"which way you p..." : the site and sequence of events in bpNichol's The Martyrology
Date
1997
Authors
Davis, Roger Nathan
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Abstract
In this thesis, I examine bpNichol's long poem, The Martyrology. focussing specifically on Book 5 and gIFTS: The Martyrology Book(s) 7& (or Books 7/8). I suggest that these two texts exemplify the radically fragmentary style which Nichol adopts in Book 3 during the "CODA: Mid-Initial Sequence." As a critical groundwork, I employ the writings of The Toronto Research Group (TRG), comprised of Nichol and Steve McCaffery, which foray into a variety of textual realms including translation, narrative, language and context and which McCaffery collected in Rational Geomancy: The Kids of the Book-Machine: The Collected Research Reports of the Toronto Research Group 1973-1982. Underlying my approach to Nichol is the deconstructive theory of Jacques Derrida in conjunction with critics such as Charles Bernstein, Frank Davey, Geoffrey Bennington and Stephen Scobie.
In my introduction, I trace some TRG publication history, notably their involvement with the journal Open Letter. I also investigate some possible connections the group had to Derrida and, more specifically, his essays on Edmond Jabes in Writing and Difference.
The second and third chapters are closely related. In the former, I develop some Derridean terminology and outline some key motifs (the ellipse, the ellipsis and the site) which inform my reading of Nichol. In the latter, I draw connections between Derrida's texts and the TRG's own involvement with narrative and textuality. The fourth and fifth chapters are, respectively, readings of Book 5 and glFTS. For Book 5, I foreground the "mid-initial" and illustrate Book S's own difficult, internal network as well as the text's spatial, temporal and narrative relationships to the previous four books. For glFTS, I continue with the "mid-initial," reading the text through the lens of Nichol's reference to the Theory of Special Relativity and further developing the spatio-temporal concerns of narrative, paragrams and the economy of writing.
It is impossible to adequately deal with the entirety of The Martyrology in this short thesis. As a result, my readings are very close and specific within a critical context which cannot be isolated from larger theoretical concerns, but this context serves as a loose framework for reading Nichol's texts.