Matthew Roth:For those
attending the upcoming Associated Writing Programs Conference in Denver, CO,
April 7-10, this panel will take place on Friday at 3:00 p.m.
F211...
Mock-Docs, Fakes, and Hoaxes...., especially involving works of art, have a
curiously abiding appeal which often supersedes any debates about their
authenticity or truth value. This panel will explore our culture's romance with
fakery across media, from Orson Welles's notorious radio hoax and Christopher
Guest's sham documentaries to Nabokov's literary
spoofs.
JM: At the time of J.S.Bach, to compose a
sacred piece inspired in secular tones, or to adapt a
secular work into a Mass, wasn't considered sham or plagium,
althought the designation for this kind of transposition was later used for
fakery (ie,counterfeiting).
"Contrafacta" (self-parody, a word which
has also acquired a different meaning today), was also applicable when a
musician quoted from his own works in some of his other compositions (in this
case fascinating results might come out related to priorities to
preserve the sacral intent *).
In a way, Nabokov was a master in "self-parody."
(culminating in LATH), something he explicitly recognized somewhere in SO (quote
needed!). We also find the easily identifiable "unreliable narrator",
false clues, mixed historical figures with fictional characters, Pale Fire's
note-cards, HH's confession, etc.
However, what does this sentence mean, when
it is stated as briefly as: "Nabokov's literary
spoofs"?
I hope that those who'll attend the Denver
conference will let us know?
....................................................................
*
Cf. Bach's Parody Procedure and the St. Matthew Passion by Paul Brainard (Journal of the American
Musicological Society, Vol. 22, No. 2, Summer, 1969, pp.
241) " It has been known that portions of the St.
Matthew Passion shared a common musical basis with Bach's Funeral Music for Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Kothen and
the question of priority-i.e. the identity of the original composition as distinct from its
contrafactum-has recurred sporadically but insistently in the literature. To
determine the actual chronological sequence of the two works is of particular interest to
musicologists....