Subject
Fw: Intertextuality, Couturier, Plagiarism & LOLITA
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----- Original Message -----
From: "Marilyn Edelstein" <MEdelstein@scu.edu>
> The "origins" of the concept of "intertextuality" itself recede into the
distance. (And would it make sense that we could clearly mark the origin of
a concept that itself questions the idea of origins and originality?).
Kristeva seems to have borrowed the concept of intertextuality from Roland
Barthes, with whom she had studied in France after immigrating from
Bulgaria. Barthes, in his influential 1968 essay "The Death of the Author,"
asserts that "We know now that a text is not a line of words releasing a
single 'theological' meaning (the 'message' of the Author-God) but a
multi-dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them
original, blend and clash. The text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the
innumerable centres of culture" (Stephen Heath's translation, included in
Barthes' _Image-Music-Text_.) The latter part of this quotation seems to be
what M. Couturier is alluding to in his posting.
>
> As I've noted in an essay on Kristeva, this Bulgarian expatriate in
France--working with some of the most important French theorists of the
1960s and 1970s--appears to have introduced Barthes and others there to the
work of the Russian theorist Mikhail Bakhtin. Bakhtin's concept of the
"dialogic"--linked to his ideas about "heteroglossia"--also has affinities
with the concept of intertextuality. So Barthes may have been influenced by
Bahktin's ideas--brought to France by Kristeva--to develop the concept of
intertextuality which was then borrowed by Kristeva (in some of her work
done in the 1970s). So M. Couturier's attribution of the concept of
"intertextuality" to Kristeva may ignore the intertextuality of the concept
of intertextuality itself. (I don't mean to be giving anyone a headache!)
>
> Of course, Vladimir Nabokov probably would not have accepted Barthes'
theory of the "death of the author" and all it entails, or Barthes'
additional claims in "DOA": "Writing is the destruction of every voice, of
every point of origin" and "it is language which speaks, not the author."
>
> Marilyn Edelstein
> Associate Professor of English
> Santa Clara University
> Santa Clara California 95053
>
> >>> chtodel@cox.net 04/02/04 2:14 PM >>>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Jansy Berndt de Souza Mello
> To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum
> Sent: Friday, April 02, 2004 1:13 PM
> Subject: Re: Maurice Couturier re Plagiarism & LOLITA
>
> Hello, List
> Once I heard a quip which stated: " if you copy another author´s work
you are a plagiarist. If you copy from various authors, you are a
researcher".
> Now, perhaps we would add a third item: " if you copy from various
works by the same author, or copy one work from various authors, you are an
intertextualist "...
> Jansy
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: D. Barton Johnson
> To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
> Sent: Friday, April 02, 2004 2:32 PM
> Subject: Maurice Couturier re Plagiarism & LOLITA
>
> EDNOTE. Maurice Couturier is the leading French authority on VN. He is
editor of the Pleiade edition of the novels.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Maurice Couturier
> To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum
> Sent: Thursday, April 01, 2004 1:42 AM
> Subject: Re: Plagiarism
>
> Following the accusation of plagiarism leveled at Nabokov recently
on the forum, I wish to add something which may help bring this episode down
to more reasonable proportions. Though I disagree with Julia Kristeva's
claim that every book is a mosaic of bits from previous books, I agree with
her that intertextuality has always been part and parcel of literature,
Shakespeare having perhaps been one of the greatest "intertextualists" (read
"plagiarists") of all times.
> In a lecture I gave at the Nabokov Museum in 2001 (available in
French on Zembla), I listed a number of French books published before Lolita
which contained the name of that famous nymphet in their titles (though no
doubt Nabokov never read them), like Isidore Gès's En villégiature. Lolita
published in 1894, René Riche's La Chanson de Lolita published in 1920 which
obviously refers to Pierre Louÿs's Chanson de Bilitis (1894) which itself
celebrated nymphets. And Valéry Larbaud's passage on the name of Lolita in
his Des prénoms féminins (1927) has often been quoted: "it is truly Spain
which is best equipped in the Western world as concerns first names. She has
those boxed up names, fitted with a set of diminutives capable of expressing
all kinds of nuances: age, the degree of familiarity one has with the people
involved. Lolita is a little girl; Lola is old enough to get married;
Dolores is thirty years old; doña Dolores is sixty (.). One day, inspired by
love, I whispe!
> red: Lola. And during the wedding night, I will have Lolita in my arms."
This passage strangely prefigures the famous opening of Humbert's narrative.
> Two years before the novel came out in France, Chriss Frager
published a novel entitled Cette saloperie de Lolita (1953), and since then
the name has resurfaced in countless works of doubtful literary value like
Julien Roussillon's Les viols de Lila ou Lolita (1980), Michel Brice's La
Lolita du TGV (1992), Orsalina's Lolita Latex (1992) and even in the title
of a book for children, Lolita la tortue by Elizabeth Schlossberg (1995). In
French "literature", the name seems to have been applied to two kinds of
characters: highly perverse prostitutes or saucy little girls.
> Has the name cropped up as much in other literatures, the Spanish
one included? I wonder. Let us not forget that Humbert was originally a
French speaker!
>
> Maurice Couturier
>
>
>
From: "Marilyn Edelstein" <MEdelstein@scu.edu>
> The "origins" of the concept of "intertextuality" itself recede into the
distance. (And would it make sense that we could clearly mark the origin of
a concept that itself questions the idea of origins and originality?).
Kristeva seems to have borrowed the concept of intertextuality from Roland
Barthes, with whom she had studied in France after immigrating from
Bulgaria. Barthes, in his influential 1968 essay "The Death of the Author,"
asserts that "We know now that a text is not a line of words releasing a
single 'theological' meaning (the 'message' of the Author-God) but a
multi-dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them
original, blend and clash. The text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the
innumerable centres of culture" (Stephen Heath's translation, included in
Barthes' _Image-Music-Text_.) The latter part of this quotation seems to be
what M. Couturier is alluding to in his posting.
>
> As I've noted in an essay on Kristeva, this Bulgarian expatriate in
France--working with some of the most important French theorists of the
1960s and 1970s--appears to have introduced Barthes and others there to the
work of the Russian theorist Mikhail Bakhtin. Bakhtin's concept of the
"dialogic"--linked to his ideas about "heteroglossia"--also has affinities
with the concept of intertextuality. So Barthes may have been influenced by
Bahktin's ideas--brought to France by Kristeva--to develop the concept of
intertextuality which was then borrowed by Kristeva (in some of her work
done in the 1970s). So M. Couturier's attribution of the concept of
"intertextuality" to Kristeva may ignore the intertextuality of the concept
of intertextuality itself. (I don't mean to be giving anyone a headache!)
>
> Of course, Vladimir Nabokov probably would not have accepted Barthes'
theory of the "death of the author" and all it entails, or Barthes'
additional claims in "DOA": "Writing is the destruction of every voice, of
every point of origin" and "it is language which speaks, not the author."
>
> Marilyn Edelstein
> Associate Professor of English
> Santa Clara University
> Santa Clara California 95053
>
> >>> chtodel@cox.net 04/02/04 2:14 PM >>>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Jansy Berndt de Souza Mello
> To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum
> Sent: Friday, April 02, 2004 1:13 PM
> Subject: Re: Maurice Couturier re Plagiarism & LOLITA
>
> Hello, List
> Once I heard a quip which stated: " if you copy another author´s work
you are a plagiarist. If you copy from various authors, you are a
researcher".
> Now, perhaps we would add a third item: " if you copy from various
works by the same author, or copy one work from various authors, you are an
intertextualist "...
> Jansy
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: D. Barton Johnson
> To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
> Sent: Friday, April 02, 2004 2:32 PM
> Subject: Maurice Couturier re Plagiarism & LOLITA
>
> EDNOTE. Maurice Couturier is the leading French authority on VN. He is
editor of the Pleiade edition of the novels.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Maurice Couturier
> To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum
> Sent: Thursday, April 01, 2004 1:42 AM
> Subject: Re: Plagiarism
>
> Following the accusation of plagiarism leveled at Nabokov recently
on the forum, I wish to add something which may help bring this episode down
to more reasonable proportions. Though I disagree with Julia Kristeva's
claim that every book is a mosaic of bits from previous books, I agree with
her that intertextuality has always been part and parcel of literature,
Shakespeare having perhaps been one of the greatest "intertextualists" (read
"plagiarists") of all times.
> In a lecture I gave at the Nabokov Museum in 2001 (available in
French on Zembla), I listed a number of French books published before Lolita
which contained the name of that famous nymphet in their titles (though no
doubt Nabokov never read them), like Isidore Gès's En villégiature. Lolita
published in 1894, René Riche's La Chanson de Lolita published in 1920 which
obviously refers to Pierre Louÿs's Chanson de Bilitis (1894) which itself
celebrated nymphets. And Valéry Larbaud's passage on the name of Lolita in
his Des prénoms féminins (1927) has often been quoted: "it is truly Spain
which is best equipped in the Western world as concerns first names. She has
those boxed up names, fitted with a set of diminutives capable of expressing
all kinds of nuances: age, the degree of familiarity one has with the people
involved. Lolita is a little girl; Lola is old enough to get married;
Dolores is thirty years old; doña Dolores is sixty (.). One day, inspired by
love, I whispe!
> red: Lola. And during the wedding night, I will have Lolita in my arms."
This passage strangely prefigures the famous opening of Humbert's narrative.
> Two years before the novel came out in France, Chriss Frager
published a novel entitled Cette saloperie de Lolita (1953), and since then
the name has resurfaced in countless works of doubtful literary value like
Julien Roussillon's Les viols de Lila ou Lolita (1980), Michel Brice's La
Lolita du TGV (1992), Orsalina's Lolita Latex (1992) and even in the title
of a book for children, Lolita la tortue by Elizabeth Schlossberg (1995). In
French "literature", the name seems to have been applied to two kinds of
characters: highly perverse prostitutes or saucy little girls.
> Has the name cropped up as much in other literatures, the Spanish
one included? I wonder. Let us not forget that Humbert was originally a
French speaker!
>
> Maurice Couturier
>
>
>