The talk will be held in German.

Water, Goosebumps – a Conversation about Word and Image

A Boeotian vase painting from the 5th century BCE that shows the decapitation of Medusa inspired Aris Fioretos to confess his love of the novel. In Wasser, Gänsehaut (‘Water, Goosebumps’) he follows the ancient pictorial narrative step by step, figure by figure, in order to describe the distinctive qualities of modern narrative through ancient myths. Knowledgable and independent, he leads us through world literature: from ancient myth to Proust and Nabokov, from Henry James to Italo Calvino. The novelist Fioretos, who speaks also of his own writing, enters into a productive alliance with the theorist: his essay on the art of the novel, in its narrative form and unusual design, is itself an example of what he is reflecting upon.

Taking his eponymous essay Wasser, Gänsehaut (Hanser 2017) as starting point, Aris Fioretos speaks to Dietrich Boschung about the vase painting, about ancient and contemporary forms of representation, and about the relation of word and image then and now

Respondent: Dietrich Boschung (Cologne)