The reading of ”The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet” by Reif Larsen. Part 1: Selected anatomical details of a liberary text Cover Image

Od…czytanie „Świata według T.S. Spiveta” Reifa Larsena. Część I: Wybrane szczegóły anatomiczne tekstu liberackiego
The reading of ”The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet” by Reif Larsen. Part 1: Selected anatomical details of a liberary text

Author(s): Marta Szymor-Rólczak
Subject(s): Language and Literature Studies, Studies of Literature
Published by: Łódzkie Towarzystwo Naukowe
Keywords: Reif Larsen; The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet; Zenon Fajfer; Katarzyna Bazarnik; Agnieszka Przybyszewska; liberature; liberariness; materiality of the book; intermediality; intertextuality

Summary/Abstract: In the first part of the paper devoted to the multidimensional analysis and interpretationof the novel by Reif Larsen, I show that the liberary optics will allow its optimal reading.The analysis of the form of this work, its “flesh”, was carried out in relation to the proposalsof Zenon Fajfer and Katarzyna Bazarnik — the founders of the liberature theory, whichcentres its interest on the materiality of the book as a physical object, focusing on theintegrity of the form of the recording with the content conveyed. Selected anatomicaldetails of a liberary text are its “external” characteristics, manifested mainly in theshape and the structure of the book, as well as in the related field of intermedia. I haveestablished that the media conveying the meaning of The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet are:the text and the material form of the book, forming an organic whole; all its elements,including the non-verbal ones, are the media of its meaning. The important elementsinclude, among others, its format imitating the shape and dimensions of a popular American spiral notebook; increased spacing mimicking printing rulings; multi-topicmarginalia; a small font size — reflecting the handwriting of a young cartographer;numerical values (e.g.: the dimensions of the volume, the number of chapters, thenumbering contained in infographics, the numbering of exhibits displayed on the coverand the website); transtextual operations (e.g.: intertextual quotation-motto, hypertextualgraphic references to Moby Dick by Herman Melville or the metatextual reference to thephilosophy of Plato).

  • Issue Year: 2016
  • Issue No: 71
  • Page Range: 221-236
  • Page Count: 16
  • Language: Polish