Is this Liberature? Words and Images in Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn
Is this Liberature? Words and Images in Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn

Summary/Abstract: The paper presents The Rings of Saturn as an example of liberature – a literary genre defined by Zenon Fajfer and Katarzyna Bazarnik that encompasses literary works in which authors purposefully fuse the content with the form and make use of the book as both a medium and an aesthetic object itself. The goal is to examine the relationship between words and images in the book to identify liberatic characteristics of Sebald’s work. The analysis concentrates around descriptions of landscape, focusing on the narrator noticing particular objects against the plain coast as well as uniting nature and humankind in numerous digressions. A close reading of a few passages with reference to studies by i.a. Long, Jacobs and Cooke makes it possible to examine the narrator’s relationship with nature and the historical concerns stemming from his complex national identity.

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