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Chapter 15 - Alisounation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 February 2024

Joshua Davies
Affiliation:
King's College London
Caroline Bergvall
Affiliation:
Queen Mary University of London
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Summary

Reclaimed with the first that the arts of poetry truly have other borders than current temporary national languages. That poetry is connected to very different lingual, historical & transfugal streams. It is in that sense that it points to the future of all languages. And might fall out of favour for a time but when needed, at any epoch, will lead us back to breath, and to all the songs it carries.

IN AND WITH language: so you play and pray, virally, vitally, counter-. Say, a word within a world and a world within a word, such an otherwordily day in and with lan-guages: so you play and pray, virally, vitally, counter-. Say, a word within a world and a world within a word, such an otherwordily worldly, tiny-mighty interplay would indeed be interesting inter-essentially (inter esse) if y’all I mean this impossibly necessary “we” could sort of hear the rustles of that silent operative, inter/enter (entre, between), yes rustles, singplural.

Resounding. Re-sounding. Resonance is the name of the game Caroline Bergvall presents. In all those language games she plays seriously, and serially, more than totally. This multi-faceted and talented writer, artist and performer working across multiple genres, languages, media and platforms, an acrossinger extraordinaire, has recently completed her trilogy by showing, summarily, how Alisoun Sings (2019), while retrofu-turally rebirthing her own molecular Alyson Singes (Belladonna*, 2008, limited edition of seventyfive). This O so “Dame”’d (1–5) force of nature Alisoun 2019, preseeded by said Alyson 2008, is naturally allready a dam “End of the Begin” (119–20). Already all ready, Dame Alisoun/Alyson is, has been and will have been at work while allowing all receptive listeners to work out their own MO in response. Such are the instantly sprawl-ing networks of semio-synaptic interplays our Notre Dame Alisoun generates performa tively, retrofuturally. U jist read and hear her. Her cross-dialect-ic, alter-native speech act, not some phd-dialecticized spiel, unleashes in full force the voices allready perme-ating the last two of the series, Drift (2014) and Meddle English (2011), both also from Nightboat Books. In the narrator’s own words:

At the ende of this meandering flow of amazonian magnificence, som electri-fied som transported give Alisoun a standing O! (199)

As a female lead, Alisoun resonates as one of the more provocative and talked about voices in the vast riches of Chaucer’s medi eval pilgrim tales.

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Caroline Bergvall's Medievalist Poetics
Migratory Texts and Transhistorical Methods
, pp. 133 - 136
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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  • Alisounation
  • Edited by Joshua Davies, King's College London, Caroline Bergvall, Queen Mary University of London
  • Book: Caroline Bergvall's Medievalist Poetics
  • Online publication: 20 February 2024
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781802701739.017
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  • Alisounation
  • Edited by Joshua Davies, King's College London, Caroline Bergvall, Queen Mary University of London
  • Book: Caroline Bergvall's Medievalist Poetics
  • Online publication: 20 February 2024
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781802701739.017
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Alisounation
  • Edited by Joshua Davies, King's College London, Caroline Bergvall, Queen Mary University of London
  • Book: Caroline Bergvall's Medievalist Poetics
  • Online publication: 20 February 2024
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781802701739.017
Available formats
×