Reading Through Theory. Studies in Theory-Framed Interpretation of the Literary Text
Enikő Bollobás
Eötvös University Press, Budapest, 2021.
274 pages
ISBN 978-963-489-297-7

Reading Through Theory. Studies in Theory-Framed Interpretation of the Literary Text published this year by Eötvös University Press is a fascinating collection of thirteen essays that bring together critical studies framed by performative, intersubjective, postmodern, feminist, tropological, and rhetorical perspectives into an assembly of “critical ekphrastic” readings. According to Bollobás, here “theory acts as a filter” through which one reads literature while theories are put to test through “primary” literary texts in a reciprocal process of interpretation (7).

After the first chapter entitled “From Logocentric to Discursive. On the paradigm of Performativity,” which is a concise history of the concept of performativity with special emphasis on the paradigm change and the performative turn in theories of the subject, Bollobás focuses on the investigation of interactional paradigms from an intersubjective point of view in “Behavioral Paradigms in the Short Fiction of Henry James” to conclude that James is keen on constantly reevaluating the interactions of his characters but never to give them the last word on them. In “The Marking and the Telling: Versions of the Stigma Narrative as Given by Anne Hutchinson, Emily Dickinson, and Philip Roth,” the author choses four different texts for the account of stigmatization through time, including John Winthrop’s and John Cotton’s views, but also the poetry of Emily Dickinson and her correspondence with T. W. Higginson, along the 2000 New York exhibit of lynching photographs chronicling the events of physical torture, and Philip Roth’s novel The Human Stain. Bollobás concludes that neither Anne Hutchinson, “nor the victims of the lynchings were allowed to tell their own story, to give an alternative account to those of their stigmatizers” with the exception of Dickinson, who “was able to defy the prohibition of narrative self-making and properly host her stigma in language” (51). Furthermore the next chapter on “Tropes of Intersubjectivity: Metalepsis and Rhizome in the Novels of H. D. (Hilda Doolittle)” explores H.D.’s Asphodel, HERmione, Palimpsest, The Gift and Tribute to Freud from the point of view of the narrativized female subject, which, coded by various discourses, exhibits the tropes of rhizome and metalepsis as “cornerstones of a rhetoric of inclusive subjectivity, psychic subjectivity, or intersubjectivity” (65). The next chapter of the book, entitled “The Fantastic as Performative: Mark Twain and Ambrose Bierce Performing the Unreal” analyzes Twain’s The Mysterious Stranger and Bierce’s “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” claiming that the alternative realities of these works of fantasy are created primarily by the power of language, as intertwined instances of logocentric strong performativity and discursive performatives. In “Making the Subject: Performative Genders in Carson McCullers’ The Ballad of the Sad Café and David Hwang’s M. Butterfly,” the author discusses forms of subjectivity and gender performativity in Carson McCullers’ novella and David H. Hwang’s drama, where gender as social and linguistic construction appears fluid through its performative essence. This appears as manipulation in case of Hwang’s Song character and with relative markers of subjectivity in case of Miss Amelia, Cousin Lymon and Marvin Macy. In “Troping the Unthought: Catachresis in Emily Dickinson’s Poetry” Bollobás explains Dickinson’s regime of lyrical innovation through catachresis, a rare trope which resembles a “metaphor without a referent” which is not “brought about by analogical duplication and replacement,” instead it “changes in meaning come about by extension of language” (100). This chapter discusses gender as catachresis and expands the trope to Dickinson’s meanings for the idea of God, best exemplified with the following quote:

"Catachresis provides Dickinson with linguistic space for impropriety and subversion, as well as assujettissement. When Dickinson writes of circumference as a capacity, woman as a bachelor, God as a burglar, death as a dialogue, or consciousness as a stranger, she speaks “improperly,” both semantically and culturally, as she verges outside accepted lexicons and cultural norms. Dickinson’s catachreses always suggest a subversion of normativity and thereby destabilize the idea of normativity itself. This impropriety, or subversion of propriety, linguistic and cultural, guarantees that Dickinson’s claim that she was “standing alone in rebellion,” as she proclaimed at age eighteen in a letter written from Mount Holyoke College (L35), would remain valid throughout the rest of her life as she kept fulfilling (performing) her own assujettissement." (129)

The chapter on “Plots of Domination, Plots of Relationality: On the Triangular Positioning of Characters in American and European Literature” focuses on an array of works authored by Henry James, D.H. Lawrence, Stefan Zweig, Sándor Márai, Carson McCullers and Péter Nádas placing triangular relations in a wider theoretical and comparative context, similar to the book’s next chapter on “Versions of Triangular Desire in Hungarian Literature: Reading Sándor Márai and Péter Nádas,” where Bollobás explores these triangular relationships and their variations through theories of patriarchy and intersubjectivity in four particular works including Sándor Márai’s Válás Budán (‘Divorce in Buda,’ 1935), Kaland (‘Adventure’, 1940) and A gyertyák csonking érnek (Embers, 1942) alongside Péter Nádas’s Találkozások (Encounters, 1976). Bollobás differentiates between the patriarchal and intersubjective triangular structures and concludes that these are not mutually exclusive but rather interconnected in the above-mentioned works. After these versions of triangular desire, Bollobás discusses the double entendre of sex, and the pornographies of body and society in a selection of works by Péter Esterházy revealing a rarely discussed aspect of Eszterházy’s fiction: the overwhelmingly pornographic, exploitative, and sexist discourse. Bollobás observes that “[f]ramed by the figure of the double entendre this sexist-pornographic discourse is then coupled with a discourse on politics and sexual politics, with the depiction of power dynamics running through all” (159) that boil down rhetorical all stories to a pornographic one “told in permutational alternatives” (173).

The last chapters of the book are dedicated to three Janus Pannonius Poet Laureates: Charles Bernstein, Augusto de Campos and Susan Howe. The Janus Pannonius Grand Prize for Poetry (2012- ), labelled by The New York Times as the “Nobel Prize for Poetry,” was named after one of the most revered poets of European Renaissance and awarded to Bernstein in 2015, to Howe in 2016 and to de Campos in 2017. In “Imploded Sentences: On Charles Bernstein’s Poetic Attentions,” Bollobás writes about Bernstein’s poetry of consciousness, mourning, transgressions and boundary crossings, about his linguistic radicalism, and about the polyphony of Bernstein’s modes of speech embodied by his postmodern ekphrastia. As Bollobás observes, Bernstein “insists that the only way to dispel metaphysical darkness is by coveting a familiarity with darkness: the griever must learn to feel comfortable in darkness, and ultimately accept the impossibility of clear sight” (197). The next chapter on “Writing on the Margins of Sound and Sight: Augusto de Campos” discusses the Brazilian poet’s special vocabulary, his particular treatment of language and his exceptional philosophy of language. According to Bollobás, Augusto de Campos “leaves behind the lyrical paradigm of expressive verse” and manages to suppress “the self-expressing poetic ego” by replacing “the Cartesian subject with language as material” producing a concrete poetry that has “the most radical departure from the lyric” (214). Finally, the last chapter of the book “Historical Reconstruction, Rough Book Poetry, and the Withdrawal of the Self: Susan Howe and the Olsonian Tradition” talks about the innovative tradition of Howe’s revisionist view of history, more specifically, the revision of women’s history in the treatment of autobiographical and personal themes by creating a veritable “rough book poetry” that “demands a very different involvement” by the reader, an intensely active participation in which the reader must “strip the reading process of the old imperative to make meaning, tolerating not knowing and not understanding” (244) and thus to learn to “disregard referential meaning” by recognizing “the voices produced by the visual rhythm of the letters and words” (244).

In conclusion, Reading Through Theory. Studies in Theory-Framed Interpretation of the Literary Text is an important volume aiming primarily to the community of literary scholars, especially those interested in the dialogic relationship between theory and interpretation. Beyond the academic audience, this new volume will certainly be of use to undergraduate and graduate students of English, American, and Hungarian studies, as well as those of comparative literature, who are looking for innovative, well-versed theoretical frameworks for their investigations. Last but not least, Enikő Bollobás’s excellent new volume of essays will also be of interest to a more general, educated public.

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