eprintid: 32505
rev_number: 12
eprint_status: archive
userid: 5878
dir: disk0/00/03/25/05
datestamp: 2022-12-12 10:28:05
lastmod: 2023-01-20 11:24:26
status_changed: 2022-12-12 10:28:05
type: article
metadata_visibility: show
creators_name: Sommer, Tim
title: Between Aura and Access: Artefactuality, Institutionality, and the Allure of the Archival
subjects: ddc-810
divisions: i-90200
note: Dieser Beitrag ist aufgrund einer (DFG-geförderten) Allianz bzw. Nationallizenz frei zugänglich. *** This publication is freely accessible due to an Alliance licence and a national licence (funded by the DFG, German Research Foundation) respectively.
abstract: This article analyses narratives inspired by the institutional emergence of the literary archive. It focuses in particular on what historian Arlette Farge has described as the “allure of the archives”: the elusive immediacy of encounters
with artefactual remnants of the past. Key to this experience is what has often been described as the ability of archival objects to conjure up the presence of their creators – a process that at the same time paradoxically depends on the uniqueness and fundamental ‘unapproachability’ of the artefact. Through regulating and restricting access to documents, the archive thus maintains their distance and simultaneously makes them available for acts of reverential consumption.
Focusing on such forms of gatekeeping and consecration, the article reads Henry James’s novella “The Aspern Papers” (1888) and Martha Cooley’s novel The Archivist (1998) to enquire how the literary archive – both as an idea and as an institution – has shaped ways of thinking about the relationship between physical absence and auratic presence.
date: 2020
publisher: de Gruyter
id_scheme: DOI
id_number: 10.11588/heidok.00032505
official_url: https://doi.org/10.1515/ang-2020-0035
ppn_swb: 1831621347
own_urn: urn:nbn:de:bsz:16-heidok-325059
language: eng
bibsort: SOMMERTIMBETWEENAUR2020
full_text_status: public
publication: Anglia
volume: 138
number: 3
place_of_pub: Berlin
pagerange: 384-403
issn: 0340-5222 (Druck-Ausg.), 1865-8938 (Online-Ausg.)
edition: Zweitveröffentlichung
citation:   Sommer, Tim  (2020) Between Aura and Access: Artefactuality, Institutionality, and the Allure of the Archival.  Anglia, 138 (3).  pp. 384-403.  ISSN 0340-5222 (Druck-Ausg.), 1865-8938 (Online-Ausg.)     
document_url: https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/32505/1/10.1515_ang-2020-0035.pdf