This book presents a synthesised framework for analysing archival poetics in multimodal literature, examining case studies from twenty-first-century American fiction towards elucidating the archival turn in contemporary literature more broadly. Ivansson turns her focus on multimodal archival fiction, here understood as works which engage with archival practices of collecting and organising both verbal text and visual inclusions of fictional and factual archival material, such as photographs, sketches, notes, and newspaper clippings.
The volume brings together work from multimodality, cognitive stylistics, and narratology with archival studies to demonstrate how contemporary archival fiction engages with archival themes through multimodal design. Case studies include works from Barbara Hodgson, Leanne Shapton, Valeria Luiselli, and Jacob Garbe and Aaron A. Reed. The selected examples allow for a detailed exploration of how to analyse the multimodal composition and reader experience of archival poetics. Furthermore, these case studies also elucidate how such a framework can be applied more broadly to the analysis of fictional works thematically and structurally concerned with the archive, or those that grapple with such areas of interest in contemporary research as materiality, bookishness, and ontological ambiguity.
This volume will appeal to students and scholars in multimodality, stylistics, American literature, and literary studies.
By:
Elin Ivansson
Imprint: Routledge
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions:
Height: 229mm,
Width: 152mm,
Weight: 610g
ISBN: 9781032862156
ISBN 10: 1032862157
Series: Routledge Studies in Multimodality
Pages: 232
Publication Date: 30 September 2025
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Professional and scholarly
,
Primary
,
Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming
1 Introducing the Archival Turn: 1.1 Introduction, 1.2 History, Development, and Critique of the Archive, 1.2.1 The Early Foundations of the Archive, 1.2.2 The Postmodern Critique of the Archive, 1.2.3 The Digital Archive, 1.3 Visual Art and the Archive, 1.4 Literature and the Archive, 1.4.1 Representations of the Archive in Literature, 1.4.2 Manifestations of the Archive in Literature, 1.4.3 The Centrality of Multimodality, 1.5 Scope and Aims: The Need to Attend to Multimodal Archival Poetics, 1.6 Structure of the Book; 2 Towards a Methodology for Analysing Archival Fiction: 2.1 Introduction, 2.2 The Pictorial Turn, 2.3 The Multimodal Turn, 2.3.1 Multimodal Stylistics, 2.3.1.1 Layout and Connectivity, 2.3.1.2 Photographs, Drawings, and Graphic Elements, 2.3.1.3 Typography, 2.4 The Cognitive Turn, 2.4.1 Transmodal Narratology, 2.4.1.1 Conceptual Shifts, 2.4.1.2 Analysing the Narrativity of Semiotic Modes, 2.4.2 Multimodal Cognitive Poetics, 2.4.2.1 Bistable Oscillation, 2.4.2.2 Doubly Deictic Subjectivity, 2.5 Towards a Multimodal Cognitive Stylistics Approach to Archival Fiction; 3 Hippolyte’s Island: Ontological Ambiguity and The Book as an Archive: 3.1 Introduction, 3.2 Hippolyte’s Island, 3.3 Analysing Hippolyte’s Island as Archival Fiction, 3.3.1 Entering the Archive: A Cognitive Approach to Multimodal Fictionality, 3.3.2 Exploring Books-within-the-Book: Archival Bookishness and Doubly Deictic Subjectivity, 3.3.3 Navigating in the Archive: Poly-Deictic Subjectivity, 3.3.4 Looking At/Through the Photographic Picture, 3.3.5 Conducting Further Research: Ontological Refreshment, 3.4 Conclusion; 4 Important Artifacts: Piecing Together a True(ly) Archived Love Story: 4.1 Introduction, 4.2 Important Artifacts, 4.3 Analysing Important Artifacts as Archival Fiction, 4.3.1 Judging the Book by its Cover: A Schema Theory Approach, 4.3.2 Entering the Archive: Intertextuality and Narrative Interrelation, 4.3.3 Reading the List: Visual and Verbal Interrelations, 4.3.4 Navigating in the Analogue Database: Intratextual Cross-referencing, 4.3.5 Interpreting the Books within the Book: Verbal and Visual Intertextuality, 4.3.6 Exploring the Gaps in the Archive: Interpreting Interreferential Lacunas, 4.4 Conclusion; 5 Lost Children Archive: Descending into an Inventory of Echoes: 5.1 Introduction, 5.2 Lost Children Archive, 5.3 Analysing Lost Children Archive as Archival Fiction, 5.3.1 Entering the Archive: A Cognitive Deixis Approach, 5.3.2 Reading the Book-within-the-Book: Free Direct Reading Presentation, 5.3.3 Shuffling in the Box-Archive: Poly-Deictic Subjectivity, 5.3.4 Descending into Echo Canyon: Metalepsis in the Archive, 5.3.5 The Photographic Archive: Blurring Ontological Boundaries, 5.4 Conclusion; 6 The Ice-bound Concordance: The Researcher Between Page and Screen: 6.1 Introduction, 6.2 The Ice-bound Concordance, 6.3 Analysing The Ice-bound Concordance as Archival Fiction, 6.3.1 Entering the Digital Archive Together: Doubly Deictic You, 6.3.2 Writing the Book within the Book: Dynarchival Bookishness, 6.3.3 Entering the Print Archive: The Reader as Researcher, 6.3.4 Navigating the Archive: Ontological Blurring through Archival Bookishness, 6.4 Conclusion; 7 Conclusion: 7.1 Introduction, 7.2 Methodological Contributions, 7.3 Theoretical and Analytical Contributions, 7.3.1 Archival Bookishness, 7.3.2 The Reader as Researcher, 7.3.3 Poly-Deictic Subjectivity, 7.3.4 Bistable Reading Modes, 7.3.5 Coreferentiality and Interreferential Lacuna, 7.3.6 Reading Presentation, 7.3.6 Commonalities Across Examined Works of Archival Fiction, 7.4 Directions for Future Research, 7.5 Conclusion
Elin Ivansson is Associate Lecturer in English at Sheffield Hallam University, UK, where she received her PhD in English in 2023.
