John Hughes Reflection With The Fictocritical Style

In addition to evolutions in my concept, my research has also aided my conceptualisation of fictocriticism and the place of both narrative and analysis in my work. Since establishing the concepts of harmony, balance and transcendence as the primary focus of my Major Work, I have decided to utilise the creative parts of my essay to provide a more artistic representation of these philosophical values.

A major influence on my experimentation with the fictocritical form is John Hughes’ exploration of the works and impact of other artists in his collection Someone Else: Fictional Essays. In one particular essay he reversed the subject and object of art, describing the still life painter Giorgio Morandi as the containers in his painting, and the inanimate objects as the artist. In this essay, it was Morandi who “had not moved in over fifty years”, forever preserved on a canvas through a process that was “a slow one, involuntary to begin, and more like a fading of the light than a shutting down”. This inspired me to experiment with composing the fictional parts of my essay from the perspective of the text being translated rather than the translator, thereby inverting the relationship between the creator and created, which in turn reflects the symbiotic process of translation. By employing techniques such as interlocking shorter, emphatic statements and longer, periodic sentences, I intend to emphasise the unique agency of the text in accordance with poststructuralist theories.

Every word, not yet born, begins the exhilarating race to that indistinguishable egress hovering above the faded horizon. They have yearned to escape the darkness, run towards the brink of something new cowering beneath the great umbra of old, but they watched as the time of departure grew nigher, and nigher but never came to be. The present, at last, it is