Auteurism and the reception of David Lynch : reading the author in post-classical American art cinema
Auteurism and the reception of David Lynch : reading the author in post-classical American art cinema
The late 1990s witnessed an academic reassessment of the notion of authorship in cinema studies. Partly in response to reception studies scholars such as Janet Staiger (Interpreting Films: Studies in the Historical Reception of American Cinema, 1992), Barbara Klinger (Melodrama and Meaning, History, Culture and the Films of Douglas Sirk, 1994) and Miriam Hansen (Babel and Babylon: Spectatorship in American Silent Film, 1991), I shall investigate the promotional and critical discourses that have been generated in response to the films of David Lynch. Using methodologies associated with reception studies, my objective is to test the extent to which perceived concepts of originality, essence and individualism have determined the shape of those responses.
Since the 1970s, scholarly discussions of authorship have debunked or conditionally sanctioned the significance of authorial analysis. Nevertheless, auteurist essentialism has continued to maintain primacy in serious and specialist film journalism. Since the mid-to-late 1980s, Lynch has been a high profile – at different historical junctures revered and vilified – auteur in post-classical American art cinema, so much so, in fact, that the term ‘Lynchian’ has become a generic signifier in itself.
Public and scholarly responses to Lynch’s films collectively gravitate towards auteurist/textual readings. My research will offer a different emphasis through its historical approach to Lynch. I shall consider concepts of aesthetic value and experience through what Hans Robert Jauss (Towards an Aesthetic of Reception, 1982) termed ‘the horizon of expectations’ which informs the composition, reading and judgement of a given (poetic) work. This process calls for a consideration of how internalized expectations determine the experience of the interaction between the reader and a new text. My thesis culminates with a fresh proposed for a more empiricist textual auteurism, that is, one that takes account of the confluence of media intertexts that compose the post-classical American art film.
University of Southampton
2005
Todd, Anthony H
(2005)
Auteurism and the reception of David Lynch : reading the author in post-classical American art cinema.
University of Southampton, Doctoral Thesis.
Record type:
Thesis
(Doctoral)
Abstract
The late 1990s witnessed an academic reassessment of the notion of authorship in cinema studies. Partly in response to reception studies scholars such as Janet Staiger (Interpreting Films: Studies in the Historical Reception of American Cinema, 1992), Barbara Klinger (Melodrama and Meaning, History, Culture and the Films of Douglas Sirk, 1994) and Miriam Hansen (Babel and Babylon: Spectatorship in American Silent Film, 1991), I shall investigate the promotional and critical discourses that have been generated in response to the films of David Lynch. Using methodologies associated with reception studies, my objective is to test the extent to which perceived concepts of originality, essence and individualism have determined the shape of those responses.
Since the 1970s, scholarly discussions of authorship have debunked or conditionally sanctioned the significance of authorial analysis. Nevertheless, auteurist essentialism has continued to maintain primacy in serious and specialist film journalism. Since the mid-to-late 1980s, Lynch has been a high profile – at different historical junctures revered and vilified – auteur in post-classical American art cinema, so much so, in fact, that the term ‘Lynchian’ has become a generic signifier in itself.
Public and scholarly responses to Lynch’s films collectively gravitate towards auteurist/textual readings. My research will offer a different emphasis through its historical approach to Lynch. I shall consider concepts of aesthetic value and experience through what Hans Robert Jauss (Towards an Aesthetic of Reception, 1982) termed ‘the horizon of expectations’ which informs the composition, reading and judgement of a given (poetic) work. This process calls for a consideration of how internalized expectations determine the experience of the interaction between the reader and a new text. My thesis culminates with a fresh proposed for a more empiricist textual auteurism, that is, one that takes account of the confluence of media intertexts that compose the post-classical American art film.
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Published date: 2005
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Local EPrints ID: 465600
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/465600
PURE UUID: e950a2f9-531c-4607-b637-3c9af6df1fd0
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Date deposited: 05 Jul 2022 01:58
Last modified: 05 Jul 2022 01:58
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Author:
Anthony H Todd
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