“So it goes.”
A study on the role of literature in literary tattoos
Marjolein Breems
573837
Tilburg University
Bachelor Algemene Cultuurwetenschappen
Bachelor’s Thesis
First reader: Dr. P.K. Varis
Second reader: Prof. Dr. O.M. Heynders
24-06-2014
16.425 words
Abstract
Literature and tattoos might not be the most obvious combination, but they do meet each in
other in what I will call ‘literary tattoos’. These are tattoos that are clearly inspired by a book,
poem, series, oeuvre or author. In this study the question is what literature’s role is within
literary tattoos. After reading on engagement with literature, tattoos and the stigma attached to
them, and recontextualisation, analysing hundreds of literary tattoos and a survey the answer
is that literature does indeed play an important role in the lives of people with literary tattoos.
However, as soon as a sentence or image from a book, poem or series gets recontextusalised,
the meaning changes and the tattoo becomes more about the personal stories and meanings
that people attach to them than they are about literature.
Key words: recontextualisation, artification of tattoos, engagement with literature, stigma
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Table of contents
Introduction
p.4
§1 Theoretical frame
p.6
§1.1 Literature
p.6
§1.2 Engagement with literature
p.7
§1.3 Tattoos
p.10
§1.3.1 History of tattoos
p.11
§1.3.2 Tattoos and the body
p.13
§1.3.3 Tattoos and identity
p.14
§1.3.4 Tattoos as art
p.15
§1.4 Stigma
p.16
§1.5 Discourse & recontextualisation
p.18
§1.5.1 Discourse
p.18
§1.5.2 Entextualisation
p.19
§1.5.3 Recontextualisation
p.19
§2 Method
p.22
§3 Results
p.24
§3.1 Blog: contrariwise.org
p.24
§3.2 Surveys
p.31
§4 Conclusions and discussion
p.38
Works cited
p.43
Appendix 1: Survey
p.46
Appendix 2: List of literary works people from
p.49
the blog Contrariwise and the survey got tattoos based on
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Introduction
Literature is seen by many as one of the high forms of art and culture. Judy Giles and Tim
Middleton (2008: 10) for instance refer to literature, philosophy, painting and music as the
higher forms of culture. In their point of view literature is typically what Matthew Arnold
meant when he spoke about “the best that has been thought and known” (qtd. in Giles and
Middleton 2008: 10). Giles and Middleton (12) say that literature is a perfect example of the
type of cultural artefact that is discussed mostly for its aesthetic value. Victoria Alexander
(2003: 3) also considers literature to be a high or fine art, when she describes the distinction
between high art and popular arts in her book Sociology of the Arts. In the same book,
Alexander (4) says that she does not consider tattoos and other kinds of body modification to
be a form of art.
This already serves to illustrate the fact that tattoos as a cultural form have a
completely different image than literature has. Part of the explanation for that comes from one
of the most important places where a lot of people have tattoos: in prison. It is usual for
inmates to get themselves a tattoo in order to express a certain message to other inmates. This
has led to tattoos having the image of belonging to a person who in some way is considered “a
risk taker with impulsive decision-making characteristics […] and gang affiliations” say
Diane Montgomery and Deborah Parks (2001: 14). Which is an image that Paul Cattani
(1922: 45) confirms in his ethnologic (among other things) overview of tattoos.
These two cultural expressions of literature and tattoos, that at first sight seem to be
each other’s opposites, have met each other in the phenomenon of literary tattoos. With that I
mean a tattoo that recognizably (for those who are familiar with the book/oeuvre/author)
refers to a literary book, a poem, a series, an oeuvre, or an author. This can be both in the
form of a text as well as an image. Getting a literary tattoo is quite a popular thing to do,
which is shown by the fact that there are numerous blogs fully dedicated to literary tattoos.
Justin Taylor and Eva Talmadge even published a book on this topic called The Word Made
Flesh: Literary Tattoos from Bookworms Worldwide (Yin 2010). In this book Taylor and
Talmadge give an overview of the kinds of literary tattoos that people tend to get.
This phenomenon of literary tattoos evokes some interesting questions. For example:
What does this mean for the status of literature as a form of high art? What kind of literary
works are chosen to get tattooed? What kind of people get these tattoos? What does it mean
for the piece of text that gets transferred from pages in a book to a skin? The question I want
to answer in this thesis is what literature’s role is in the phenomenon of literary tattoos. In
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order to answer this question I will read on literature, engagement with literature, tattoos,
stigma and recontextualisation. Moreover, I will analyse a blog on this topic to get an insight
into what kind of literary works get often made into a tattoo. Besides that, an important part of
the research will consist of asking people who have a literary tattoo on their body to fill in a
survey through the Internet that will help answer this question. Thus, apart from the literature
review that is part of this research, an important part of the research will be conducted online.
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§1 Theoretical frame
§1.1 Literature
Literature is more than just a nice story, it is supposed to leave something
of itself behind with the reader.
(Dautzenberg 2004: 398; my translation)
Kiene Brillenburg Wurth and Ann Rigney (2009: 46), in their book Het leven van teksten (The
life of texts), describe that there are certain texts, these can be literature or any other form of
text, that deserve to live on and that people attach great value to. These are texts that can
appear in many different contexts and that have a value in themselves that goes further than
just a practical use, which for example instruction manuals or handbooks have. The value is
not just about the form of the text; an important part of it comes from the contents of the story
it tells. Books that seem to be worth keeping, mostly seem to contribute to the reader’s
intellect or deal with important and big themes, such as friendship or righteousness (Wurth &
Rigney 56).
Wurth and Rigney (2009: 342) refer to Bourdieu’s idea of symbolic capital. They say
that this is something different than economic capital, because it is a kind of capital that, at
first sight, does not seem to deal with profit. Symbolic capital is more exclusive than
economic capital is, and in order to obtain symbolic capital one needs to have connections
with those who have power in the field one wants to obtain one’s symbolic capital in.
According to Wurth and Rigney (343) it will not only bring one symbolic capital when one is
able to make art, but also when one is able to appreciate art that is considered to be difficult to
understand. This appreciation is not a natural talent according to Bourdieu, but depends on
factors like social class, upbringing and education. This capital is a way of distinction, says
Bourdieu (in Wurth & Rigney 343). It can make one stand out from the masses who are not
able to understand such works of art. Wurth and Rigney (343) argue that many people who
aspire to have a high position and esteem often try to get familiar with science, art or
literature, because having a high amount of cultural capital is just as important as having a lot
of money. Literature can be seen as one of those forms of art that have a rather high status and
being able to appreciate and understand certain types of literature may contribute to having a
high level of symbolic capital.
However, Wurth and Rigney (2009: 348) describe that even in medieval times, ‘high’
and ‘low’ culture were not two completely different things. The ‘low’ culture slowly entered
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the world of the church, which was seen as ‘high’ culture. This process never stopped, and
today many ‘high’ forms of art use popular culture as an inspiration and many important
developments within the fine arts can be partly attributed to developments in all kinds of
forms of popular culture. Popular culture is a genre that is, just like the fine arts, perfectly
capable of creating a space in which people can express criticism, of shocking and surprising
its audience, of making them think, of actively including the audience in the watching,
listening or reading. Wurth and Rigney (358) say that popular culture is perfectly able to
activate its consumers and to stimulate them to give meaning to what they are seeing, hearing,
or reading. A further point that Wurth and Rigney do not explicitly mention, is that not only
high culture gets influenced by popular culture, but that this movement works vice versa as
well, and literary tattoos are a perfect example of this.
So in short, literature is an art form that is considered to be ‘high’ and is associated
with a high amount of symbolic capital. On the other hand, the distinction between ‘high’ and
popular art seems to be fading and popular art gets appreciated for being indeed a form of art.
Besides that, ‘high’ and ‘low’ art use each other’s techniques, which causes very hybrid forms
of art. Literary tattoos are a very clear example of this trend.
§1.2 Engagement with literature
In order to understand the phenomenon of literary tattoos, it is useful to have a look at the
types of reactions that literature can invoke. In her book Uses of Literature Rita Felski (2008)
does just that: she describes four kinds of reactions or effects that the reading of literature can
cause. Felski (14) calls these reactions the four modes of textual engagement. There is
recognition, enchantment, knowledge and shock. She explains these modes as interactions
between the text and the reader and notes that they cannot be reduced to one category only. At
the end of her introduction, Felski (20) makes a remark that is similar to what Blommaert
(2005) says in his book Discourse: Felski says that people look at texts with different frames
and therefore they may conclude completely different things from them. Blommaert (45) also
mentions that people have different universes of contextualising a message. In this respect it
will be interesting to see what different sentences and images people choose from a book to
use as a tattoo and to see what meaning they attach to them.
This difference in framing is an important part of the first mode of textual engagement
that Felski (2008: 23) describes, i.e. recognition, because recognition does not go without
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difference. Language can alienate us from others, because not everyone speaks English for
example, and even if this were the case, there would be division in the sense of differences in
discourse and context. On the other hand, language is an important way in which we can share
experiences and emotions with each other in a way that would not be possible without words.
Recognising oneself in literature is according to Felski “at once utterly mundane yet
singularly mysterious” (Felski 2008: 23). While reading, a connection in the form of an
affinity or an attunement can suddenly come to light. Recognition can occur at any time,
whether the reader is looking for it or not. While the reader recognises something of him- or
herself in the book, it will change his or her perspective on the book, says Felski (23). Not
only will it change one’s perspective on the book, but on oneself as well, because one will see
oneself from the outside, described by someone else, rather than from the inside.
It may seem contradictory, but recognition can be reassuring and unnerving at the
same time, because it brings together likeliness and difference at once. Felski (2008: 25) says
that to recognise something is to know it again and place it in familiar schemes. She does note
though that according to Gadamer the joy that comes from recognition comes from knowing
more than one already did. Recognition can be very educative, because one can learn how to
be oneself by “taking one’s cues from others who are doing the same” (Felski 26). She (26)
also argues that it may be dangerous, or even arrogant, to think that one can recognise oneself
in a book. It is dangerous, because it may limit one’s interpretation of the artistic value that
the book has. It is wrong to compare books with persons, because that is not what they are.
But when reading a book the reader may somehow encounter another way of thinking and
may even feel like he or she is encountering another person than just him- or herself. Felski
(32) says that it is possible for a book to recognise its reader and vice versa. The fact that the
book contains a character that resembles the reader may lead to the reader feeling
acknowledged by the book.
Felski (39) further distinguishes recognition into self-intensification and selfextension. In the first case, one encounters a situation that makes one think of a situation one
has gone through oneself and feel like he or she is not alone, but has a shared history with
someone else. In the case of self-extension, one recognises oneself in a situation one has never
been in, thus strangeness and familiarity are brought together here. According to Felski (46),
none of us have unmediated access to ourselves. Some literary works are able to show the
reader another side of him- or herself, which might make them interesting literary works.
Encountering another side of oneself may be a very confronting experience, but it can help
people understand themselves better.
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The second mode of textual engagement that Felski (2008: 51) describes is
enchantment. This form of bewitching was first found in the novel, says Felski (52), even
though popular culture, for example music and movies, is mostly accused of putting a spell on
the consumers. A book that is enchanting confuses the reader about what is real and what is
imaginary and makes it hard for the reader to tell where the distinction between these exactly
is. To be enchanted by a novel is to forget everything else around you and to focus only on the
object and taking in every detail. The distinction between the self and the book fades as well.
One feels really absorbed by the text and does not realise that he is turning the pages nor is he
aware of his own responses. The reader is at the mercy of the text instead of controlling it.
When the novel is finished, there will be a very strange moment in which the reader will have
to try and readjust to the daily world again. The danger of being so caught up in a text is that
one can no longer place it in context, because it has become the context.
Felski (2008: 60) believes that the whole phenomenon of being enchanted by a book
or film does not accentuate the line between “high” and “low” art, but rather transcends it. It
is a phenomenon that happens in both forms of culture, according to Felski (60). Not just the
modern media are capable of creating some kind of hallucination, but literature may actually
be the oldest form to do that. An explanation that Janice Radway (in Felski 62) gives for the
hypnotic experience is that while reading she is able to be another I than she is when not
reading the book and that she is able to know thoughts that she had never thought of before. It
is an experience of self-surrender. It can also be an important factor in the experience that the
reader can escape his or her own daily life while reading.
The third mode of textual engagement that Felski (2008: 77) brings to her reader’s
attention is knowledge. An important relationship that literature has with the world is that of
mimesis, where literature can be seen as some kind of mirror of the world. But literature can
also be seen as something that brings new insights into the world and shines light on places
that were before unseen. Felski says that it is possible for a literary work to “expand, enlarge,
or reorder our sense of how things are” (83). Both metaphor and mimesis are ways in which a
new perspective on the world can be created; Felski says that: “They can intensify meaning by
dynamically recreating a world already mediated by language” (86). According to Felski
(102), descriptions of material elements can also be seen as storytelling; that title is not solely
reserved for the descriptions of actions and happenings. A poem about an object should also
be seen as a story, according to her. Finally, she concludes (103) this part of her text by
arguing that literature is an important source of (new) insights of all sorts, but is perfectly able
to mystify and mislead as well.
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The fourth and final mode of textual engagement that Felski (2008: 105) describes is
that of shock. Shock is a reaction that is based on fear, but this shock does not originate from
a realistic threat to safety. Shock is actually quite different from fear, since shock is a very
abrupt phenomenon, a sudden collision. Shock is a reaction that can cause the audience to feel
alienated. There is another mode of literary enchantment that has a strong relationship with
shock, namely enchantment. As Felski puts it, shock and enchantment are actually each
other’s antitheses: “Shock thus marks the antithesis of the blissful enfolding and voluptuous
pressure that we associate with enchantment” (Felski 113). Shock is more temporary than
enchantment is: Only the first time one encounters something will one really be shocked by it,
but the shock decreases when reading the book for the second time. Enchantment is less
vulnerable for this aspect of time, as one can be just as enchanted when reading a book for the
first time as when reading it for a second or third time. Time also plays another important role
in the effect of shocking. That is, what shocks people changes from one period to another:
what was found shocking a century ago, is not so shocking anymore in the contemporary
time. Felski (122) does note, however, that despite such changes there are certain texts that
succeed in shocking people over and over again, from one era to another.
There are thus four modes of textual engagement, or in other words, four reactions that
literature may evoke in its reader: recognition, enchantment, knowledge and shock. It will be
interesting to see if one of these engagements has a role in the process of picking a book,
poem, series, oeuvre or author to base one’s literary tattoo on. Is it for example so that people
mostly choose works because they feel enchanted by them, or is it because they feel like they
have learned a lot from the specific literary work?
§1.3 Tattoos
Norman Goldstein (2007: 417) describes tattoos as “the common usage to mark the skin with
pigments”. According to Goldstein (417) tattoos have become increasingly popular in the past
decades. Diane Montgomery and Deborah Parks (2001: 14) also argue that tattoos have
become increasingly popular. Especially adolescents use them to show the world who they
are, they say. Montgomery and Parks (14) believe that “Tattoos represent individualism,
defiance, affection, risk, alliance, sexual preference, beauty, fantasies, freedom and
uniqueness – all important issues for the adolescent who is trying to establish a personal
identity”. They point out that while in the past people with tattoos were associated with poor
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grades and gang affiliations, these days “more than half of the tattooed adolescents were
academically successful” (Montgomery and Parks 14).
§1.3.1 History of tattoos
Paul Cattani (1922: 5) describes tattooing as the process of “bringing dyes under the skin in a
mechanical way in order to create marks that hopefully will not fade”. He says that the origin
of tattooing must come from the fact that painting one’s body with paint or make-up, for
example, is only temporary and that some people might be bothered by having to do it again
and again. He then proceeds to sum up different reasons people can have to get a tattoo
(Cattani 7). The first reason can be found in primitive cultures where tattoos were considered
to be attractive for the other sex. Thus people would get a tattoo to beautify their bodies and to
become more attractive. Cattani (1922: 10) explains that tattoos, in cultures in Tahiti and New
Zealand for example, became more and more a thing that needed to be done by specialists.
The more money one would pay for the tattoo, the more detailed and beautiful it would be.
Tattoos became a status symbol, as the rich had very elaborate tattoos, and the poor had more
simple decorations. This went on till the point where everyone had tattoos and one would
stand out for not having one.
Another reason that Cattani (1922: 11) mentions for having a tattoo is to show
possession. According to Cattani (11) it was a habit in Guayeura (Mexico) to mark women in
order to show that they belonged to someone. There are many cultures (the Turkish, ancient
Greece, ancient Rome, Morocco, France until the 20th century, Russia, England in the 19th
century and China), where tattoos were used to show ownership. A similar reason to get a
tattoo, which was seen mostly in Africa, was to distinguish between different tribes. Each
tribe would have their own signature, so that they would recognise each other and know who
belonged to the same tribe and who did not. Cattani (14) says that even now it is common to
get a tattoo that represents one’s occupation. Cattani wrote his book in 1922 and his
experience of ‘now’ is quite different from the now of 2014. However, his statements still has
value; people still get tattoos that represent their occupation.
Within the islands in the Pacific Ocean Cattani (1922: 15) sees that tattoos also play a
part in the marking of certain stages of life, for example birth or puberty. Tattoos can also be
used as an award, which is often seen amongst war heroes. Furthermore, tattoos can express a
specific emotion, such as grief or loyalty, or a belief or religion, and the act of tattooing can
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become holy. The ninth reason that Cattani (21) notes has to do with the strong connection
tattoos have with clothes. There have been certain cultures where one would wear clothes that
were in harmony with the tattoos that they had. Tattoos were used to cover up the parts that
clothes would not cover up. Yet another reason to get a tattoo, often found on the islands in
the Pacific Ocean, was the therapeutic working and powers it was assumed to have. These
tattoos were no difficult drawings, mostly just dots and stripes, but they were thought of as
having healing effects. Moreover, tattoos were sometimes used to make money; people who
worked in an environment where they show their body, in a circus for example, got tattoos to
look better and more interesting in order to make more money. The last reason for getting a
tattoo that Cattani (23) mentions is fashion. When a great number of people has a tattoo,
others will most probably follow.
Cattani (1922: 24) elaborates on the different methods that were used in most cultures
on the islands in the Pacific Sea to place the tattoo. He describes the different instruments and
different kinds of ink that were used. This is not so relevant nowadays, since most tattoos are
being placed with a tattoo machine. What might be interesting today though is the fact that
getting a tattoo can come with a whole ritual and ceremony, which Cattani (26) saw in his
time as well. He explains that people go to certain places to get the tattoo in the exact way that
they want, and sometimes a whole preparation process has been part of getting the tattoo.
Cattani (1922: 31) observes that while in all kinds of cultures all over the world tattoos
have been a part of the culture, nowadays they are not so widely used anymore, and are
actually prohibited in some places1. He reports (41) that in the primitive cultures, as he calls
them, tattoos were something that people showed, but that modern Europeans hide their
tattoos, if they even have one, under their clothing. Cattani (41) holds the view that the tattoos
that modern Europeans have, are somewhat pointless2: they are just forms that only seem to
be meant to fill up space. Here comes to light the fact that the beginning of the 20th century is
different from the beginning of the 21st century. In 2014, tattoos are widely used and more
and more people have them. Within the tattoos of his time, Cattani (42) distinguished three
types of tattoos: ornamental tattoos, which are random images placed together on a body,
symbolic tattoos, which are a symbol for one’s occupation, religion or love for example, and
erotic tattoos, referring to tattoos with an obscene image, mostly found on prostitutes and
criminals. He is convinced that in the Europe of his time, most tattoos were to be found on the
1
Again, note that the book is written in 1922. In 2014 tattoos are far more widely used then they apparently were
in 1922.
2
It is very interesting for Cattani to call the tattoos that he sees around him pointless. The fact that he did study
the subject of tattoos might suggest that he does not find them completely pointless.
12
lower social classes, meaning groups such as seamen, soldiers, craftsmen- and women.
However, Cattani does not give any empirical data to back up his observation. He does
immediately nuance his view by pointing out that tattoos are very much influenced by fashion
and trends and by saying that tattoos were often seen at the English court during the 1890’s,
causing them to not be associated only with lower classes.
Tattoos can be seen as a sign of one’s identity, as Cattani (1922: 60) confirms. He sees
a very practical use for this: tattoos have been used to identify corpses that were
unrecognizable in any other way. Cattani (62) observes that criminals and prostitutes are
people who have the most tattoos, when compared to the rest of society and he believes that
this has not so much to do with them being a certain kind of anthropological type, but more
with the environment that they function in. Again, Cattani does not provide enough empirical
data to verify these statements.
§1.3.2 Tattoos and the body
Patricia MacCormack has thought about tattoos as well, but in a more philosophical and less
ethnological way than Paul Cattani. MacCormack says that “Modified bodies represent the
impasse between philosophy (the need to create) and sociology (the need to reflect)” (2012:
20). She disagrees with the often heard idea that it is peculiar that people with tattoos most of
the time do not exactly know why they got a tattoo. According to MacCormack, tattooing is
just like any creative expression in that the motivation is never totally clear.
MacCormack sees tattoos as an extension of the flesh of the body (2012: 21). The skin
is where the world and the self meet each other. When having a tattoo on this skin, this
meeting-place becomes even more complex than it already is, because tattoos “suggest
individuality and belonging” (MacCormack 22). The skin does not seal the self, as is
sometimes thought, says MacCormack (36), but rather opens it up and allows for it to extend
the self. Tattoos can be seen as markers, markers that are placed on the body after all kinds of
other markers are made visible, for example age, gender, race etc. MacCormack (24) suggests
that maybe tattoos should be seen as something more than just an accessory, because they do
something to the person having the tattoo, but also to the people observing the tattoo.
MacCormack (2012: 21) describes that the modified body is seen in Western culture
as a form of self-expression and as a sign that one belongs to a certain subculture, which is a
motivation also seen in Paul Cattani (1922: 14). MacCormack (40) notes that many types of
13
people have tattoos and that they might not have anything in common at first sight. The fact
that they all have tattoos means that these people automatically do form a community, and
maybe even a “minoritarian collective” as MacCormack (40) puts it, simply because they all
share having ink on their bodies.
§1.3.3 Tattoos and identity
Jan Baetens, Joost de Bloois, Anneleen Masschelein and Ginette Verstraete (2009) have
written a chapter on tattoos in their book Culturele Studie. Theorie in de Praktijk (Cultural
Studies. Theory in Practice). According to them a tattoo is a confirmation of the idea that the
subject, or an identity, is not a given, but is something that has to develop and that comes into
being, rather than at once being (Baetens et al. 53). A person is not an unchangeable subject,
but is one that constantly becomes a subject again. One’s identity is no longer seen as an
essence, argue Baetens et al. (54). A person is a construction, and getting a tattoo is a part of
constructing oneself.
The idea that subjects are made and are impossible to describe in an essence has to do
with ideology as well, according to Baetens et al. (2009: 57). They explain that a society is
always based on a certain ideology and even though this ideology tries to show itself as the
most natural system, it is only just another system. The system may be built on a certain truth,
but these truths are definitely not universal, nor are they sacrosanct. But since people grow up
in a certain society, say Baetens et al. (58), they may become blind to the fact that the
ideology and system they believe in is not holy. Baetens et al. (58) explain this with the
example of the mass media: they say that people have become numb to the fact that mass
media flood people with images of how they should be and how they should look. To be even
slightly freed from such a system, a critical analysis is needed. Popular culture may offer the
room for such critical analyses.
Baetens et al. (2009: 51) explain two examples of cultural artefacts in which tattoos
play an important role, the short story Parker’s Back written by Flannery O’Connor and the
movie Memento directed by Christopher Nolan. In these examples, they say, the main
characters are having troubles with their own identities and “use tattoos to mark themselves as
subjects” (63). In both these examples the problems do not disappear though, despite the
tattoos. This leads Baetens et al. (63) to make the general claim that “tattoos are the
14
metapictures for the necessity that we have to identify ourselves with images, but at the same
time, they are the metapictures for the impossibility of that”.
Baetens et al. (2009: 63) explain that a tattoo is an icon as well as an index. This
means that a tattoo has a relationship with the image that is being portrayed, but it also has a
material link to what is being portrayed. They (64) also talk about post-identity, referring to
the idea that believing that identity is a construct is not enough. A post-identity is an identity
that indeed is a construct, but it is one that has no final goal or final form of any kind. Baetens
et al. add the prefix “post”, which might be slightly unnecessary, because identity nowadays is
mostly associated with something that is never finished. The thinking that Baetens et al. adopt
has to do with the will to abandon traditional Western dual thinking. People should no longer
for example think about mind and body as two separate things. Tattoos are actually a great
example of that, because having a tattoo is to have something that sprang from one’s mind
permanently visible on one’s skin.
§1.3.4 Tattoos as art
Finally, Mary Kosut (2014: 143) argues that tattoos nowadays are classified as art and are
collected and worn by the aficionados as if they were art. Kosut (143) adds that this does not
mean that institutional experts feel the same way. However, it seems to be the case that even
these experts cannot deny that tattoos have become a real art from, since there have been
several exhibitions dedicated to tattoos. Despite this trend it still depends on the tattoo, says
Kosut (144), whether someone will consider a certain tattoo ‘high’ or ‘low’ culture. Some
tattoo artists take an active role in letting go of all the negative history that is connoted with
tattooing and try to position themselves as tattoo artists rather than tattooists (Kosut 146).
These tattoo artists make unique designs for each customer individually, instead of placing the
same image on hundreds of customers. Theyare no longer the working class people with no
higher education or knowledge of the canon of Western art. Kosut (149) explains that
tattooing used to be a craft and something that was self-taught, and therefore not really
associated with art in any way. The fact that tattoo artists get training means that they are able
to develop their own style and distinguish themselves from other tattoo artists. A lot of tattoo
artists, says Kosut (150), are actually trained in art, but fail to build a career in that field and
therefore choose to become tattoo artists, which is still slightly within their field of interest. It
allows them to engage with art of some kind, even though they are using a tattoo gun instead
15
of a paintbrush. Besides that, Kosut (151) quotes several tattoo artists who like making
connections with people outside of the ‘traditional’ art field which they see as pretentious.
Tattoo artists are also more and more trying to work with techniques from the traditional art in
their tattoos, such as textures, shadows and shapes (Kosut 152). Many of these artists actually
paint, draw or make sculptures besides their job as tattoo artist (Kosut 154).
Cattani showed that tattoos are a phenomenon that people used even in ancient Egypt. Some
of the uses of tattoos have stayed the same, such as expressing who one is and identifying
with a certain group. However, Kosut showed an important change in the field of tattoos,
namely its artification: some tattoos are considered to be art, and not just by tattoo
aficionados.
§1.4 Stigma
According to Erving Goffman (1964), stigma is the situation of an individual who is
disqualified from full social acceptance. In ancient Greek it referred to “bodily signs designed
to expose something unusual and bad about the moral status of the signifier” (Goffman 1)
Nowadays the focus is not so much on the bodily evidence anymore, but more on the disgrace
that comes with it. Goffman (2) explains that it is the first physical encounter with someone
that makes us try and categorise this person and to give him or her a social identity. When
someone is considered to have a weakness and therefore is not seen as a whole person, but as
a tainted one, then this person has an attribute that causes him or her to have a stigma.
Another distinction that Goffman (4) makes is between being discredited, when the
stigmatised person assumes that people around him or her know about the unusualness, and
discreditable, when this person does not assume that people know. Goffman (4) distinguishes
three types of stigmas: abominations of the body, blemishes of individual character and tribal
stigma of race, nation and religion. The first type will prove itself to be the most relevant in
unravelling the phenomenon of literary tattoos. Goffman clarifies that stigma is about “an
undesired differentness from what we had anticipated” (5). Tattoos differ from other kinds of
bodily stigmas, since getting a tattoo is something one does voluntarily in most cases, while
having for instance a skin disease is not voluntarily in most cases. However, this does not
mean that tattoos do not come with a stigma and that one cannot regret having a tattoo.
16
Goffman (1964: 6) makes clear that just because others consider someone stigmatised,
this does not automatically bother the stigmatised one; he or she may even wear the stigma
with pride, which is often the case with tattoos. Generally, tattoos are something that people
are proud of, because they like the design that they choose and the way the artist made it look
on their skin. On the other hand, people can regret their tattoos, because he or she may realise
that the others are what is normal for the social category in which he or she sees him- or
herself fit and might feel a sense of shame for not being completely accepted. After a while of
dealing with his or her stigma, says Goffman (10), this person might see its value and the
advantages that come with it.
An interesting possibility that Goffman (1964: 42) draws the attention to is to hide the
stigma. This is very relevant for people with tattoos, because they are free in choosing where
on their bodies they get the tattoo and thus in showing it to other people or not. In this light,
Goffman makes a difference between a stigma symbol and a status symbol, which are each
other’s opposites. He comes up with the idea of “disidentifiers”, which are signs that ‘disturb’
a coherent picture of a person and paint a more positive picture of this person (44). An
example of this could be an ex-con who is well-read. These signs, stigma symbols, status
symbols and disidentifiers, are all signs that give some social information about the person
who carries them.
The way people react to a stigma is dependent of a number of factors, says Goffman
(1964: 48). Factors such as whether the stigma is easily visible or easily concealed, the extent
to which it influences interaction with the stigmatised, and how long people have known
about the stigma can all play a role in reactions to stigma. For tattoos the exact image might
also play a role: it is probable that people respond different to a tattoo of a skull or a butterfly.
Goffman (56) makes an observation that may sound a bit cliché, but is true nonetheless,
namely that the stigma is part of what makes a person unique and makes sure there is no-one
else exactly like him or her. Goffman (59) describes all kinds of documentation, such as
medical records, that people can carry with them in order to show personal information about
themselves and make themselves unique. These documents might exclude the stigmatised
from certain activities, for example a job. Another example that Goffman does not name, but
definitely fits this description, is tattoos. These can show a lot about the person who has them
and, similarly to the documents Goffman mentions, can be seen as something that people
carry around with them.
Goffman (1964: 128) explains that in fact everyone sometimes might feel stigmatised,
that there is a hierarchy in stigmas and that people might even be normal in one situation, but
17
stigmatised in another. Thus, it is not correct to speak of society as divided into stigmatised
and ‘normals’, but society should be seen as two-headed: everyone is ‘normal’ and
stigmatised in different contexts.
Even though Goffman does not speak about tattoos, they can definitely be seen as a
form of stigma, because people tend to judge people with tattoos. Tattooed people sometimes
feel like they should hide their tattoos in order to be fully accepted in society. When a tattoo is
based on a literary work, this may be a disidentifier; when one considers literature as a form
of ‘high’ art, one might associate a tattoo based on that art form with a more acceptable
person than the ‘traditional’ tattooed person who has poor grades and criminal affiliations.
§1.5 Discourse and recontextualisation
§1.5.1 Discourse
The most shocking and meaningful thing that happens when a part of a book, say a sentence
or an image, gets made into a tattoo, is that it gets a totally different context. In his book
Discourse Jan Blommaert (2005) gives some attention to this process that can be called
recontextualisation. In this book, Blommaert gives an introduction on discourse. According to
Blommaert discourse is “a general semiosis, i.e. meaningful symbolic behaviour” (2). He calls
it “language-in-action” (2), but immediately adds that it does not necessary has to be
language, it can also be objects, attributes or activities. This of course means that tattoos can
also function as a discourse, as meaningful symbolic behaviour. Blommaert (3) brings it to the
reader’s attention that such a discourse can only be used within a certain connection to
historical, social and cultural patterns. These are all dimensions that should be taken into
account when studying the construction of meaning. Blommaert (8) argues, in line with Frans
Boas, that it is wrong to analyse any form of culture or language against universal standards,
as it is the immediate environment and context that should be taken into consideration. By
doing this, one will find the actual meaning of the expression. Finally, Blommaert (11) draws
some extra attention to the fact that in the analysis of every utterance one should constantly
take into account who the person behind the utterance is, because every expression of
language (remember, this may be linguistic or not) has a relation to the person who speaks it,
to whom it is spoken and says something about the relation between these two. This idea is
even more interesting when talking about tattoos, because the ‘readers’ are not immediately
known.
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§1.5.2 Entextualisation
The context is, as said, extremely important for any text, because the context determines how
said texts become part of the larger activities in the world, and how they get integrated into
that world. It is thanks to a context that people are able to understand texts. The context can
function on very small levels, such as intonation when pronouncing a word, but it works on
extremely large levels as well. Blommaert (2005: 40) is bold enough to claim that context
may potentially be everything and that contextualisation may potentially be infinite. He
quotes Auer (qtd. in Blommaert 41): “contextualisation comprises all activities by participants
which make relevant, maintain, revise, cancel…any aspect of context which, in turn, is
responsible for the interpretation of an utterance in its particular locus of occurrence”. The
connections between language forms and the social and cultural patterns, says Blommaert
(41), are responsible for people picking up on cues and unsaid meanings on how to interpret a
text. This framing shows a perduring, conventional and normative character which means that
we can speak of a “systematic dimension of contextualisation” (41). Contextualisation is a
process, which means that it can for instance change during a conversation.
“Context and contextualisation are dialogical phenomena” (Blommaert 2005: 43).
Even though it is important that both parties contribute to the conversation, an important part
is played by the receiver, and decoder, of the message. One must not forget that a dialogue is
not per se co-operative, it can also be a clash or conflict. Not everyone has the same universes
of contextualisation, and there is no automatic sharedness between two communication
partners per se. Furthermore, dialogue does not presuppose symmetry in contextualising
power (Blommaert 45). A lawyer, for example, has the power (because this is an issue of
power) to be in the universe of contextualisation of the law, which means that he or she has
access to a different discourse than someone who is not in this same universe, and therefore
the lawyer is better able to interpret and negotiate in certain situations.
§1.5.3 Recontextualisation
During a conversation, the interlocutors can shift between different universes of
contextualisation, which is called footing (Blommaert 2005: 46). Every utterance of language
has probably been used before and has got a meaning attached to it. So every utterance has a
19
certain history of how it has been interpreted in the past. This is the process of intertextuality.
A concept related to this intertextuality is entextualisation, which
“refers to the process by means of which discourses are successively or
simultaneously decontextualised and metadiscursively recontextualised, so
that they become a new discourse associated to a new context and accompanied
by a particular metadiscourse which provides a sort of ‘preferred reading’
for the discourse. This new discourse has become a ‘text’: Discourse lifted
out of its interactional setting and transmitted together with a new
context.” (Blommaert 47).
A fragment can be re-embedded by investigating how it relates to its context. Silverstein and
Urban call it the “natural history of discourse” (qtd. in Blommaert 47). This
decontextualisation and recontextualisation adds a new metadiscursive context to the text.
This metadiscourse suggests things that are about the text: an utterance does not only say
something in itself, but also something about itself. During talking speakers sometimes may
make clear what they want to say, and what they actually mean (for instance: “I don’t want to
say that…”, “What I really mean…”). As a researcher it is important to realise the context that
one is working in, because that context may not be the universal norm (Blommaert 50).
Blommaert (2005: 55) considers analysis itself to be entextualisation. This refers to
“The fact that talk may not have certain implications to the ‘direct’ participants, that certain
matters are not ‘demonstrably relevant’, but that they are made relevant by later reentextualisations of that talk by others.” (Blommaert 56). It is thus important to keep in mind
that something may have been meant in a specific way, but can be interpreted in an entirely
different way. Talk is not just an activity in its own right, it can be made subject to
interpretations. This can also be the case with tattoos that are based on a certain book. The
reader of the book may give a whole new meaning to a sentence he or she takes out of that
book, completely different from the one the author of the book had meant. As the person with
the tattoo puts the text or image on his or her body the context becomes completely different,
which most likely causes a change of meaning as well.
Finally, Blommaert (2005: 116) also touches upon another important idea: that texts
do not only have a textual element, but that there is a visual aspect as well, or things such as
cadence when reading a poem. This is of course especially important when thinking and
talking about literary tattoos, since the visual aspect plays an important role for tattoos.
20
Thus, context is essential in understanding any utterance, including both literary works and
tattoos. Not everyone is able to understand all contexts, because of the different universes of
contextualisation that Blommaert mentioned. This means for instance that people who have
read a literary work are better able to understand a tattoo that is based on that work than
people who have not read that particular literary work.
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§2 Method
In order to give a proper answer to question what literature’s role is in literary tattoos, an
online survey for people with literary tattoos was used and an analysis of a blog about literary
tattoos was made.
The survey, which can be found in Appendix 1, contains 38 questions, all of which are
open questions. The questions are about general information like gender, age, ethnicity and
occupation, tattoos in general, the specific literary tattoos someone has, literature in general,
the literary work the tattoo is based on and the person’s reactions to this work. The goal of
this survey is to find out what the book (or poem, author or series) means to the person with
the tattoo. The survey was spread through the social media Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and
Reddit. I posted the link to the survey with a short explanation about the study on my personal
accounts on Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr and asked people to fill out the questionnaire and
share the link. A lot of people shared the link, which caused a snowballing effect; I was no
longer able to control who saw the link and who not. On Reddit and Tumblr I directly
addressed people who had uploaded a photo of their literary tattoo and asked them to fill in
the questionnaire. They were given a link to the survey on the website www.thesistools.com,
which hosted the survey.
Despite the huge amount of people that can be found on the internet, very few people
were found willing to fill in the questionnaire. Since it is not known how many people there
are in the world that actually have a literary tattoo, it is not possible to account the sample that
needs to be drawn (Baarda 2009: 58) in order for the final conclusions to be representative
and therefore the conclusions that will be drawn cannot be translated into general statements
about people with literary tattoos in general without problems. However, the conclusion will
be written in a way that it appears to contain general statements, but the reader should keep in
mind that these statements are not actually general statements about a whole population.
The survey has been online from the 21st of March, 2014 until the 16th of May, 2014,
and in that time as many people as possible were addressed online and the survey has been
shared on the several social media websites listed above. In total, 25 people were found
willing to fill in the questionnaire. One of the respondents only filled in her age, gender and
ethnicity and did not answer any of the other questions. Her answers were not included in the
analysis. Respondents will be referred to by a number (the first person to fill in the survey got
number one, the second number two, etc.) in the remainder of this text.
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The survey is not the only method used in this study to give an answer to the research
question. Besides that, a blog that is fully dedicated to literary tattoos, was analysed. This way
a triangulation of data is created (Baarda 2005: 74). The blog that is analysed is called
Contrariwise: Literary tattoos and can be accessed at www.contrariwise.org. This blog is
interesting because it has been active in posting pictures of tattoos for over six years, from the
9th of April 2008 until the 22nd of March 2014. The owner of the blog has not announced that
she has stopped posting pictures, but has become less active on the blog and has not added
any posts since the 22nd of March. The blog also only posts pictures of actual tattoos instead
of literary quotes that can serve as an inspiration for literary tattoos. The person maintaining
the blog posts pictures of literary tattoos herself, but people can also submit their own photos
of their tattoos by using a special submission form. When analyzing the blog attention has
been paid to several aspects. Firstly, I have drawn up an inventory of which works are chosen
to be tattooed, where on the body the tattoo is placed, whether the tattoo contains a lot of text
(more than two sentences) or whether it is only a few words, only an image, or a combination
of the two. After that, an analysis has been made of the explanations that people have given
about their tattoos. In these texts I looked for motives for getting the tattoo and what the
literary part of the tattoo means to these people. The usernames people have used to upload
their photo to the blog will be used to refer to their tattoos and/or their explanations of these
tattoos3. All the explanations people gave about their tattoos on the blog are quoted verbatim
in this text.
While analyzing the blog Contrariwise: Literary tattoos a point of saturation was
encountered, at which new data did not produce any new information in addition to that
already obtained by analyzing the previous tattoos. A global look was taken at another blog:
The word made flesh on www.tattoolit.com and this proved to confirm the results found on
Contrariwise: Literary tattoos and was therefore not submitted to a thorough analysis.
3
Jen is the owner of the blog and the one who posts all the photos and texts. However, in the list of references,
Jen will not be listed as the author of the submissions, but the person that Jen quotes on her blog.
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§3 Results
§3.1 Blog: Contrariwise: Literary tattoos
In total, 858 tattoos were found on the blog www.contrariwise.org. 72 of these were not
considered literary tattoos and were therefore not included in the analysis. These tattoos were
for example based on movies or music, quotes that did not come from a literary work, or they
were tattoos of punctuation marks, or phonetic spellings and dictionary meanings of words.
This leaves 786 tattoos that were considered literary tattoos and these were all analysed.
These 786 tattoos referred to 321 different authors, book titles, poems or series. A list
of all these works and authors can be found in Appendix 2. 28.5% of the tattoos referred to a
literary text or author that was found only once on the blog. On the other hand, there were
several titles that seemed to be really popular. The most popular book was Kurt Vonnegut’s
Slaughterhouse-Five. There were two kinds of tattoos that were clearly inspired by this work:
The words “So it goes.”, combined with the asterisk that can be often found in the book, or a
headstone with the words “Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt”. Other often seen
literary works were Shakespeare’s Hamlet, E.E. Cummings’s poem [I carry your heart with
me (I carry it in], all the books from J.K. Rowlings’s Harry Potter series, Le Petit Prince
written by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, and Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
Authors that were often seen are: Charles Bukowski, E.E. Cummings, Shel Silverstein,
William Shakespeare and Sylvia Plath and J.R.R. Tolkien. This shows the wide diversity in
works from which people choose to get inspiration for their tattoos: novels, plays, poems and
children’s books. There is a variety to be found, ranging from works that are nowadays
considered to be ‘high’ forms of literature, such as Shakespeare, and works that do not have
that position and might be considered more entertainment by some people, such as the Harry
Potter series. Both kinds of literature seem to be very popular though. It must be noted that
the high number of tattoos based on Slaughterhouse-Five can partly be explained by the fact
that the owner of the blog, Jen, initiated a challenge in which she tries to collect 106 tattoos
that read “So it goes”, because this sentence occurs 106 times in Vonnegut’s SlaughterhouseFive.
When it comes to the placements of the tattoos, a couple of places were seen more
often than others. The most common place (29.0%) was the wrist, or the lower arm, which is a
fairly visible place. The rib cage and side of the body were popular (10.5%) places too, as
well as the back (11.2%). These spots are harder to see when wearing most types of clothes.
All the other places for tattoos that were found during the analysis were quite common places
24
for tattoos, such as the upper arm, the legs, the feet, shoulders and the chest. There were no
tattoos found on the face or on the front or side of the neck, which are the most visible body
parts.
In terms of the layout of the tattoos, there is a clear trend to be found: Almost half of
the tattoos (49.2%) consisted of only a few words, or one or two sentences (see Figure 1).
Fig.1. Tattoo consisting of solely text: Roald Dahl’s The Minpins; “The Minpins”; Contrariwise: Literary
Tattoos; www.contrariwise.org, 5 Jan. 2014; Web; 13 Jun. 2014.
Another often seen type of tattoo is one consisting of both text and an image (25.2%). This
was often seen with Slaughterhouse-Five, i.e. the headstone described above (see Figure 2), or
with Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower. The tattoos that are based on the
latter often consist of an infinity sign with the words “I feel infinite” in it (See Figure 3).
Fig. 2. Tattoo consisting of text and image: Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five; “Everything was Beautiful
and Nothing Hurt”; Contrariwise: Literary Tattoos; www.contrariwise.org, 29 Jun. 2012; Web; 13 Jun. 2014.
25
Fig. 3. Tattoo consisting of text and image: Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower. “Infinite”;
Contrariwise: Literary Tattoos; www.contrariwise.org, 25 Jun. 2012; Web; 13 Jun. 2014.
A third form that was found quite often (18.5%) was the literary tattoo that was solely an
image. This was often seen with tattoos based on Le Petit Prince, Maurice Sendak’s Where
the Wild Things Are (see Figure 4), the Harry Potter series or anything written by the
children’s author Shel Silverstein.
Fig. 4. Tattoo consisting of solely an image: Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are; “Max”;
Contrariwise: Literary Tattoos; www.contrariwise.org, 21 Jan. 2009; Web; 13 Jun. 2014.
26
Finally, some people (7.1%) have tattoos that consist of more than just one or two sentences,
but consist of several sentences or even a whole poem, which covers for example the entire
back or side of someone’s body (See Figure 5).
Fig. 5. Tattoo with a large amount of text: Edgar Allan Poe’s Annabel Lee; “Annabel Lee”; Contrariwise:
Literary Tattoos; www.contrariwise.org, 18 Jan. 2014; Web; 13 Jun. 2014.
On contrariwise.org people are able to submit a picture of their own tattoo and add a
story about their tattoo. 63.7% of the people added an explanation of their tattoo, sometimes
only describing what the tattoo is and what it is based on, but sometimes explaining as well
what the tattoo means to them, and what the literary work it is based on means to them. What
is interesting is that a lot of people seem to have chosen the tattoo because of the contents of
the words more than because of its reference to a literary work. For instance Becca’s
[username] explanation of her tattoo illustrates this: “My tattoo is a quote from The Catcher in
the Rye, spoken by Mr. Antolini. I’m not really a huge fan of the book itself, but this quote
27
really sums up how I feel about learning.” (5 May 2009). In these cases, people say that the
words mean something to them, that they feel like they want to use those words as a guideline
for their life, like Tyler [username] (18 Jan. 2010), who says the following about his tattoo
based on Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s A Psalm of Life: “I got it because this poem has
always spoken volumes to me and serves more or less as my maxim for living life day to
day.”, or Jenni [username] (8 Feb. 2014) who says: “I love that I will be able to see it always
and it reminds me to let things go and focus on what really matters.” about her
Slaughterhouse-Five tattoo.
A lot of the tattoos were placed because the person wanted to honor an author. For
example the following is a description of a sleeve dedicated to Dr. Seuss:
“The reason i chose Dr. seuss for my left sleeve is because of his background
and his amazing stories. He started out drawing cartoons and making anti-nazi
war propoganda during WWII …I love his stories because they all have
fantastic morals, and are all about understanding and being anti-racist and
against discrimination. I admire him very much.” (Jenny, 23 Jun. 2008).
Another example is the tattoo of Sarah Bohr [username], who has a tattoo in Elvish, the
language invented by J.R.R. Tolkien:
“My tattoo is a tribute to J.R.R. Tolkien, whom I’ve had a lifelong relationship
with through his books. I first read The Hobbit when I was four and five (it took
me a while) and Tolkien has been a major influence in my life ever since.”
(Sarah Bohr, 30 Jun. 2008).
Another often found reason to get a tattoo was to commemorate certain people or
periods in one’s life. Kaitlynn [username] gives a good example of this by saying: “I got it
in memory of all of my grandparents who have passed away, mainly for my mom’s mom,
who loved Shel Silverstein’s work and collected his books – “Invitation” was one of her
favorite poems.” (3 Aug. 2009), about the poem Invitation written by Shel Silverstein. People
also tend to get a tattoo because they recognise themselves in the work, or because it reminds
them of their own childhood, which is often the case for people who have a tattoo that is
based on a children’s book.
A striking comment was made by dylan Snow [username], who has a tattoo of the
poem Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night written by Dylan Thomas, and says that:
“Years ago when I showed this tattoo to my grandmother (who once kicked a man out of her
house for having an earring) she told me she approved. It was her grandmother’s favorite
poem and favorite poet.” (24 Jun. 2008). This could tell something about literary tattoos,
28
namely that they may evoke a different reaction than tattoos that are not based on books or
poems, since a lot of people consider literature to be a ‘high’ or fine form of art. However, it
must be said that this is just one comment, which cannot be generalised to all literary tattoos
and all people reacting to them.
It also seems that people want to associate themselves with certain people and want to
show how much symbolic capital they have. The following example of someone with a tattoo
based on Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged is a good example of that:
“I just pray some day an attractive man comes up to me and, after reading it,
tells me what an amazing novel it was so we can get married and live happily
ever after. It’s ok to dream isnt it?” (Pistol [username], 2 Aug. 2008).
The emotional depth of the motivation to get a tattoo varies greatly: some people get
the tattoo because of very emotional and personal reasons, while others have a more simple
motive to get the tattoo, for example floweredscience [username] who says “I’m just obsessed
with Alice in Wonderland” (13 Jan. 2009), or S.P. Sullivan [username], who says: “I got this
when I turned eighteen because I wanted to do something stupid and impulsive, but not
entirely uncharacteristic of me.” (30 Dec. 2008), about a tattoo that refers to the author Kurt
Vonnegut. An example of someone who got the tattoo, based on the poem [i carry your heart
with me(i carry it in] written by E.E. Cummings, for emotional reasons is Danielle
[username]:
“Just over a year ago my fiance Noel took his own life. I had been in the
process of making him a scrapbook to give to him at our rehearsal dinner.
One of the pages included e.e. cummings’ poem “i carry your heart with
me.”A month after his death I had this tattoo done on the inside of my left
wrist. It has the first line of the cummings’ poem around a winged heart.”
(5 Mar. 2009).
Ron [username] (25 Nov. 2009) also has an emotional story that made him decide to get his
tattoo, based on Neil Gaiman’s Death: High Cost Of Living:
“I broke up with my ex girlfriend in 2007; she was my high school crush
(I’ve known her for 10 years, dated solid the last 5), we never stopped talking
and kept trying to ‘make it work’. Last October 2008 she ended up pregnant.
I stuck by her, did everything I could for the pregnancy, changed my schedule
so I could be there for every appointment, went to all the classes; et al. In
May she brought it to my attention, I may not be the father- I didn’t freak out,
I kept going to every class, and appointment, because what would be worse?
29
Going to the appointments and the baby not being mine, or being mine and I
missed all the appointments out of anger? Lucas Grey was born on 07/08/09,
at 10p and I instantly fell in love with him (despite never wanting children).
I stayed at her home, did the midnight changings, put him to sleep, pacified
him when he cried. I was daddy and it really felt good. On 7/18 I got the
test results that he is not mine. I left and I’ve been entirely devastated ever
since. Buried myself in my work, was drinking a lot, and became a good shut
in. I got this quote for several reasons. First, When he used to sleep, he would
sleep under my left arm, nuzzled onto my chest, secondly its my reminder
that its better for both of them without me there, staying only for the
selfishness of wanting to be around him. They are both better without me,
and my animosity towards her. Third, Neil Gaiman is my favorite author, and
High Cost of Living is what really introduced me to him, I was a huge Tori
Amos fan and I bought the book only to read her forward of the book. It is also
a true quote in every single aspect of life; everything ends, for something new.”
A lot of people express the feeling that getting the tattoo that they have was only a logical step
in their life. According to Sam [username], whose tattoo refers to Mark Danielewski’s House
of Leaves:
“When I first read the passage, I thought it was just a clever ploy by the author,
but as time went on and I got older, I realized how much the quote meant to me.
Growing up, I realized I was a completely different person than who I thought I
was. The only natural thing to do was to express it with something permanent
and unchanging.” (27 Apr. 2012)
Tattoos with the text “So it goes.” or “Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt” are
quite popular, as has become evident. It is interesting to see why so many people choose to
get these particular texts tattooed on themselves. Sam [username] (3 Oct. 2009) explains:
“Vonnegut is easily my favorite author. I chose this tattoo for the same reason everyone else
has; I’m a worrier and it reminds me that not everything is in my control.” Just like Sam, Dan
[username] (14 Jul. 2012) realises that he is not very original for getting this tattoo:
“I got the tattoo for the same reason everyone else who gets it did, I love
the quote from the book and the message about death and destiny that it carries.
Vonnegut is hands down my favorite writer of all time and when I decided I
wanted a tattoo it was an obvious decision who would be my inspiration. It was
just a matter of which quote I wanted and this one won out pretty easily.”
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Interestingly, many people who give an explanation about their “So it goes.” tattoo, end their
comment by actually saying “So it goes.”. This could mean that these people have indeed
adapted this way of life, a life of not worrying too much and letting things pass by.
§3.2 Surveys
The greater part of the respondents was female: 75.0%. Only 20.8% was male and 4.2%
described themselves as non-binary. The ages of the respondents varied between the age of 18
and 32 with an average of 24 years old. This is a very specific group, and two factors can help
explain this: The first one is the way the survey was sent into the world, namely through my
own social media profiles, on which I have mostly friends in my own age group. The survey
started snowballing from a certain age group and apparently stayed in that group. Therefore, it
is more likely for them to have encountered the survey than it is for older people. Besides that,
a lot of countries have put age limits for getting a tattoo, so that one must be 18 years old for
example to be allowed to get a tattoo, which explains why this is the youngest age
encountered in the survey.
41.7% of the respondents are American, 33.3% Dutch, 8.3% is Canadian, 4.2%
English, 4.2% Finnish, 4.2% listed themselves as Dutch-Pakistani, and 4.2% as white. This
can be explained by the same reason that was responsible for the age group, namely the way
the survey was spread. Thanks to my own network on Facebook, which consists of mostly
Dutch people, a high number of Dutch people filled in the survey. Thanks to sites such as
Tumblr and Reddit where I also posted the survey, the nationalities are more diverse and even
caused the Dutch nationality to not be the most common one in the survey.
When looking at occupation, it becomes clear that 45.8% of the respondents were
students, which is logical considering the ages that the respondents have. Only one person
specified their field of studies, computer science, but no-one mentions whether their studies
have anything to do with literature. The jobs that were mentioned, varied a great deal: There
are artists, a sales advisor, a front end developer, cooks and a baker, a journalist, teachers, a
faucet assembler, a cashier at a gas station and a copywriter. Within the jobs there are not
really many occupations to be found that deal directly with literature, even though the one
artist in a theatre among the respondents may come very close.
The amount of tattoos that the respondents have vary between one and fifteen with an
average of four tattoos. Only 16.7% answered that all the tattoos that they have are literary
31
tattoos, and these are people that have only one or two tattoos. 83.3% of the respondents have
other tattoos that are not based on literature and add that only one of their tattoos is based on a
literary work. When asked what other kinds of tattoos they have, most answer with the images
that they have, such as images of a fish, initials, personal drawings and flowers. What is
striking, is the fact that 33.3% of the people have tattoos that are related to other forms of
cultural expression and entertainment. These people have tattoos that refer to a certain
musician, game or movie. Also striking is the 12.5% that has something in one of the classical
languages (Greek and Latin) written on them in permanent ink. 58.3% of the respondents plan
on getting another literary tattoo besides the one(s) they already have. Others plan on getting a
tattoo that is not at all related to literature or on getting a tattoo that refers to a movie, music,
or a game for example. Some people are not yet certain on what they want to have exactly,
but only have a general idea. Most people do know precisely what they want though, and give
a list of the tattoos that they plan on getting.
As might have been expected from people who have tattoos themselves, all
respondents considered tattoos to be a form of art, for various reasons: Some consider it art
because it is a form of self-expression, others because tattooing requires a high skill level and
others think it is art because it is a way to beautify the body. When asked if literature is a form
of art, most people answer that they absolutely feel it is, because it is a creative form, a form
of self-expression and because it can touch people. However, 4.2% is not so sure and thinks
that some literature can be art, but definitely not all of it.
Just as on the blog, in the answers to the survey a great variety was found in authors,
books and poems that the tattoos referred to. The only books that were mentioned more than
once were Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, J.K. Rowlings’s Harry Potter and Suzanne
Collins’s The Hunger Games. Other tattoos that were referred to included Lewis Carroll’s
Alice in Wonderland, John Fante’s Ask the Dust, Stephen King’s The Gunslinger, works by
Nietzsche and many more. 6.5% of the tattoos was not based on a specific literary work, but
on books, literature or writing in general. An interesting case is the tattoo that says “Carpe
Diem” and “Carpe Noctem”. The person who has this tattoo believes that these sayings stem
from Shakespeare, even though he is not completely sure. This is only one case, but it shows
that this person might not have chosen the tattoo because of a love for literature but merely
because of what the words mean.
The ages at which people decided to get their literary tattoo vary between 18 and 32,
with an average of 22 years old. The most common ages were 19 years and 22 years. Only for
29.2% of the respondents this literary tattoo was the first tattoo that they got, for 70.8% it was
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not the first tattoo. The respondents were asked what made them decide to get this particular
tattoo. 54.2% gave an answer that had something to do with the work on which their tattoo is
based, like love for the author, the poem or the series of books, or the feeling that a particular
quote captures the entire work really well. 47.9% answered with something that cannot be
directly linked to the work the tattoo refers to. Someone decided to get the tattoo to help her
remind herself why she wanted to quit drug abuse, someone got the tattoo in order to get
matching tattoos with her grandmother, someone else wanted something to reflect her
heritage, etc.
When it comes to placement, the same patterns can be found as were seen on the blog:
27.6% of the tattoos was placed on the wrist or lower arm, 20.7% on the upper arm, 13.8% on
the back and 13.8% on the ribcage. Other places that were mentioned are the ankle, foot,
shoulder, collarbone and calf, which are all often seen places for tattoos in general. The
reasons for the placement of the tattoo are very neatly spread. 29.2% has the tattoo on a
visible place, because they want to constantly be able to see it themselves or because they
want to spread the word of the work that is portrayed in their tattoo. Another 29.2% of the
people chose the place for their tattoo regardless of whether other people would be able to see
it, but because it would be best fitted for their kind of tattoo, or because it was a place they
had always wanted a tattoo on. Yet another 29.2% wanted the tattoo to not be visible all the
time, sometimes because of the job they hold, or because their parents do not like tattoos and
they do not want to offend them, or because they feel like it is something very personal that
not everybody needs to see. 12.5% chose a place that can easily be covered up, but is not
difficult to see either, so that the owner of the tattoo can choose when the world can see the
tattoo and when not. The respondents were asked whether people recognise the tattoo or not.
37.5% answered that people do not recognise the tattoo, or do so only after an explanation or
translation. 33.3% said that people do recognise the tattoo. 20.8% answered that only some
people recognise the tattoo, for example only people who speak the language in which the
tattoo is. 4.2% answered that their tattoo got recognised wrongly, and 4.2% said that there is
nothing to recognise, because the tattoo is not based on one specific book.
A lot of people do want to express something with their tattoo. 41.7% wants to express
something related to the book, poem, series or oeuvre that they have tattooed, namely the fact
that they love it, and someone even wants to “spread the awesomeness that is Don Quixote”
(Respondent 19). 12.5% wants to express their love for the book or poem along with
something that is not related to the book or poem, such as memories they have of a certain
period or how they view their life. 29.2% wants to express something that does not directly
33
have anything to do with the book, poem, series, oeuvre or author. They for example want to
remind themselves how they feel they should live their lives or how they define themselves.
Someone wants to show her “love for the darker creatures” (Respondent 8) and some want to
show beauty and creativity. 8.3% says they do not want to express anything at all, because the
tattoo is for them and not for the rest of the world. 4.2% did not answer the question.
Half of the people, 50.0%, got the inspiration for the tattoo from the books or poems
themselves. 12.5% got inspired by sources such as movies or quotes. 20.8% says their
inspiration comes from the internet, from sites such as Reddit, Tumblr and Pinterest and
12.5% answers that their inspiration stems from themselves, or friends around them. Finally,
4.2% did not answer this question.
The meaning of the tattoo was something entirely different for every one of the
respondents. However, certain categories can be recognised in the answers that were given:
42.2% of the respondents attached a meaning to the tattoo that might be best described as
some kind of life lesson or guideline that can be derived from the literary work the tattoo
refers to. 32.5% of the answers had to do with the tattoo symbolising love for the book, one of
the characters or literature in general. A more personal meaning that has at a first glance
nothing to do with literature, for instance remembering a certain time in one’s life or
honouring someone, was mentioned 19.6% of the time. Aesthetic reasons, such as “I also just
wanted something pretty to look at on my foot” (Respondent 10), only occurred in 6.5% of
the answers given.
The respondents were asked what role literature played in their lives and for almost
everyone (83.3%) literature did indeed play a role. What this role exactly is, differs from
person to person: for 12.5% literature is a form of entertainment and relaxation. For 8.3% it is
a way to escape, or something they go to when they are feeling sad. For 25% literature plays a
very important role, because they are a writer, or major in English, which causes them to
constantly be dealing with literature. For some people, 16.7% of the respondents, literature is
just something that they love, while another 12.5% call it their “life source” (Respondent 25)
or “favorite non-living thing in the world” (Respondent 22). One way, though definitely not
the only way, to measure how big this role is, could be the number of books one reads per
year. Among the respondents this varied a great deal. It goes from one or two books per year
to more than 200 per year. The number that was most mentioned (12.5%) was 12 books, as
well as 10-20 books, which too was mentioned in 12.5% of the answers. The average would
be 28 books, but since the enormous dispersion of the results this does not say anything. The
respondents were also asked whether the book their tattoo refers to plays an important role in
34
their lives. For 62.5% this was indeed the case, but for 20.8% it was not. 8.3% thought this
question non-applicable to their situation and 8.3% did not answer the question. 37.5% of the
respondents said that the tattoo(s) that they have chosen are representative for the kinds of
books they normally read. 45.8% only listed the genres they liked, but when looking at the
tattoo(s) they have, these tattoos are indeed representative for the types of books they like to
read. 4.2%, one respondent, answered that the tattoo is no longer representative for the
literature she reads nowadays, since it is based on the children’s book Alice in Wonderland.
For 12.5% the tattoo is not really representative for the books they read.
The majority of the respondents, 70.8% to be more precise, did read the book their
tattoo is based on. 8.3% read the book, poem, or series, only partly. Another 8.3% says that it
is not really applicable for the tattoo that they have and 12.5% did not answer this question.
Of the people who have read the book, poem, or series, 25.0% has read it only once, 15.0%
says they cannot count the number of times they read it, 15.0% answered they read the book
“few” (Respondent 6) or “several” (Respondent 21) times, another 20.0% specified the
number and said they had read it around 5 times, 10.0% read the work around seven times,
10.0% read it twice and 5.0% said they read the book, poem or series 12 times. The majority,
75.0%, read the work before they got the tattoo. 8.3% read the book, poem or series before
and after the tattoo, and 4.2% read it only after they got the tattoo. For 8.3% of the
respondents this question was inapplicable and another 4.2% did not answer this question.
The reasons for reading the book, poem, series or oeuvre again vary a great deal. Some people
did not choose to read the work, but became familiar with it because their parents read it to
them. The other way around occurs as well, so that the book, poem or series is chosen to be
read to the child of the person with the tattoo. It is also seen that people decide to read a book,
poem or series because someone close to them, for instance a parent or friend, recommended
it to them. Besides that, school and book clubs that prescribed a work to be read are
mentioned. Thus, social factors seem to play a great role in the choice of literature, but some
people also answered that they read the book, poem or series because it suited their interests
or because the work looked or sounded interesting. A few people say they read the book,
poem or series because they heard it mentioned in a movie or saw the movie adaptation of it.
Only one person read the book because of her tattoo.
The respondents were asked what they appreciated most about the book, series or
poems: the contents or the way it was written. 37.5% answered that the contents spoke the
most to them. 33.3% couldn’t choose and appreciated both equally. For 12.5% the way the
35
text was written was the most appealing. 8.3% answered that they did not think this question
was relevant for their tattoo and 8.3% of the respondents did not answer the question.
It is interesting that these people with a literary tattoo liked something about the
literary work so much that they wanted it to be on their body permanently, so they were asked
what exactly it was about this work that they wanted to carry with them all the time. For
41.7% this related to the story. They felt like they could escape to the world described in the
book, poem, oeuvre or series or just really liked the character or what the story is about.
20.8% of the respondents wanted to be reminded about a certain life lesson that is mentioned
in the work. Some people, 12.5%, wanted to be reminded of the period of their lives in which
this book, poem series or author was important to them. Finally, 8.3% mentioned a certain
way of recognition of one of the characters or situations. 4.2% deemed this question irrelevant
for their tattoo and 12.5% did not answer the question.
Another set of questions the respondents were asked was about the language they read
the literary work in. 33.3% of the people read it in its original language, while 22.2% read a
translation. 14.8% found the question irrelevant for their tattoo and 27.0% did not answer the
question, presumably because their tattoo did not contain any text, only images. 8.3% read an
English translation, because they liked English more than their own language. 16.7% read a
translation into their own mother tongue. Of this 33.3% that read the book, poem, series or
oeuvre in its original language 25.0% answered that they did not read a translation, but read
the work in its original language. 16.7% deemed the question irrelevant and 33.3% did not
give an answer to the question, again, probably because their tattoo did not contain any text.
Finally, the respondents were asked a couple of questions related to Felski’s theory on
engagement with literature, as described above. The first question based on Felski’s theory
dealt with learning from a book. 45.8% of the respondents felt like they indeed learned
something from the book, poem, series, oeuvre or author that inspired their tattoo. Most of
them do not feel like they have learnt facts, but more like they have learnt certain life lessons
or guidelines, such as “evil can be born from grief and love” (Respondent 8), “I learned to see
with my heart, to appreciate those closest to me, and to hold on to the imagination of youth.”
(Respondent 12), or “In regards to Animal Farm it taught me that I should never fully trust
authority and to constantly question what authority figures say.” (Respondent 14). 8.3% said
they did not feel like they learnt something, because they rather enjoyed the beauty of the
work. 4.2% of the respondents just felt they had not learnt anything. Another 4.2% thinks they
might have learned something, but cannot remember what anymore, since it had been such a
long time since they read the work. For yet another 4.2% it is too early to be able to answer
36
this question, because they have not yet finished reading the book, poem, series or oeuvre.
12.5% answered that this question is not applicable for them and 20.8% did not answer the
question. In terms of learning something new about themselves, 45.8% of the respondents felt
like this was not the case, while 29.2% of them did feel like they learnt something new about
themselves. 8.3% of the respondents felt like this question was not applicable to their situation
and 16.7% did not answer the question.
Another mode of engagement Felski has mentioned is recognition, and this is also
something that the respondents were asked about. 41.7% of them did not resemble the
characters or recognised themselves in one of the characters. 4.2% did not recognise
themselves either, but wished they did. 20.8% did recognise themselves and 12.5% only
recognised themselves to a certain extent. 8.3% felt this question was irrelevant for them and
12.5% did not fill in an answer. 20.8% felt really great when recognizing themselves, because
they realised they were not alone and that there are people out there with whom they now feel
connected. 8.3% simply enjoyed the occasion and 4.2% did not have a special feeling,
because they think it is not at all unusual. 4.2% cannot remember how they felt at that certain
moment. Another 4.2% said they did not recognise themselves. Again, 8.3% of the people felt
like this question was not applicable to their situation and 50.0% did not answer the question,
most probably because they do not feel like they recognised themselves in the work.
Felski also touches upon the feeling of enchantment while reading a book. 62.5%
indeed felt like they were in the book’s grip and could not stop reading it. 20.8% did not have
this same feeling, but they explain that this may be due to the kind of text it is, namely a
poem, fairy tale, or a very thick book with a lot of density. 8.3% felt this question did not
apply to them and 8.3% did not answer the question. The emotions that the respondents have
experienced while reading the work vary greatly. 20.8% of the people even said they have
experienced all kinds of emotions during the read. Other emotions that were encountered
more than once were happy or happy and sad at the same time. Some other emotions that
were mentioned were inspired, curious, enchanted, melancholic, scared, intrigued, enthralled,
cathartic, whimsical and shocked.
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§4 Conclusions & Discussion
It seems to be the case that the literature that people get tattooed on their bodies mainly has a
personal meaning to them. The literary works that are chosen to get tattooed are works that
people have a personal connection with. Even when people tell that they admire the book,
poem, series or the author very much, they add that this is because the work played an
important role in their life, for example by helping them through difficult times or teaching
them something new. This brings us to the engagement with literature that people with literary
tattoos have. Half of the people with literary tattoos feel like they have learnt something from
reading the book, poem, series or oeuvre, mostly in terms of life lessons and morals. A lot of
people seem to have a connection with a certain book or poem because they recognise
themselves in it, but there is only a small number of people that actually feels like they
learned something new about themselves. The people who recognise themselves in a work
feel glad because they now know that they are not the only ones and feel indeed
acknowledged by the work, as Felski suggested. This recognition does not seem to be the
most important reason to get a literary tattoo, since this only goes for a few people. The mode
of enchantment that Felski has explained does seem to play an important role though. A lot of
people felt like they could not stop reading the book or series and for the ones that did not
have the same feeling, this can be explained by the kind of text they were reading, for
example a poem. The final mode of engagement was shock, but this did not play a role at all
for the respondents, since this emotion was hardly mentioned by the respondents. Most of the
emotions that people felt while reading the book, poem, series or oeuvre have to do with
enchantment. The books, poems and series that bewitch their readers and hold them in their
grasp are works that people want tattooed. On the other hand, literary works that make the
reader feel acknowledged and not alone, and remind them about something that has happened
or is happening in their lives, are popular books for literary tattoos as well.
Cattani’s (1922) ideas on tattoos still seem to be very accurate, despite the long time
that has elapsed since his work was published. People get literary tattoos to show that
studying or teaching a certain language is their occupation, or because they want to attract
certain people and thus want to show that they belong to a certain group (confirming
MacCormack 2012), to express love and honour for a loved one who has passed away and
even therapeutic reasons were named every now and then. Furthermore, tattoos seem to play
an important role in one’s identity, since a lot of people get a tattoo to remind themselves of
how they want to live and who they want to be, which shows also what MacCormack (2012)
38
described, namely the idea that the skin is connected to the mind, that it is an extension of it
and that tattoos show individuality. Baetens et al. (2009) gave examples of stories in which
tattoos did not solve any problems, but the people with literary tattoos in this research are
really helped by their tattoos, and even though it might for instance not bring back their loved
ones, it does reassure them and make them feel as if they are still there. Baetens et al.’s ideas
on popular culture offering a space for critique are not really backed up by the results from the
blog analysis and the survey, since a clear critique on society for example was mentioned
rarely.
In line with what Mary Kosut (2014) has argued, people with literary tattoos consider
these tattoos art, which can be proven by the fact that they explicitly answered that they
consider it art and the fact that on the blog analysed here, a lot of people mention the name of
the tattoo artist, who they indeed call tattoo artist instead of tattooist, and thank him or her for
the job they did. This shows respect for the work of the tattoo artist and distinguishes a tattoo
from other crafts where the creator is not considered that important. Almost all people
questioned in this study consider literature to absolutely be a form of art as well, for the same
reasons they felt tattoos are art. This shows that the lines between the so-called ‘high’ and
‘low’ culture are not that strict and people enjoy both in the same ways and even actively try
and unite them.
Almost everyone read the work before they got the tattoo and for most of the people it
was the contents of the work that made them want to get a tattoo based on it, which is in line
with what Wurth and Rigney (2009) say about the great works of literature, which are valued
because of the themes they deal with. The fact that a lot of people choose to read the work in
the language it was originally written, to the extent that they are able to understand this
language, shows that people do care about the way the text is written as well and want to give
credit to the original text, and maybe attach value to being authentic.
The fact that literary tattoos refer to literature, one of the fine arts, does not
immediately take away their stigma, which is shown by the fact that many people feel as if
they need to cover up their tattoo in order to be accepted or in order to be able to hold a job.
There are exceptional cases in which a literary tattoo is accepted by family members for
example especially because they refer to a poem or book, but again, these are exceptions and
the stigma does not seem to have gone away in general. This causes quite a few people to
choose for a place on their body where they can easily cover up their tattoo, but can also show
it if they want to, because they will be in different environments and in one environment
tattoos might be frowned upon, while in the other they are appreciated. Most of the tattoos are
39
rather modest and show only a couple of words or a small image. Tattoos really seem to
function like the documents that Goffman (1964) mentioned: people have them with them all
the time and are being judged on them. Despite this stigma, another big group of people do
want to show their tattoo and want to express something with it, which a lot of times is
something that these tattooed people want to share with the world or at least the people
around them.
The kind of people that get literary tattoos are students and people with a job, which
confirms what Montgomery and Parks (2001) explained about tattoos nowadays being not just
for the outlaws of society. There does not seem to be a specific group of people that get
literary tattoos in particular, since the occupations they hold show a great diversity, both in
level and area. What can be said about people with literary tattoos is that they show a lot of
interest in other kinds of cultural expressions as well, such as music and film. Most of them
either already have or want a tattoo that refers to those cultural artefacts. Literature does play
a role in their life, and for some a really big one, because they major in it for example or are
writers themselves, and almost everyone reads a fair amount of books per year and has a clear
idea of what kind of literature they like. On the other hand, they have a strong connection with
tattoos as well, maybe even stronger, because they have or want all kinds of other tattoos that
have not much to do with literature. The literary tattoos that people have do symbolise a love
for literature or one of the characters from the work and represent the types of literature that
they enjoy to read in most cases. Very few of the people had tattoos that combined several
authors or literary works, which could indicate that most people love a literary work in
particular, instead of literature in general.
Recontextualisation plays an important role here: The meaning of the texts and images
that come from the books, poems, series and oeuvres change drastically when they get
transferred from the pages of paper to someone’s skin. As soon as the text or image gets
tattooed on someone’s body it does not seem to matter that much anymore that it came from a
book, it could have also come from a movie, a song, etc. The context of the world of literature
loses importance for the person with the tattoo, because people attach their own meanings to
the sentence or image. For some people the meaning that the book, poem, series or author has
still stays slightly intact, but for a lot of others the meaning they have given to it is entirely
different from their ‘original’ meaning in the book, poem, series, or oeuvre. The fact that not
everyone recognises the tattoos they see on others shows something about the
contextualisation universes that Blommaert (2005) mentions and symbolic capital as seen in
Wurth and Rigney (2009): Having symbolic capital in the sense of being familiar with
40
literature also means that one has power in a certain contextualisation universe. Blommaert
(2005) said that context is of the utmost importance and plays a great role in the interpretation
in texts. And here it has become visible that it requires some knowledge to understand certain
texts, like fragments from literary works and that not everyone has this knowledge, which
causes inequalities and misunderstandings.
In short, to answer the research question people with literary tattoos really seem to
have a passion for literature and keep themselves occupied with literature. Literature plays a
big role in their literary tattoos and they want to symbolise their love for literature. But by
recontextualising the text or image, people with literary tattoos attach a whole new dimension
of meaning to the text and/or image which in some cases replaces the meaning of the text
and/or image in the literary work. So in the end, the personal stories that people connect to
their tattoos, mean that the literature moves slightly to the background to make the tattoo
about the person having it.
Due to time constraints I was forced to conduct the surveys and the blog analysis at the same
time, but it might have been helpful if first the blog was analysed and the survey was
conducted after that. In that way, assumptions formulated during the analysis could have been
‘checked’ so to speak, by asking people about it in the surveys. Moreover, ideally, the survey
would have been filled in by a lot more people, so that statements about the entire population
could have been made with more certainty.
Despite that, this research has proven itself to be an interesting addition to a field of
research that has not been fully developed yet. There are many questions that remain
unanswered and that deserve attention in the future. An interesting question would be what
people think about literary tattoos; do they attach more value to them than they do to tattoos
that are not based on literature or does this not play a role? It might also be interesting to see
if there are any patterns to be found in these reactions; is it the people who normally do not
like tattoos that can appreciate these literary tattoos more, or people who have a passion for
literature? Or is there perhaps no increase to be found in appreciation? Another aspect that
deserves more attention is that of recontextualisation. A more in-depth analysis could be made
of just a few works to see if there is a pattern in what people do take from the book’s ‘original
meaning’ and what this pattern is. In case of tattoos that consist of images, or images and
words, a different question arises: who is the artist? Is it the illustrator of the book or is it the
tattoo artist who makes the tattoo? This question becomes even more complex when the tattoo
is not a direct copy of an image from a book, but an adaptation of it. Furthermore, it would be
41
interesting to find out if there are other forms of art that are considered ‘high’ that are popular
in the field of tattoos. Are there for instance a lot of tattoos based on paintings and/or
sculptures? This could tell whether it is only literature that is so ‘tattooable’ or that there is a
broader trend in mixing tattoos with ‘high art’?
In short, literary tattoos still raise a lot of questions and offer many interesting starting
points for further research.
42
Works cited
Alexander, Victoria D. Sociology of the Arts: Exploring Fine and Popular Forms. Malden:
Blackwell Publishing, 2003. Print.
Baarda, Ben. Dit is onderzoek! Handleiding voor kwantitatief en kwalitatief onderzoek.
Groningen: Noordhoff Uitgevers BV, 2009. Print.
Baetens, Jan, Joost de Bloois, Anneleen Masschelein and Ginette Verstraete. Culture Studies.
Theorie in de praktijk. Nijmegen: Uitgeverij Vantilt. 2009. Print.
Becca. “It’s History. It’s Poetry.” Contrariwise: Literary Tattoos. WordPress.org, 5 May
2009. Web. 13 Jun. 2014.
Blommaert, Jan. Discourse: A Critical Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2005. Print.
Cat. “The Minpins”. Photograph. Contrariwise: Literary Tattoos. WordPress.org, 5 Jan. 2014.
Web. 13 Jun. 2014.
Cattani, Paul. Das Tatauieren: Eine monographische Darstellung vom psychologischen,
ethnologischen, medizinischen, gerichtlich-medizinischen, biologischen,
histologischen und therapeutische Standpunkt aus. Basel: Benno Schwabe & Co,
1922. Print.
Dan. “So it goes #39, 40, 41” Contrariwise: Literary Tattoos. WordPress.org, 14 Jul. 2014.
Web. 13 Jun. 2014.
Danielle. “(i carry it in my heart)” Contrariwise: Literary Tattoos. WordPress.org, 5 Mar.
2009. Web. 13 Jun. 2014.
Dautzenberg, Jo. Literatuur. Geschiedenis en leesdossier. ’s-Hertogenbosch: Malmberg,
2004. Print.
dylan Snow. “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” Contrariwise: Literary Tattoos.
WordPress.org, 24 Jul. 2008. Web. 13 Jun. 2014.
Felski, Rita. Uses of Literature. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2008. Digital.
floweredscience. “A Mad Tea-Party” Contrariwise: Literary Tattoos. WordPress.org, 13 Jan.
2009. Web. 13 Jun. 2014.
Giles, Judy and Tim Middleton. Studying Culture: A Practical Introduction. 2nd ed. Malden:
Blackwell Publishing, 2008. Print.
Goffman, Erving. Stigma. Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. 2nd ed. Englewood
Cliffs: Prentice-Hall Inc., 1964. Print.
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Goldstein, Norman. “Tattoos defined”. Clinics in Dermatology 25.4 (2007): 417-420. Web. 8
Apr. 2014.
Grantham, Jen. Contrariwise: Literary Tattoos. WordPress.org, 2014. Web. 16 May 2014.
Greg. “Infinite”. Photograph. Contrariwise: Literary Tattoos. WordPress.org, 25 Jun. 2012.
Web. 13 Jun. 2014.
Jenni “So it Goes #78, 79, 80” Contrariwise: Literary Tattoos. WordPress.org, 8 Feb. 2014.
Web. 13 Jun. 2014.
Jenny. “Dr. Seuss” Contrariwise: Literary Tattoos. WordPress.org, 23 Jun. 2008. Web. 13
Jun. 2014.
Kaitlynn. “Invitation” Contrariwise: Literary Tattoos. WordPress.org, 3 Aug. 2009. Web. 13
Jun. 2014.
Kevin. “Max”. Photograph. Contrariwise: Literary Tattoos. WordPress.org, 21 Jan. 2009.
Web. 13 Jun. 2014.
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Ashgate Publishing Group, 2012. Web. 8 Apr. 2014.
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Montgomery, Diane F. and Deborah Parks. “Tattoos: Counseling the Adolescent” Journal of
Pediatric Health Care 15.1 (2001): 14-19. Web. 22 Jun. 2014.
Pistol. “Who is John Galt?” Contrariwise: Literary Tattoos. WordPress.org, 2 Aug. 2008.
Web. 13 Jun. 2014.
Ron. “It always ends.” Contrariwise: Literary Tattoos. WordPress.org, 25 Nov. 2009. Web.
13 Jun. 2014.
S.P. Sullivan. “Kurt Vonnegut’s “Asterisk”” Contrariwise: Literary Tattoos. WordPress.org,
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Sam. “Known. Some. Call. Is. Air. Am.” Contrariwise: Literary Tattoos. WordPress.org, 27
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Sarah Bohr. “Elvish” Contrariwise: Literary Tattoos. WordPress.org, 30 Jun. 2008. Web. 13
Jun. 2014.
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Tyler. “Life is real!” Contrariwise: Literary Tattoos. WordPress.org, 18 Jan. 2010. Web. 13
Jun. 2014.
Valentina Tagliabue. “Annabel Lee”. Photograph. Contrariwise: Literary Tattoos.
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Appendix 1: Survey
You are asked to participate in a study about literary tattoos. This research is conducted by
Marjolein Breems, a cultural studies student at Tilburg University in the Netherlands, in order
to complete the final phase of the bachelor’s programme.
When participating in this study, you will be asked a set of questions about the literary tattoo
that you have yourself. When answering the questions you should answer them from your
own situation and your own perspective. To be able to participate in this study, you must be at
least 18 years old. Participation in this study is completely voluntary, meaning that you are
not in any way obliged to participate. You may change your mind at any time and stop your
participation in the midst of answering the questions. You can also leave questions
unanswered if you don’t want to, or don’t know how to answer them.
Completing the set of questions will take around 20-30 minutes. Your answers will be treated
confidentially and will only be used for research purposes. Neither your real name nor your
username or screen name will be shown in the research report. Parts of answers that you give
may be used as quotes in the research report, but again, never in combination with any
information that could lead to you or your online profile.
If you have any concerns or questions about this research, please feel free to contact me via
the following e-mail address: [email protected]
You indicate your voluntary agreement to participate by completing and returning this survey.
46
Questions
NOTE: whenever ‘book’ is written, you should read this as ‘book/series/author’.
General information
1. What is your age?
2. What is your occupation?
3. What is your gender?
4. What is your nationality?
Tattoos in general
5. How many tattoos do you have?
6. Are all of your tattoos based on books?
7. If all your tattoos are not based on books, what kind of other tattoos do you have?
8. What kind of tattoos do you plan on getting besides the one you already have (if you
do at all)?
9. Do you see tattoos as a form of art? Why/Why not?
Your specific tattoo
10. Could you describe your tattoo?
11. Which book/series/author is your tattoo based on?
12. How old were you when you decided to get this tattoo?
13. Was it your first tattoo?
14. What made you decide to get this particular tattoo?
15. Could you elaborate on what this tattoo means to you? Please tell me as much as you
want to share with me.
16. Where did you get the inspiration for this tattoo?
17. What do you want to express with this tattoo?
18. Do people around you recognise the tattoo; do they realise that it refers to a book?
19. Where on your body is the tattoo placed?
20. Why did you want the tattoo to be clearly visible/difficult to see?
Literature
21. What role does literature play in your life?
22. On average, how many books do you read per year?
23. What types of books do you read? Is this tattoo representative for the kinds of
literature you enjoy reading?
24. Do you see literature as a form of art? Why/why not?
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The specific book
25. Have you read the book your tattoo is based on? If so, how many times have you read
it?
26. Did you read the book before or after you got the tattoo?
27. Why did you decide to read this book?
28. What is it about this book that made you want to carry it with you all the time and be
remembered permanently through a tattoo?
29. What about the book did you most appreciate: the way it is written or the contents of
the story?
Please answer the following two questions only if your tattoo contains text from a book.
30. Did you read the book in its original language or in a translation into your mother
tongue or another language?
31. Is the language in which you got the tattoo your mother tongue? If not, why did you
decide to get the tattoo in another language than your native language?
Your reaction to the book
NOTE: If your tattoo is based on a series or author, then try and answer the following
questions with the book in mind that means the most to you from this series or author.
32. Did you learn something from reading this book? If so, what?
33. Do you share any resemblance to one of the characters, or do you recognise yourself
in the book otherwise?
34. How did it make you feel to recognise something of yourself in the book?
35. Do you feel like you learned something new about yourself after reading this book?
36. Did the book hold you in its grip you while you were reading it? Were you able to stop
or did you feel totally enchanted?
37. How did the book make you feel when you first read it (shocked, sad, happy…)?
38. Does the book that this tattoo is based on have a special meaning to you; has it played
an important role in your life in some way?
Thank you so much for your time and for filling in this survey!
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Appendix 2: List of literary works people from the blog Contrariwise and the survey got
tattoos based on
When a work, series or author was mentioned more than once, the number of times is
mentioned in brackets after the entry.
When a tattoo referred to an author in general, without a specification of a book, poem or
series, the word ‘unspecified’ is used after the author’s name.
Adams, Douglas – The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (13x)
Albom, Mitch – The Time Keeper
Alexie, Sherman – Jesus Christ’s Half-Brother Is Alive and Well on the Spokane Indian
Reservation
Ali, Ayaan Hirsi – How (and Why) I Became an Infidel
Alighieri, Dante – Inferno (3x)
Andersen, Hans Christian – The Nightingale
Anderson, Sherwood – Winesberg, Ohio
Angelou, Maya – Still I Rise
Angelou, Maya – unspecified
Anhava, Tuomas – In the Dark, Move Slowly
Atwood, Margaret – The Handmaid’s Tale (3x)
Austen, Jane – Pride and Prejudice
Autumn, Emilie – The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls
Bacon, Francis – unspecified
Barrie, J.M. – Peter Pan (4x)
Baruch, Bernard - unspecified
Baum, Frank L. – Ozma of Oz
Beauvoir, Simone de – The Second Sex
Beckett, Samuel – Worstward Ho
Beowolf
Berry, Wendell – Manifesto: the Mad Farmer Liberation Front
Bible – Chronicals
Bible – Corinthians (2x)
Bible – Isiah
Bible – Proverbs
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Blake, William – Proverbs of Hell
Bradbury, Ray – Byzantium
Bradbury, Ray – Fahrenheit 451 (3x)
Brandt, Anthony – unspecified
Bronk, William – Winter Vocative
Brontë, Charlotte – Jane Eyre (2x)
Brontë, Emily – Wuthering Heights
Brooks, Mel – unspecified
Bukowksi, Charles – 462-0614
Bukowski, Charles – Bluebird
Bukowski, Charles – For Jane (2x)
Bukowski, Charles – Hot Water Music
Bukowski, Charles – Love Is a Dog from Hell
Bukowski, Charles – My Doom Smiles at Me (2x)
Bukowski, Charles – My Fate
Bukowski, Charles – So You Want to Be a Writer
Bukowski, Charles – Splash
Bukowski, Charles – The Laughing Heart
Bukowski, Charles – What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk through the Fire
Bukowski, Charles – You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense
Bukowski, Charles – unspecified (5x)
Butts, Mary – Armed with Madness
Campbell, Joseph – The Secret
Camus, Albert – The Myth of Sisyphus
Camus, Albert – unspecified
Capote, Truman – Breakfast at Tiffany’s
Carey, Jacqueline – Kushiel’s Legacy series
Carew, Thomas – Ungrateful Beauty Threatened
Carroll, Lewis – Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (22x)
Carroll, Lewis – Through the Looking-Glass (4x)
Cavafy, Constantine P. - Ithaca
Cervantes, Miguel de – Don Quixote
Chabon, Michael – The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
Chaucer, Geoffrey – The Canterbury Tales
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Chbosky, Stephen – The Perks of Being a Wallflower (13x)
Chopin, Kate – The Awakening
Cicero, Marcus Tullius – unspecified
Cisoux, Hélène – The Laugh of the Medusa
Cleary, Beverly - Socks
Cohen, Leonard – Let Us Compare Mythologies
Collins, Suzanne – The Hunger Games series (3x)
Confucius – unspecified
Conrad, Joseph – Heart of Darkness
Creeley, Robert – I Know a Man
Creeley, Robert – The Warning
Crichton, Micheal – Jurassic Park
Crowley, John – Little, Big
Cummings, E.E. – [I Carry Your Heart With Me (I Carry It In] (17x)
Cummings, E.E. – Anyone Lived in a Pretty How Town
Cummings, E.E. – Be of Love (a Little)
Cummings, E.E. – I Like Your Body When it Is with Your (2x)
Cummings, E.E. – Into the Strenuous Briefness
Cummings, E.E. – l(a (3x)
Cummings, E.E. – Maggy and Milly and Molly and May
Cummings, E.E. – May My Heart Be Open a Little
Cummings, E.E. – Since Feeling Is First
Cummings, E.E. – You Said Is (2x)
Dahl, Roald – Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Dahl, Roald - Matilda
Dahl, Roald – The Big Friendly Giant
Dahl, Roald – The Minpins
Danielewski, Mark Z. – House of Leaves (2x)
Davies, Robertson – Fifth Business
Dick, Philip K. – The Transmigration of Timothy Archer
Dickens, Charles – A Tale of Two Cities (2x)
Dickens, Charles – Great Expectations
Dickinson, Emily – Forever –Is Composed of Nows
Dickinson, Emily – Hope is the Thing with Feathers (3x)
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Dickinson, Emily – Not in Vain
Dillard, Annie – Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Donne, John – Holy Sonnet 14
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor – One of his letters
Dr. Seuss – And to Think that I Saw it on Mulberry Street
Dr. Seuss – One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish
Dr. Seuss – The Cat in the Hat
Dr. Seuss – The Lorax (5x)
Dr. Seuss – unspecified
Einstein, Albert – unspecified
Eliot, T.S. – Four Quartets (2x)
Eliot, T.S. – Little Gidding
Eliot, T.S. – Preludes
Eliot, T.S. – The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (11x)
Emerson, Ralph Waldo – Merlin’s Song
Fante, John – Ask the Dust
Fitzgerald, F. Scott – The Great Gatsby (4x)
Fitzhuhg, Lousie – Harriet the Spy (2x)
Flaubert, Gustave – unspecified
Foer, Jonathan Safran – Everthing Is Illuminated
Foer, Jonathan Safran – Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Forster, E.M. – A Room with a View (2x)
Frost, Robert – Nothing Gold Can Stay
Frost, Robert – Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening (9x)
Frost, Robert – The Road Not Taken (2x)
Gaarder, Jostein – Sophie’s World
Gaiman, Neil – Death: The Hight Cost of Living
Gaiman, Neil – The Sandman series (8x)
Gaiman, Neil – The Sandman: Fables & Reflections
Gaiman, Neil – The Sandman: Seasons of Mist (2x)
Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand – unspecified (3x)
Gibbons, Dave and Alan Moore – Watchmen series
Gibson, William – Neuromancer (2x)
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Gilbert, Elizabeth – Eat, Pray, Love: a Women’s Search for Everything across Italy, India and
Indonesia
Ginsberg, Allen – An Eastern Ballad
Ginsberg, Allen – Howl (8x)
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von – unspecified (2x)
Gogol, Nikolaj – Dead Souls
Gorey, Edward – The Headless Bust: A Melancholy Meditation on the False Millenium
Gorey, Edward – The Vinegar Works series
Green, John – Looking for Alaska
Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm – The Star Talers
Hafiz – Ghazal 98
Harjo, Yoy – A Poem to Get Rid of Fear
Hass, Robert – Meditation at Lagunitas
Hawthorne, Nathaniel – The Scarlet Letter (2x)
Hawthorne, Nathaniel – unspecified
Heinlein, Robert A. – The Number of the Beast
Heller, Jospeh – Catch-22 (2x)
Hemingway, Ernest – The Old Man and the Sea (2x)
Hemingway, Ernest – The Sun also Rises
Hemingway, Ernest – unspecified (2x)
Herbert, Frank – Dune (5x)
Hinton, S.E. – The Outsiders (4x)
Holmes, Oliver Wendell – The Chambered Nautilus
Homer - Illiad
Homer - Odyssey
Horace, The Odes
Hornschemeier, Paul – Mother, Come Home
Hughes, Langston – Dream Dust
Irving, John – Until I Find You
Jacques, Brian – Redwall series
Jordan, June – Poem for South African Women
Joyce, James – A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Joyce, James – Ulysses (3x)
Juster, Norton – The Dot and the Line
53
Juster, Norton – The Phantom Tollbooth (2x)
Juvenal - unspecified
Keats, John – La Belle Dame sans Merci
Keats, John – Ode on a Grecian Urn
Kerouac, Jack – Belief & Technique for Modern Prose
Kerouac, Jack – On the Road (7x)
Kerouac, Jack – Some of the Dharma
Kerouac, Jack – unspecified
Kipling, Rudyard – Rewards and Fairies
King, Stephen – It
King, Stephen – The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger (3x)
King, Stephen – The Dark Tower series
Komunyakaa, Yusef – I Apologize for the Eyes in my Head
Krishnamurti, Jiddu – unspecified
Laux, Dorianne – Antilamentation
Lazarus, Emma – The New Colossus
Lee, Harper – To Kill a Mockingbird (4x)
Lehmkuhl, Donald – The Flights of Icarus
Lewis, C.S. – The Chronicles of Narnia: The Silver Chair
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth – A Psalm of Life
Lovecraft, H.P. – unspecified
Lowell, Amy – Patterns
Lowell, Joan – The Cradle of the Deep
Lucretius – On the Nature of Things
Lyall, Edna – Donovan, a Novel
Macauley, Catherine – The History of England
Marlowe, Christopher – The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus
Martin, George R.R. – A Song of Ice and Fire
McCain, Murray and John Alcorn - Books
Melville, Herman – Moby-Dick (2x)
Meyer, Stephenie – Twilight Series
Millay, Edna St. Vincent – Alms
Monterroso, Augusto – El dinosaurio
Moore, Alan – V for Vendetta
54
Morrison, Toni – Sula
Nabokov, Vladimir – Lolita (3x)
Neruda, Pablo – The Sea and the Bells
Neruda, Pablo – unspecified
Nietzsche, Friedrich – Beyond Good and Evil
Nietzsche, Friedrich – unspecified (3x)
Niffenegger, Audrey – The Time Traveler’s Wife (2x)
Nin, Anaïs – The Diary of Anaïs Nin
Nowlan, Alden - unspecified
O’Hara, Frank – Meditations in an Emergency
Olds, Sharon – I Go back to May 1937
Orwell, George – 1984 (4x)
Orwell, George – Animal Farm
Owen, Wilfred – Dulce et Decorum Est
Palahniuk, Chuck – Fight Club (4x)
Palahniuk, Chuck – Invisible Monsters (2x)
Palahniuk, Chuck – Lullaby (2x)
Parks, Suzan-Lori – Venus
Petrarch – unspecified
Plath, Sylvia – Elm
Plath, Sylvia – Lady Lazarus (2x)
Plath, Sylvia – Street Song
Plath, Sylvia – The Arrival of the Bee Box
Plath, Sylvia – The Bell Jar (9x)
Plath, Sylvia – The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
Plath, Sylvia – Tulips
Poe, Edgar Allan – A Dream within a Dream
Poe, Edgar Allan – Annabel Lee (3x)
Poe, Edgar Allan – Tamerlane
Poe, Edgar Allan – The City in the Sea
Poe, Edgar Allan – The Raven (7x)
Poe, Edgar Allan – unspecified
Pound, Ezra – Canto LXXIV
Pratchett, Terry – Discworld series (2x)
55
Pratchett, Terry and Neil Gaiman – Good Omens
Pynchon, Thomas – The Crying of Lot 49 (3x)
Rabelais, François – unspecified
Rainer, Maria Rilke – The Sonnets to Orpheus
Rand, Ayn – Atlas Shrugged (8x)
Rand, Ayn – The Fountainhead (2x)
Rich, Adrienne – Twenty-One Love Poems
Riordan, Rick – Percy Jackson & the Olympians series
Robbins, Tom – Jitterbug Perfume
Rothfuss, Patrick – The Name of the Wind (2x)
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques – The Social Contract (2x)
Rowling, J.K. – Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (2x)
Rowling, J.K. – Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2x)
Rowling, J.K. – Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (6x)
Rowling, J.K. – Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (3x)
Rowling, J.K. – Harry Potter series (26x)
Rubine, Theodore Isaac – Love Me, Love my Fool
Rushdie, Salman – The Satanic Verses (2x)
Sagan, Carl - Contact
Sagan, Carl – Pale Blue Dot: a Vision of the Human Future in Space
Saint-Exupéry, Antione de – Le Petit Prince (27x)
Salinger, J.D. – Franny and Zooey (2x)
Salinger, J.D. – The Catcher in the Rye (5x)
Scott, Robert Falcon – The Worst Journey in the World
Sendak, Maurice – Where the Wild Things Are (10x)
Shakespeare, William – A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2x)
Shakespeare, William – As You Like it (2x)
Shakespeare, William – Hamlet (14x)
Shakespeare, William – Henry VIII
Shakespeare, William – Macbeth (4x)
Shakespeare, William – Romeo and Juliet
Shakespeare, William – Sonnet 116 (2x)
Shakespeare, William – The Tempest
Shakespeare, William – Titus Andronicus
56
Shakespeare, William – unspecified (2x)
Shelley, Percy Bysshe - Ozymandias
Silverstein, Shel – Hug O’War (6x)
Silverstein, Shel – Invitation (2x)
Silverstein, Shel – My Guitar
Silverstein, Shel – The Giving Tree (6x)
Silverstein, Shel – The Missing Piece Meets the Big O
Silverstein, Shel – Woulda-Coulda-Shoulda
Silverstein, Shel – Where the Sidewalk Ends
Silverstein, Shel – unspecified
Singer, Isaac Bashevis – The Seance and Other Stories
Small, David - Stitches
Smith, Betty – A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Snicket, Lemony – A Series of Unfortunate Events series (6x)
Sophocles – Oedipus the King
Steinbeck, John – East of Eden (8x)
Steinbeck, John – Of Mice and Men
Stevens, Wallace – Poetry is a Destructive Force
Stevenson, Mary – Footprints in the Sand
Stoker, Bram – Dracula
Tartt, Donna – The Secret History
Tennyson, Alfred Lord – Ulysses (2x)
Thomas, Dylan – Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night (3x)
Thomas, Dylan – Fern Hill
Thomas, Dylan – The Force That through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower
Thompson, Hunter S. – Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (2x)
Thompson, Hunter S. – unspecified
Thoreau, Henry David – Letters to a Spiritual Seeker
Thoreau, Henry David – The Journal of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau, Henry David – unspecified
Tolkien, J.R.R. – All that is Gold Does Not Glitter (10x)
Tolkien, J.R.R. – The Hobbit (2x)
Tolkien, J.R.R. – The Lord of the Rings series (6x)
Tolkien, J.R.R. – The Riddle of the Strider
57
Tolkien, J.R.R. – unspecified (10x)
Trollope, Anthony – unspecified
Twain, Mark – Life on the Mississippi
Virgil – Aeneid (2x)
Vonnegut, Kurt – A Man without a Country
Vonnegut, Kurt – Breakfast of Champions (8x)
Vonnegut, Kurt – Cat’s Cradle (3x)
Vonnegut, Kurt – Slaughterhouse Five (109x)
Vonnegut, Kurt – The Sirens of Titan
Walcott, Derek – Love after Love
Walker, Alice – Possessing the Secret of Joy
Wallace, David Foster – Infinite Jest
Waugh, Evelyn – Brideshead Revisited
Wells, H.G. – The Shape of Things to Come
Whitman, Walt – I Sing the Body Electric
Whitman, Walt – Leaves of Grass
Whitman, Walt – Song of Myself
Wilde, Oscar – A Woman of no Importance
Wilde, Oscar – Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young
Wilde, Oscar – The Picture of Dorian Gray
Wilde, Oscar – We Are Made One with What We Touch and See
Wilson, Robert Edward – The Illuminatus!
Winterson, Jeanette – The Passion (2x)
Wolfe, Thomas – Look Homeward, Angel
Wright, James – Two Hangovers
Yesenin, Sergey - Poj zhe poj. Na proklyatoy gitare
58