ARTISTIC LITERATURE AS EMBODIED HISTORY: READING ANTONIA ARSLAN’S “IL LIBRO DI MUSH/ SILENT ANGEL”
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.46991/AFA/2025.21.1.143Keywords:
historical knowledge, literary knowledge, embodied history, framing events, phenomenology, collective memory, ekphrastic narrationAbstract
The literature on the Armenian Genocide (Metz Yeghèrn) comprises a great variety of genres and styles. Historical accounts, diplomatic reports, letters, eyewitness accounts, official political statements have been released worldwide providing a most relevant documentation. The aim of this essay is to show that artistic literature must be valuably added to these narratives. What novels provide to historical knowledge is a unique sense of history, whereby events are represented from the special perspective of the subjects involved. This phenomenological perspective will be illustrated through a reading of Il libro di Mush (2012) by the Italian writer of Armenian origin Antonia Arslan and its English translation as Silent Angel (2020) by Siobhan Nash-Marshall. The narration focusses on three women, a man and a young boy who escape from the massacres perpetrated in their valley, and who accomplish the heroic task of salvaging the Book of Moush, a precious illuminated manuscript, for posterity. History is “embodied” in their gaze and their sensations, as well as their perceptions of the contexts in which they move. Arslan’s novel is one of her most moving contributions to (her) Armenian identity, after the world acclaimed novel La masseria delle allodole (2004) from which a renowned film by the Taviani Brothers was produced in 2007.
Downloads
References
Arslan, A. (2012). Il Libro di Mush [The book of Mush]. Skira: Milano.
Arslan, A. (2020). Silent Angel. A Novella. Siobhan Nash-Marshall [Trans.]. San Francisco: Ignatius Press and The Augustine Institute.
Barthes, R. (1993). Le discours de l’histoire [The discourse of history]. In R. Barthes (Ed.). Essais Critiques IV [Critical Essays] (pp. 163-177). Paris: Seuil.
Foucault, M. (1973). The order of things: an archaeology of the human sciences. New York: Random House.
Gallagher, C., & Greenblatt, S. (2000). Practicing new historicism. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.
Gasparyan, S. (2014). The Armenian Genocide. A linguocognitive perspective. Yerevan: Yerevan State University Press.
Ginsburg, C. (2006). Il filo e le tracce: vero, falso, finto. Milano: Feltrinelli.
Gramsci, A. (1971). Selections from Prison Notebooks (Q. Hoare& N. Smith Ed. and Trans.). London: Lawrence & Wishart.
Halbwachs, M. (1980). On collective memory. New York: Harper Colophon.
Ignatius Press. (2020). FORMED Book Club: Silent Angel, by Antonia Arslan (Interview with translator Siobhan Nash-Marshall). [Video]. Youtube, Retrieved January 26, 2025.
Irimia, M., & Dragos, I. (2011). Author(ity) and the canon. Between institutionalization and questioning literature from high to late Modernity. Bucharest: Bucuresti Institutul Cultural Roman.
Locatelli, A. (2010a). Framing events: literary and historical knowledge. In A. Locatelli (Ed.) La conoscenza della letteratura/The Knowledge of Literature, Vol IX (pp. 7-18). Bergamo: Bergamo University Press, Sestante Edizioni.
Locatelli, A. (2010b) "I give you my word(s)": Layered realism and Images of Life in Literature. In P. Lyytikainen, T. Klapuri, M. Maijala. (Eds.). Genre and Interpretation (pp. 109-121). University Press of Helsinki.
Locatelli, A. (2011). Description in literary and historical narratives. Rhetoric, narratology and ways of seeing. In M. Irimia & I. Dragos (Eds.). Author(ity)and The Canon. Between Institutionalization and Questioning Literature from High to late Modernity (pp. 115-126). Bucharest: Bucuresti Institutul Cultural Roman.
Lukács, G. (1963). The Historical Novel, transl. by H. Mitchell and S. Mitchell. Boston: Beacon.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1976 [1945]). Phénomenologie de la perception. Paris: Gallimard.
Pomian, K. (2001). Che cosa è la storia [What is history]. Milano: Mondadori.
Ricoeur, P. (2000). La mémoire, l’histoire, l’oubli [Memory, History, Forgetting]. Paris: Seuil.
Thompson, E.P. (1963). The making of the English working class. London: V. Gollancz.
Veeser, H. A. (1989). The new historicism. New York and London: Routledge.
White, H. (1973). Metahistory. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
White, H. (1987). The content of the form: narrative discourse and historical representation. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Williams, R. (1958). Culture and Society 1780-1950. New York: Harper.
Williams, R. (1977). Marxism and literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Author(s)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
