - on the other‘): is it appearance and function? And if so, does ‗determined‘ mean that form inevitably has to follow function? Or is it action and result? And if so, does ‗descriptions are results of the characters‘ staged acts of describing‘ stand for action or result? Anyway, the logic of the paragraph seems elusive. As for scope, it would be unfair to expect a comprehensive treatment of the immense body of descriptological work done since Genette‘s ―Frontiers of Narrative‖ (first published in French in 1966). However, even a cursory glance might have revealed that every description is also a display of discursive mastery that suffers from a certain opacity resulting from its linguistic makeup (a case most prominently made in Hamon 1981). At times, Hartmann seems to be on the verge of acknowledging that as ―a phenomenon of the literary text‖, a description can never be ―determined by the subjective character of the described experience‖ alone, as when she mentions that the ―transformative process of describing verbally what is visual directs attention to the process of verbalization‖ (75). This tension between experientiality and literaricity, however, is never explicitly addressed. What you would expect, though, is that a critical text displays some awareness of the very field into which it inscribes itself, which in this case is neither that of the sister arts (2.2.1), nor that of ekphrasis (2.2.2) nor that of intermediality (2.2.3), but that of literary visuality studies. Two major problems seem to arise from this theoretical blindness: (1) Literature‘s role in visual culture is conceptualised as derivative or even parasitical. Briefly promising insight into the ―complex interrelations and dynamics between the representation of seeing in literature, the philosophical theorization of the visual sense, and the actual practices of seeing within the socio-cultural environment‖ (24), Hartmann quickly resorts to the idea (still enclosed in the use of the term ‗representation‘), that literature reflects and retraces, reacts and responds to visual cultural context. In the end (and at the end of the very same paragraph), it is the ―importance of the prevailing ‗visual culture‘ for the representation of seeing in literature‖ (25) that matters (cf. 302) in what appears to be a one-way street. Compared to Mergenthaler‘s ―osmotic processes of exchange‖ (2002: 394), Hartmann‘s appears to be a thoroughly mimetic model of literature as chronicler of rather than agent in the visual field. (2) In visual cultural terms, the sense of the historical place of Hustvedt‘s works suffers from myopia. To be sure, her novels are cursorily claimed as representative of a neo-realist or post-postmodernist trend in contemporary literature (15), which by the way, at least in The Summer Without Men, gives us the worst of both worlds, a compassionate or (em)pathetic postmodernism (―You, gentle reader out there…‖, cited 250 f.). But not a word on how ―Hustvedt‘s aesthetic program [that] captures the Rezensionen 165 intricacies and complexities of the contemporary world‖ (78) relates to literary texts of an earlier period no less noted for ―its increasing cognizance of the body‖ and ―the emergence of the body as a kind of afterimage, exposed in repeated betrayals of its situated partiality, its culturally determined distortions, its will to dominance and even violence‖ (Jacobs 2001: 2). After all, ―visualizing embodiment‖ (ibid.: 145) might not exactly be a contemporary invention. Turning to the third part (―Readings‖), the first thing that strikes the eye is the complete lack of advance organisers. Not a single sentence introduces the following six chapters (each dealing with one of Hustvedt‘s novels in chronological order), which amount to more than 200 pages (roughly two thirds) of the whole book. It is only in the conclusion that a rough outline of a narrative thread traversing Hustvedt‘s œuvre begins to emerge (―The six novels by Hustvedt subjected to analysis within the scope of this study show continuities and discontinuities concerning the configuration of the visual paradigm‖, 303; ―In Siri Hustvedt‘s novels, the visual encounter between human beings is tied to the notion of recognition - a theme apparent since her first novel‖, 304; ―Since What I Loved, the theoretical dimension has gained in significance‖, 305). In fact, the many elements that Hustvedt‘s fictional texts have in common with regard to both characters (cf. 253 on ―the distant father figure‖ as ―a kind of stock character‖; 269 on Oswald Case as ―a configuration of the hostile and vicious art critic who appears in several of Hustvedt‘s novels‖) and inventory (dolls and ‗story boxes‘, above all) make you wonder if the full pass through all six novels could not have been profitably replaced by a more Proppian analysis, which could have taken its inspiration from Leo Hertzberg‘s drawer in What I Loved, who muses that the meaning of the objects he stores in it ―depended on their placement, what I thought of as a mobile syntax‖ (cited 164). Apart from having their longueurs, though, the readings themselves are technically solid and pertinent as regards subject matter. On a minor note, the handling of the concept of filmic writing is noteworthy. Not having introduced it in the second part, Hartmann goes on to excessively claim the use of ―filmic devices‖ (217), ―filmic techniques‖ (247), ―a cinematic aesthetic‖ (209), ―cinematic techniques‖ (157, 220), ―cinematic strategies‖ (224), ―cinematic devices‖ (247, 256), or a ―cinematic imagination‖ (268) for Hustvedt‘s novels in the third. Many of the alleged examples seem ill-founded or hardly backed by textual evidence. From a strategic point of view, the offhand use of this controversial label might be a belated attempt to distance herself from Reipen‘s (2014) study (published ―[b]riefly before the submission of this dissertation‖, 14), in that cinematic/ filmic description effectively means something like dynamised pictorialist (as opposed to static ekphrastic) description. Still, this seems like a far stretch. Overall, I cannot help thinking that Hartmann‘s book would have profited from a stricter focus on the phenomenology of intradiegetic ‗human‘ relations, which would have resulted in a study both more concise and more consistent. Along this line, I might even venture a recommendation for pro- Rezensionen 166 spective readers: start with the theory chapter 2.1, then go on to the readings of those Hustvedt novels you are most interested in (The Summer Without Men seems a safe omission in any case or, at least, ―is in many respects different from the preceding and subsequent novels‖, 304), then stop. References Hamon, Philippe (1981). Introduction à l‟analyse du descriptif. Paris: Hachette. Jacobs, Karen (2001). The Eye‟s Mind: Literary Modernism and Visual Culture. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP. Mergenthaler, Volker (2002). Sehen schreiben - Schreiben sehen. Literatur und visuelle Wahrnehmung im Zusammenspiel. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Reipen, Corinna Sophie (2014). Visuality in the Works of Siri Hustvedt. Frankfurt a.M.: Lang. Zunshine, Lisa (2006). Why We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and the Novel. Columbus, OH: Ohio State UP. Guido Isekenmeier Institut für Literaturwissenschaft Abteilung Neuere Englische Literatur Universität Stuttgart Eckhard Lobsien, Die Antworten und die Frage. Funktionen der Literatur - Der irische Roman 1800 bis 1850 (text & theorie 15). Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2014. Katharina Rennhak Eckhard Lobsiens Studie besteht - wie der Autor selbst in der Einleitung klarstellt - „aus zwei selbständigen Teilen, die verklammert sind durch die Frage nach einer Funktionsgeschichte der Literatur, die aber nicht in einem Verhältnis von Modell und Applikation zueinander stehen― (12). In der Tat schreibt Lobsien zunächst eine „kleine Collingwood-Monographie― (12), die den funktionsgeschichtlichen Zugriff auf die literarischen Erzähltexte im zweiten Teil präzise fundiert und umsichtig rahmt. Darauf folgt eine funktionsgeschichtliche Analyse und Einordung des irischen Romans von 1800 bis 1850. Die Studie leistet so einen Beitrag zu zwei Forschungsfeldern, die in der anglistischen Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaft in den 1990ern und 2000ern etwas in den Hintergrund gerieten, in den letzten Jahren aber neu entdeckt werden. AAA Band 4 2 (201 7 ) Heft 1