Archiving Agnes Owens: Asserting the Marginal Voice

利用最近捐赠给阿拉斯代尔·格雷档案馆(AGA)的阿格尼斯·欧文斯的档案，这将是对阿格尼斯·欧文斯全集的第一次研究，恢复了她在苏格兰西部背景下的边缘化文学对苏格兰文学文化和其他地方的重要性。博士将专注于三个关键领域：1.将Agnes Owens的论文存档--与AGA合作，对最近捐赠的论文进行组织和编目。这将包括为她的作品准备一份编年史研究，将以前未见过、未发表的作品纳入其中。对欧文斯工作的更广泛背景的详细研究。这一部分将把欧文斯的作品放在她更广泛的苏格兰西部背景下。这将包括对Agnes Owens、Liz Lochhead和Alasdair Gray之间的通信和集体文本编辑的研究。艾格尼丝·欧文斯的创作在多大程度上受到了其他苏格兰作家的影响？反过来，她在多大程度上影响了他们的工作？这一部分还将侧重于欧文斯作品的工人阶级背景，以及她所在的更广泛的网络(参与作家团体和文学杂志)。对她的文学作品的正式研究。贯穿欧文斯作品的一个中心主题是边缘化：她的文本揭示了局外人，因为他们的地位，揭示了我们的社会关系，我们的心理和我们的价值体系中的荒谬。这个项目将通过被边缘化和异化的主题(从作家，通过叙述者和诗意的声音，再到人物)的视角，对欧文斯的整个作品进行持续的批判性分析。方法：为了加深对欧文斯作品背景的理解，项目的一个中心方面将是通过增加一系列口述历史访谈(与其他作家、朋友和家人)来建立现有的档案材料。欧文斯的许多短篇小说最初出现在小型文学杂志和作家团体出版物上。她第一次被Liz Lochhead发现时，是她在莱文谷的作家小组辅导的时候。这些相互联系将通过采访杂志编辑和作家小组参与者/组织者来进一步探讨。以这种方式揭示欧文斯作品的文化和历史背景，对于理解苏格兰目前更广泛的文学和文化背景也是至关重要的。许多受访者都是老年人，这一项目具有紧迫性和时效性。采访录音和文字记录将由AGA和位于斯特拉斯克莱德的苏格兰口述历史中心(SOHC)联合存储，在那里它们将是公开可用的资源。论文的主要背景之一将是对欧文斯整个作品中的边缘化和异化的主观性进行持续的批判性分析。这将涉及到欧文斯在不同作品、不同形式和不同时期的叙事策略的比较研究：重点关注形式特征，如反讽距离、框架叙事、隐含的受众、盲点和黑色幽默。这将把欧文斯的作品置于更广泛的文学史背景中，并在更广泛的范围内扩展对20世纪末苏格兰文学和艺术中工人阶级实验主义的批判性欣赏。

Drawing on her archives recently donated to the Alasdair Gray Archive (AGA), this will be the first study of the complete writings of Agnes Owens, restoring the importance of her literature of the marginalised, within its West of Scotland setting, to Scottish literary culture, and beyond. The PhD will focus on three key areas:1. Archiving the papers of Agnes Owens - working with the AGA to organise and catalogue the recently donated papers. This will include preparing a chronological study of her works, incorporating the previously unseen, unpublished works.2. A detailed study of the broader context of Owens's work. This section will situate Owens's work within her broader West of Scotland context. This will include a study of the correspondence and collective textual editing between Agnes Owens, Liz Lochhead and Alasdair Gray. To what extent was the writing of Agnes Owens influenced by other Scottish writers? In turn, to what extent did she influence their work? This section will also focus on the working-class context of Owens's work, as well as the broader networks she was operating within (involvement in writers' groups and literary magazines).3. Formal study of her literary works. A central theme running through Owens's work is marginalisation: her texts illuminate outsider figures who, because of their status, reveal absurdities in our social relations, our psychology, and our value systems. This project will offer a sustained critical analysis of Owens's entire oeuvre through the lens of the marginalised and alienated subject (from the writer, through the narrator and poetic voice, to characters).Methodologies:In order to deepen understanding of the context of Owens' work, a central aspect of the project will be to build upon the existing archival materials through the addition of a strand of oral history interviews (with fellow writers, friends and family members). Many of Owens's short stories first appeared in small literary magazines and writers' group publications. She was first 'discovered' by Liz Lochhead when she tutored at her writers' group in the Vale of Leven. These interconnections will be further explored through interviewing magazine editors and writers' group participants/ organisers. Opening out the cultural and historical context of Owens's work in this way will also be vital to understanding the broader literary and cultural context of Scotland at this time. Many of the interviewees are elderly and there is an urgency and time-sensitivity to this project. The interview recordings and transcriptions will be stored jointly between the AGA and the Scottish Oral History Centre (SOHC) at Strathclyde, where they will be publicly available resources.One of the main contexts of the thesis will be a sustained critical analysis of marginalisation and alienated subjectivities throughout Owens's work. This will involve comparative studies of Owens's narrative strategies in different works, forms, and periods: focussing on formal features like ironic distance, frame narratives, implied audiences, blind-spots, and black humour. This will place Owens's work in its wider literary historical context and extend critical appreciation of late-20th-century working-class experimentalism in Scottish literature and the arts more broadly.