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Book Review:Description in Literature and Other Media
Werner Wolf & Walter Bernhart, eds., Description in Literature and Other Media. Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi, 2007.
ISBN: 978-90-420-2310-9
Thomas Van Parys
Description is something that has always been rather neglected in literary studies. Still, the most noteworthy publications dealing with this topic, namely Philippe Hamon‟s seminal work, a Yale French Studies special issue, some writings by Seymour Chatman and by Ruth Ronen amongst others, have successfully laid a foundation for further research. On its turn, Description in Literature and Other Media, a new volume on description edited by Werner Wolf and Walter Bernhart and based on a cycle of lectures, takes the discussion in the direction of intermediality, strikingly broadening the scope of the term as well as that of the continuing investigation into the phenomenon.
This collection of essays, which is the second volume in the book series „Studies in Intermediality‟ (following Framing Borders in Literature and Other Media), starts out with a lengthy introduction of ninety pages (almost a monograph on its own) by Werner Wolf, which all the other texts are meant to build upon and refer to. Wolf sees description as a semiotic macro-mode that has concrete manifestations in every medium. He assigns the term „the descriptive‟ to the abstract cognitive macro-frame (although, admitting the clumsiness of this phrase, he replaces it by „description‟ sometimes), while „description‟ is reserved for the concrete micro-level realisation of this frame in a text. Wolf goes on discussing the functions and uses of description in different contexts – including everyday situations – and breaks down the descriptive into functional, content-related, and presentational or formal „descriptemes‟ (p. 32). To illustrate and discuss his elaborate breakdown further, he analyses three media in more detail, namely painting, narrative fiction, and instrumental music. Basically, Wolf considers description from two main angles. Firstly, he emphasises that the descriptive is a cognitive frame, for objects that are being described only become concrete in the recipient‟s mind. This is undoubtedly the strongest element of Wolf‟s view on description, and saves the discussion from being too one-sidedly structuralist in its orientation. Secondly, he sees description (or rather the descriptive) as a transmedial phenomenon. However, his view of an inherently interartistic overarching frame is critically not always convincing. As Wolf contends, „the descriptive, like all macro-frames, can be realized in more than one medium shows that these macro-frames are to a large extent media-independent‟ (p. 18). What I take issue with is that medium specificity is turned on its head here, as the individual media themselves are seen as limiting the potentiality of the
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descriptive. Rather than announcing the limits of a medium regarding description (e.g. Wolf‟s struggle to apply the descriptive to music) or, conversely, another medium‟s „maximum of descriptive capability‟ (p. 77), it would perhaps have been more fruitful to approach these issues from a bottom-up rather than a top-down perspective, and discuss a medium on the basis of its characteristics and its system of signification. With respect to comparatism and transmediality, it is much more interesting, in my opinion, to analyse how a medium represents and describes an object, how this works within the text, and how it differs from representations in other media. While Wolf‟s case studies are certainly engaging enough, there seems to be an underlying assumption of an ideal description, which a medium can never attain, of course. Despite these objections on my part, Wolf‟s analysis largely still stands, and proves to be an illuminating and most of all a very systematic attempt to map the description and its more abstract macro-frame.The rest of the book is divided into three (unequal) parts, viz. „Description in Literature and Related (Partly) Verbal Media‟, „Description in Visual Media‟, and „Description in Music‟. The first essay, though, Ansgar Nünning‟s „Towards a Typology, Poetics and History of Description in Fiction‟, may also serve as an excellent second introductory article, in that it discusses the status of research on description (incorporating his critical predecessors), sketches and explores the types and functions of description, and raises astute questions for further research. (Nünning‟s framework also seems to be more useful than Wolf‟s, perhaps due to its medium-specific approach.) The merits of this essay are undoubtedly the nuanced differentiation between various kinds of description on the basis of various levels of inquiry as well as its emphasis on the importance of historical research into description.
The other essays each take up a different genre or medium. Walter Bernhart does a good job discussing the „Functions of Description in Poetry‟. Poetry, in contrast to prose, can look back on a long tradition of thoughts on its rhetorics and hence its descriptions (p. 129). Here, following Wolf, Bernhart lays an even greater emphasis on the „beholder‟s share‟: „in the strictest sense, it is not a poetic text itself that is (possibly) descriptive, but the process of its reception‟ (p. 149). In other words, „one needs a “descriptive impulse” in order to experience descriptivity in poetry, or painting, or music, or whichever aesthetic medium‟ (p. 149), Bernhart argues. Arno Heller‟s essay, „Description in American Nature Writing‟, ties together different forms of description of natural phenomena. While it appears to stick out in between the analyses of the descriptive in various media, it is interesting in that this genre is presented as non-fictional. Yet, Heller does not examine the problematic concept of the non-fictional descriptive as such, but concentrates on his observation that nature writing has shifted its emphasis away from the narrative and interpretative to the representational and the descriptive (p. 164), a move away from anthropocentric narration in favour of an „ecocritical fundamentalism celebrating the rights of the non-human Other‟ (p. 173). It is an interesting analysis and read, but feels somewhat out of place here as it hardly touches upon some of the larger issues at hand in this collection. In „The Descriptive in Audio-/Radioliterature – a “Blind Date”?‟, Doris Mader turns her
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attention to the neglected genre of audioliterature, which she examines explicitly in the context of intermediality, as the acoustic signifiers in these texts usually belong to various different codes (p. 183). By means of concrete examples, Mader deftly discusses the descriptive in its relation to the narrative mode in audioliterature, as well as the relations between the several sound signifiers in the descriptive. What remains insufficiently substantiated, however, is the term „audioliterature‟ itself. Mader argues that the „English term “radio drama” and [...] “Hörspiel” are reductive in that they invariably denote the “dramatic”, and are hence generically inadequate‟ and that „both terms seem to connote somewhat outdated literary forms‟ (p. 184). Since this essay deals with „artefacts‟ specifically composed and dramatized for radio (rather than audiobooks), I fail to see why this genre would be more „literature‟ than „drama‟ (especially considering its high level of performance). This switch thus seems an attempt to upgrade the genre, only causing unnecessary terminological confusion as the term „radio drama‟ (which Mader perhaps experiences as derogatory) is without doubt much more established. In „For Your Eyes Only: Some Thoughts on the Descriptive in Film‟, Klaus Rieser does a very good and succinct analysis of description in film, including his thoughts on why this concept has been given little attention in film studies. Interestingly, his look into the medium film provides a different take on some of the central issues in this book, e.g. its intermedial comparatism, the use of the term „description‟ instead of „depiction‟, or the description vs narration discussion. It is surprising, though, that this essay is included in the first part rather than in the second part of the book, all the more since Rieser explicitly concentrates on „the influence of the visual on cinematic storytelling‟ (p. 216).The second part contains three essays on visual media. Johann Konrad Eberlein‟s essay, „Dürer‟s Apocalypse as the Origin of the Western System of Graphic Reproduction: A Contribution to the History of Descriptive Techniques in the Visual Arts‟, is concerned with the vivid representation and aesthetic illusion that description produces in the visual arts. It is a case study that positions Dürer‟s Apocalypse as a key work in the evolution of the Western system of graphic depiction: „Dürer found the way to introduce and enforce a graphical depictive and reproductive system with a maximum of descriptive and illusionist power without evoking the opposition of traditional advocates of the importance of the “word” before that of the “picture”‟ (p. 256). Götz Pochat, in „“Spiritualia sub metaphoris corporalium”? Description in the Visual Arts‟, takes on the larger questions of description in the context of the visual arts. He draws further attention to the mental processes that are going on when we look at paintings, and juxtaposes the cognitive perception of literature vs the visual arts. In „Descriptive Images: Authenticity and Illusion in Early and Contemporary Photography‟, Susanne Knaller examines „how the descriptive, renditional and referential photographic image [fits] into the art system and in what ways it changes it‟ (p. 293). Description in the context of photography is relevant not only as a concept of rendition but also as a definition (p. 295), which is why it has until only recently struggled to be fully integrated in the art system. In the end, the descriptive mode in
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contemporary photography brings to light a link and balance between authenticity, referentiality, iconicity and abstraction.The third part of the book, on music, consists of only one article, Michael Walter‟s „Musical Sunrises: A Case Study of the Descriptive Potential of Instrumental Music‟. Walter traces the various cognitive frames (both verbal and musical) that need to be in place if one wants to experience and understand a certain piece of music precisely as a description. But since music lacks a semantic meaning, he concludes, „the danger of a misconception of descriptions transmitted by this medium is by far greater than in other arts and media‟ (p. 333). Finally, it seems problematic, to say the least, to continue the same comparative argument and model, with regard to a general descriptive mode, in every medium (which is perhaps why this is the only essay in this section).
Wolf and Bernhart‟s book proves to be an adequate and wide-ranging description of description. On this front it is necessary reading as it will hopefully jump-start renewed critical interest in this long-neglected topic in various academic fields. A small overall gripe I have about this book, though, is a certain terminological opacity (and weight), as sometimes one concepts replaces a more common term for the sake of argument (e.g. „the descriptive‟, „verbal media‟, „description‟ instead of „depiction‟, „audioliterature‟). Finally, the focus of this collection on intermediality has many merits, but much more attention to forms of adaptation may shed light on the different functionings of description in the various media, and further adjust the comparatist model that is presented here.
Thomas Van Parys is assistant professor at KU Leuven, where he is finishing his PhD on the representation of space in SF-novelizations.
