Writing the Visual in "Baroni: un viaje" and Other Recent Work by Sergio Chejfec

<p>This dissertation has three parts. First, I explore the ways in which word intersects with image in several recent texts by the contemporary Argentine writer Sergio Chejfec, whose oeuvre is replete with verbal descriptions of visual artifacts. Second, as a complement to the critical essay, I present my English translation of Chejfec's <em>Baroni: un viaje</em> (2007), a novel featuring the Venezuelan artist Rafaela Baroni, whose extraordinary wood carvings of Virgins, saints and other figures are described in key passages. Third, as a bridge between these two parts, I reflect on the related critical discourses of ekphrasis and translation and on the task of translating <em>Baroni: un viaje</em>.</p> <p>Chejfec's engagement with the visual as both an essayist and novelist has received little critical attention to date. In the first part of my study, I consider recent essays and blog postings in which he discusses the problematics of the word-image encounter, both in his own work and in that of others. I contend that Chejfec's privileging of the word and of the artifice of writing affirms W.J.T. Mitchell's concept of ekphrastic hope. By examining ekphrastic passages in <em>Baroni: un viaje</em>, I study the effects of the ekphrastic encounter in the novel and move beyond the notion that ekphrasis represents a spatial fix or halt in the narrative.</p> <p>In the second part, I offer my English translation of <em>Baroni: un viaje</em>. In the third part, I discuss the affinities between the critical discourses surrounding ekphrasis and translation. I conclude with a Translator's Note that posits that the cleft that splits one of Baroni's wooden carvings, described at the novel's outset, can be understood as a powerful trope for the gap separating word from image, and the original Spanish of the novel from my English translation. I argue that although translation implies rupture, one hopes for engagement with the other in the space such a translation opens.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Philosophy

Level thesis:degree_level

Doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Hispanic & Luso-Brazilian Literatures & Languages

Grantor

The Graduate School and University Center of The City University of New York

Year dc:date.available

2013

Author dc:creator

• Carson, Margaret

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Magdalena Perkowska

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Paul Julian Smith
• Elena Martínez
• Esther Allen

• Latin American Languages and Societies
• translations
• Latin American literature
• Argentina

Repository record dc:identifier

https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/1941

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:academicworks.cuny.edu:gc_etds-2969