TRACT: A NOVEL WRITTEN WITHIN THE CRACKS OF KING LEAR

单张：一部写在《李尔王》夹缝中的小说

• 批准号: 2875354
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Lancaster University
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2022 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2875354
• 关键词: TRACT; NOVEL; WRITTEN; WITHIN; CRACKS

'Tract' - - a major passage in the body - e.g. respiratory tract.- an indefinite stretch of land, or kind of plot.- a piece of writing, to be given away.Research ContextThere have been several recent re-framings of Shakespeare's King Lear. The most notable include: Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres (1991) where the land takes centre stage; Edward St. Aubyn's Dunbar (2017) where Lear's folly is set against the backdrop of a media empire; Preti Taneja's We That Are Young (2017) which relocates the play to modern India; and JR Thorp's Learwife (2021) which takes the form of a monologue by one 'unwritten' by Shakespeare - namely Lear's wife. Equally unwritten is the Fool's mysterious temporary absence from Lear's court following the banishment of Cordelia. When Lear remarks of the Fool that 'I have not seen him these two days' (1.iv.41) we learn only that the Fool has 'much pin'd away' (1.iv.72). We have no idea where he has gone or why. This is a trapdoor in the play, a ticking clock, forty-eight hours of unauthorised absence. However, save for the mention of pining, the Fool's absence has been passed over by both writers and scholars. It is as if Lear's interjection 'No more of that, I have noted it well' (1.iv.73) has, until now, put paid to any further speculation. Contribution to the fieldMy own speculation will take the form of Tract, an experimental hybrid novel driven by its reading of the Fool's not-being-at-court as analogous to Cordelia's not-speaking-at-court. They are bound together by negation, and indeed the idea of 'nothing' - Cordelia's 'Nothing, my Lord' (1.i.87) is mirrored by the Fool's 'Can you make no use of nothing, Nuncle?' (1.iv.129). Many scholars have attended to the idea of 'nothing' in King Lear (e.g. Brian Sheerin, 'Making Use of Nothing,' Studies in Philology (2013)) but what Tract will add is a novelistic exploration of how, in the conjoined disappearances of both the Fool and Cordelia, we have not one nothing but two nothings, even perhaps a marriage of nothings. T. S. Eliot famously writes that 'I can connect/Nothing with nothing' (The Waste Land (1922), and Tract shall pursue what happens when two nothings do connect or meet. Is it simply a case of 'an O without a figure' (1.iv.158) plus an O without a figure - a simple arithmetical doubling of emptied, kenotic selves? Or is there some kind of encounter? Is there an 'I' and a 'You'? If so, who are they? And what happens? Resonant here, for me, is the final sentence from Paul Celan's poem 'Vast, glowing vault': 'The world is gone, I must carry you' (Selected Poems, tr. Michael Hamburger (Penguin 1990), 275).To put this another way, Tract will read and write beyond a vision of one consistent world of nothing and towards a vision of the meeting or colliding of two nothings.

“道”- -身体的主要通道--例如呼吸道。一片无限期的土地，或一种阴谋。研究背景莎士比亚的《李尔王》最近有几次重新装帧。最值得注意的包括：简·斯迈利的《一千英亩》（1991年），土地占据了中心舞台;爱德华·圣·奥宾的《邓巴》（2017年），李尔王的愚蠢以媒体帝国为背景;普雷蒂·塔内贾的《我们年轻》（2017年），将戏剧重新定位到现代印度;和JR索普的Learwife（2021），采用莎士比亚“未写”的独白形式-即李尔的妻子。同样不成文的是，在科迪莉亚被放逐后，愚人神秘地暂时离开了李尔王的宫廷。当李尔王说“这两天我没有见到他”（1.iv.41）时，我们只知道这个傻瓜有“很多事情要做”（1.iv.72）。我们不知道他去了哪里或者为什么。这是一个活板门在发挥，一个滴答作响的时钟，四十八小时的未经授权的缺席。然而，除了提到思念，傻瓜的缺席已经被作家和学者忽略了。就好像李尔王的一句感叹词“别再说了，我已经注意到了”（1.iv.73），到目前为止，已经平息了任何进一步的猜测。我自己的推测将采取《道》的形式，这是一部实验性的混合小说，它的驱动力是阅读《傻瓜不在法庭》，类似于《科迪莉亚不在法庭》。它们被否定联系在一起，事实上，“无”的概念--科迪莉亚的“无，我的主”（1.i.87）与愚人的“你能什么都不利用吗，叔叔？'（1.iv.129）。许多学者都注意到了《李尔王》中“虚无”的概念（例如布莱恩·希林，《利用虚无》，《语言学研究》（2013）），但《小册子》将增加一个小说式的探索，探讨在傻瓜和科迪莉亚的联合失踪中，我们不是一个虚无，而是两个虚无，甚至可能是虚无的婚姻。T. S.艾略特有一句名言：“我可以连接/无与无”（《荒原》（1922）），而《小道》将探讨当两个无连接或相遇时会发生什么。它仅仅是“一个没有数字的O”（1.iv. 158）加上一个没有数字的O--一个空的、空的自我的简单的算术加倍吗？或者是有什么遭遇？有一个“我”和一个“你”吗？如果是，他们是谁？然后呢？对我来说，在这里产生共鸣的是保罗·策兰的诗《巨大的，发光的拱顶》的最后一句：“世界已经消失，我必须带着你”（选读诗歌，tr。Michael Hamburger（Penguin 1990），275）.换句话说，道将阅读和写作超越一个一致的无物世界的愿景，朝着两个无物的相遇或碰撞的愿景。