Poetics of the bed : narrated everydayness as language of theory

  • In Carl Barks' 1963 comic strip "The Invisible Intruder", the bed becomes the main theme of the story. We get to know how Uncle Scrooge became a creative and successful entrepreneur. Since his parents were too poor to provide a proper sleeping place for their son, Scrooge had to sleep in a cabinet drawer. Therefore, Scrooge's only aim was to buy himself a bed. His capitalist creativity is, as he himself admits, driven by the "desire for a better bed." With the economic growth of his company, his bed becomes bigger too. But in the end, he throws out his enormous mattress because it is too sensitive to the vibrations caused by the money rammer in the money bin; and moreover, the investigation into the cause of the vibrations became far too expensive. Eventually, Scrooge is returning to his childhood bed: the cabinet drawer. What is striking about this story is not the idea that objects of everyday culture play a leading role within a narrative; it is the fact that the usual cultural function of furniture is altered in a significant way. The misapplication of the drawer draws attention to the object of everyday culture as signifier of the everyday experience in capitalist societies. The function of the bed is no longer defined by criteria of good sleep but of economic calculation. The bed thereby becomes an agency within the narrative that questions the stability of the cultural and linguistic semantics of the everyday. In the following, I will press the point that the representation of the bed in literary texts from Homer to Kafka can be read as an implicit linguistic theory of cultural signification.

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Metadaten
Author:Peter BrandesGND
URN:urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-516831
ISBN:978-3-8498-1292-8
ISSN:1432-5306
Parent Title (German):Komparatistik : Jahrbuch der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Allgemeine und Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft
Publisher:Aisthesis Verlag
Place of publication:Bielefeld
Document Type:Article
Language:English
Year of Completion:2019
Year of first Publication:2018
Publishing Institution:Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg
Release Date:2019/12/03
GND Keyword:Homerus; Boccaccio, Giovanni; Jean Paul; Kafka, Franz; Bett <Motiv>; Alltag <Motiv>
Volume:2017
Page Number:14
First Page:38
Last Page:51
HeBIS-PPN:45798435X
Dewey Decimal Classification:8 Literatur / 80 Literatur, Rhetorik, Literaturwissenschaft / 800 Literatur und Rhetorik
Sammlungen:CompaRe | Allgemeine und Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft
CompaRe | Allgemeine und Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft / Aisthesis Verlag
BDSL-Klassifikation:13.00.00 Goethezeit / BDSL-Klassifikation: 13.00.00 Goethezeit > 13.14.00 Zu einzelnen Autoren
17.00.00 20. Jahrhundert (1914-1945) / BDSL-Klassifikation: 17.00.00 20. Jahrhundert (1914-1945) > 17.18.00 Zu einzelnen Autoren
Zeitschriften / Jahresberichte:Komparatistik : Jahrbuch der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Allgemeine und Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft / Komparatistik : Jahrbuch der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Allgemeine und Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft ; 2017
:urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-516816
Licence (German):License LogoDeutsches Urheberrecht