'So dense a commingling of the improbable and the mundane!': writing Palestinian history in a magical realist key
'So dense a commingling of the improbable and the mundane!': writing Palestinian history in a magical realist key
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“不可能与平凡的结合如此紧密！”：用魔幻现实主义的基调书写巴勒斯坦历史
DOI：
10.1080/13642529.2024.2304531
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发表时间：
2024
影响因子：
0.6
通讯作者：
Norris J
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Norris J
这篇文章反映了写一本魔幻现实主义小说风格的历史书。这本书，Jubrail Dabdoub的生与死，采用了魔幻现实主义小说的经典技巧，讲述了19世纪巴勒斯坦城镇伯利恒的转变。在这篇文章中，我描述了写这本书的过程，以此为切入点，展开更广泛的讨论，探讨历史学家如何有效地参与文学形式和体裁。这篇文章借鉴了西班牙语、阿拉伯语和英语的虚构作品，认为魔幻现实主义散文特别适合捕捉一种幻想、神秘和荒谬的感觉，而这些都是学术写作中通常被忽视的历史经验领域。我讨论了我如何用具体的技术来实验，以利用伯利恒在19世纪与全球资本主义的逮捕，往往是奇怪的遭遇，以及探索我自己的关系，这段历史作为一个英国历史学家写巴勒斯坦。
This article reflects on writing a history book in the style of a magical realist novel. The book,The Lives and Deaths of Jubrail Dabdoub, employs classic techniques from magical realist fiction to narrate the transformation of the Palestinian town of Bethlehem in the 19thcentury. In this article, I describe the process of writing the book, using this as an entry-point into a wider discussion on how historians can productively engage with literary form and genre. Drawing on fictional writing in Spanish, Arabic and English, the article argues magical realist prose is particularly well suited to capturing a sense of the fantastical, the uncanny and the absurd – areas of historical experience usually neglected in academic writing. I discuss how I experimented with specific techniques to tap into Bethlehem’s arresting, often bizarre encounters with global capitalism in the 19thcentury, as well as explore my own relationship to this history as a British historian writing about Palestine.