Ghosting Through: Ficto-Critical Translation as a Means of Resisting the Appropriations of History and Place

幽灵穿越：虚构批评翻译作为抵制历史和地点挪用的手段

• 批准号: AH/J008192/1
• 负责人: Michael Green
• 金额: $ 9.76万
• 依托单位: Northumbria University
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Fellowship
• 财政年份: 2012
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2012 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FJ008192%2F1
• 关键词: Ghosting; Through; Ficto; Critical; Translation

Through a 'ficto-critical' combination of experimental fictional techniques, archival research, and investigations into relevant areas of cultural theory, this project explores ways in which we can challenge the tendency to control and domesticate implicit in attempts to understand past and place.This broad research question is grounded in a case study focused on the haunting of a public house in a small Northumberland village, and the witch trial associated with the ghost. The project frames the haunting and the history informing it within a self-reflective account of the process of recreating historical events and contemporary constructions of place. It does this by positioning the researcher as a character in the work. A recent migrant from South Africa, he tries to write himself into the 'Englishness' of his new location by investigating the ghost story. The ghost is that of Anne Armstrong, a servant who in 1673 accused various residents of Riding Mill and surrounding Northumberland villages of holding witches' meetings in what is now the Wellington Inn. This story is regularly reproduced in ever-shifting versions appearing in everything from tour guides to advertisements for residential properties in the area. Armstrong's charges were apparently dismissed at the Morpeth Assizes - after which she hanged herself or was hanged by those she accused - but her depositions are now considered among the most remarkable texts in the history of English witchcraft. For all their compelling detail, however, Armstrong's accounts fall short of full historical contextualisation. No records of a trial following on from her depositions have been found, which leaves us unsure as to whether her accusations ever came to trial, or whether the trial records have been lost. Armstrong's story is thus a combination of specific detail and tantalising openness, both in terms of its truth status and historical contextualisation. This project does not contest conventional modes of historical research, but develops complementary modes of understanding in which an analysis of the archival material is played off against current retellings. It is not an exercise in corrective intervention, but an exploration of the complex ways in which a specific place constructs its past. The ghost becomes a centre of absence which holds at bay any authoritative control over the story. The public house is resonant with peculiar aspects of 'Englishness', as is the widespread alleged haunting of pubs and inns. The haunting of the Wellington, and the appropriations of the story behind it, thus feed into a contemporary sense of place, ranging from the national to the local. Placed in various conjunctions with the deposition records, this apparently slight ghost story resists the researcher's attempts to know the past, the place in which he has come to live, and his own sense of identity. The unsettling awareness of the ways in which identities and places are implicated within networks at once contingent and the product of relations of power is reinforced by the constant reminders of 'home' the researcher discovers in a landscape haunted by memorials of Empire. He commits himself to recreating the history behind one statue in particular, that of a British officer killed in the 'Anglo-Boer War'. His efforts are overwhelmed by the ways in which his understanding of history is challenged by the ghost story attached to what has become his 'local', the Wellington Inn. The usual authority accorded to the researcher discovering and giving meaning to his material is tested against his taking shape in relation to that material which is in itself dynamic and fluid in its expression of place, the past, and the present. In crucial ways it is the researcher who is the real 'apparition' in the text. This is a practice-led research project, and the larger question it takes on is how such material can be worked into a successful work of fiction.

通过实验性小说技巧、档案研究和文化理论相关领域的调查的“小说批评”结合，该项目探索了我们可以挑战试图理解过去和地点时所隐含的控制和驯化倾向的方法。这个广泛的研究问题基于一个案例研究，该案例研究集中在诺森伯兰郡一个小村庄的公共房屋中，以及与鬼魂有关的女巫审判该项目框架的困扰和历史告知它在一个自我反思的过程中重新创造的历史事件和当代建筑的地方。它通过将研究者定位为作品中的一个角色来做到这一点。作为一个最近从南非移民过来的人，他试图通过调查鬼故事来把自己写进新地方的“英国化”。鬼魂是安妮·阿姆斯特朗的鬼魂，她是一名仆人，1673年她指控骑式轧机和诺森伯兰郡周围村庄的居民在现在的惠灵顿旅馆举行女巫会议。这个故事经常以不断变化的版本出现在从导游到该地区住宅物业广告的所有内容中。阿姆斯特朗的指控显然在莫尔佩斯巡回审判中被驳回--之后她上吊自杀或被她指控的人绞死--但她的证词现在被认为是英国巫术史上最引人注目的文献之一。然而，尽管阿姆斯特朗的叙述有着令人信服的细节，但他的叙述缺乏完整的历史背景。没有发现她的证词之后的审判记录，这使我们不确定她的指控是否曾经受到审判，或者审判记录是否已经丢失。因此，阿姆斯特朗的故事结合了具体的细节和诱人的开放性，无论是在其真相地位和历史背景。这个项目并不质疑传统的历史研究模式，而是发展了理解的补充模式，在这种模式中，对档案材料的分析与当前的复述相矛盾。它不是一种矫正干预的练习，而是对一个特定地方构建其过去的复杂方式的探索。鬼魂成为一个缺席的中心，它阻止了对故事的任何权威控制。这座酒店与“英国”的特殊方面产生了共鸣，就像人们普遍认为的酒吧和旅馆闹鬼一样。惠灵顿号的萦绕不去，以及它背后故事的挪用，从而注入了一种当代的地方感，从国家到地方。与沉积记录放置在各种连接，这个明显轻微的鬼故事抵制研究人员的企图知道过去，他已经来到生活的地方，和他自己的身份感。身份和地点在网络中的牵连方式是偶然的，是权力关系的产物，这种令人不安的意识被研究者在一个被帝国纪念馆困扰的景观中发现的“家”的不断提醒所强化。他致力于重现一尊雕像背后的历史，这尊雕像是一位在“英布战争”中丧生的英国军官。他的努力被他对历史的理解所挑战的方式所淹没，这些方式被附在他的“当地”，惠灵顿客栈上的鬼故事所挑战。通常赋予研究者的权力是发现并赋予他的材料以意义，这是对他与材料的关系的形成的考验，材料本身在表达地点、过去和现在时是动态的和流动的。在关键的方面，研究者才是文本中真实的“幽灵”。这是一个以实践为导向的研究项目，它所面临的更大的问题是如何将这些材料转化为成功的小说作品。

项目成果

The Ghosting of Anne Armstrong

安妮·阿姆斯特朗的幽灵

• 发表时间: 2019
• 作者: Green

Ghosting Through: commemorating George Elliott Benson

鬼影穿越：纪念乔治·埃利奥特·本森

• 发表时间: 2014
• 期刊: Hexham Historian
• 作者: Green, M M

On reflection: The role, mode and medium of the reflective component in practice as research

论反思：反思成分在研究实践中的作用、方式和媒介

• 发表时间: 2018
• 期刊: Journal of Writing and Writing Courses
• 作者: Green M

Reflection and Reflexivity: The Archive and The Creative Process

反思与反身性：档案与创作过程

• 发表时间: 2018
• 期刊: Journal of Writing and Writing Courses
• 作者: Green M