Elizabeth Nazarian

The Tenth Muse: Karol Irzykowski and Early Film Theory Elizabeth Nazarian

Elizabeth Nazarian's ground-breaking book examines the early 20th century concept of film specificity using the work of Polish film theorist, Karol Irzykowski, as a case study and point of departure. The author analyzes and evaluates Karol Irzykowski's key text on film theory, THE TENTH MUSE, as to date this important and fascinating text has been neglected or misread by scholars. Until now, scholars have sought a systematicity and structure in Irzykowski's text which is not there, and, not finding it, have underestimated Irzykowski's thoughts on film. Considering Irzykowski's writing to be "full of contradictions" and "a labyrinth," scholars have cherry-picked discrete expressions or concepts from THE TENTH MUSE to illustrate or convey specific ideas without treating the text comprehensively. To rectify this situation, Nazarian challenges the approach that previous scholars have used to assess Irzykowski's text, and, instead, offers a different way to examine THE TENTH MUSE. Her approach fully addresses the text's broad spectrum of interesting issues regarding film and cinema, especially Irzykowski's ideas around film's medium specificity and film as an art versus entertainment.