Author(s): Bocchi, Gianmarco
Date: 2017
Persistent ID: http://hdl.handle.net/10362/23096
Origin: Repositório Institucional da UNL
Subject(s): Winfried Georg Maximilian Sebald; The Emigrants; The Rings of Saturn; Vertigo; Domínio/Área Científica::Humanidades::Línguas e Literaturas
Sebald’s writing would be greatly impoverished without his use of images. Beginning with this statement as my starting point, this dissertation will investigate the complicated relationship between photographs and text in three of W. G. Sebald's narratives: The Emigrants, The Rings of Saturn and Vertigo. The introductory chapter will establish the research questions and it will provide a preliminary overview of fundamental issues, which one has to take into account when approaching Sebald's works. These include the question of memory, the reasons and implications of using photographs in fiction and the use of black and white images. I will then focus my attention on the “hybrid” and intriguing nature of photography and by relying on Berger, Barthes and Sontag's works in particular,1 I will be able to enrich the discussion and to provide my critical insight on the role of photographs in Sebald's works. By considering concepts such as manipulation and indexicality, I will determine the reasons behind Sebald's use of this medium. A considerable portion of this work will focus on the analysis of the three books, both separately and combined. Besides specific thematic issues, the core of this dissertation will be based on the identification of sylistic devices within the visual apparatus of Sebald's narratives. By investigating Sebald's visual narratives, I recognized many sequences that generate such stylistic devices. In doing this, I will shed light on the rhetorical aspect of Sebald's visual apparatus, which represents a new critical interpretation. By ʻwalkingʼ through Sebald's memories and images, I will also establish connections between the three works. By using a series of comparative diagrams, I will contribute to the critical body of work on Sebald's way of organizing both his verbal and visual apparatus. Thanks to the critical positions that I will display throughout the dissertation and thanks to my focus on the rhetoric of images, the conclusion will finalize the discussion by providing answers that will open new direction to Sebald's scholarship.
