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Showing papers in "Journal of Literary Studies in 1999"


Journal ArticleDOI
Mick Short1
TL;DR: This article examined the use of graphological deviation as an indicator of viewpoint in the opening of Marabou Stork Nightmares (1995) by Irvine Welsh and provided a detailed interpretative summary of the novel to help the reader "navigate" from one narrative level to another.
Abstract: This article examines the use of graphological deviation as an indicator of viewpoint in the opening of Marabou Stork Nightmares (1995) by Irvine Welsh. A detailed interpretative summary of the novel is provided to help "place" the passage analysed and make clearthe unusual narrative structure (three interweaved "levels" of narration, all produced by the same narrator). In this context, graphological deviation in the novel's opening is seen to be (i) a marker of style shifts which helps the reader "navigate" from one narrative level to another and, (ii) at the same time, constitutes a symbolic representation on the page of movements up and down from one level of narration to another. The patterns seen in detail in the opening to the novel are reflective of its main body. The paper also includes a brief, more general indicative discussion of the relationship between the stylistic markers of viewpoint and narratological concepts like focaliser and reflector.

17 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: For instance, this article pointed out that neither rhetoric nor poetics has ever given the reader any role in the process of meaning production, and even the influential literary theories formulated in the first three decades of our century perpetuated this situation.
Abstract: Summary The inextricable link between classical rhetoric and poetics manifests itself in the different emphases that their theoretical principles have received through the centuries. Thus, due to a complex of political and sociocultural factors, the late classical period and the Middle Ages placed all emphasis on the ornamental component elocutio (the ancestor of stylistics), while the Renaissance fully restored the logical components inventio and dispositio. Next the Romantics expectably revolted against rhetoric because by then it had again been reduced to a set of artificial stylistic prescriptions. Surprisingly, our century has witnessed a revival of rhetoric in its full scope. However, the most remarkable fact in this chequered history is that neither rhetoric nor poetics has ever given the reader any role in the process of meaning production. This situation remained unaltered through the centuries and even the influential literary theories formulated in the first three decades of our century perpetu...

11 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper reviewed previous research on negative language, both linguistic and psycholinguistic, defines explicit and broad negation and offers a method for measuring these forms of negation, which is then applied to a representative corpus2 of the early prose fiction of Mudrooroo, a prominent Australian author.
Abstract: Summary One manner in which a writer involves the reader with a text is through the use of negative language. The reader becomes involved on two levels: firstly at a linguistic level, a negative message needs extra time to decode, and secondly, at an emotional level, we must come to terms with the emotional response the negative message has incurred. Therefore, explicitly negative language engages linguistic, psychological and cognitive processes, which force the reader to become involved with the text in question, as he attempts to decipher the underlying propositions. This study reviews previous research on negative language, both linguistic and psycholinguistic, defines explicit and broad negation and offers a method for measuring these forms of negation. This method is then applied to a representative corpus2 of the early prose fiction of Mudrooroo, a prominent Australian author. The results obtained show that he has shifted in style across his early prose fiction, with respect to negation. By examini...

8 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the critical reception of African-American writer James Baldwin in the early 1960s, a reception that is itself marked as an interpretive act, is analyzed, as well as the rhetorical and cultural tropes used to read and interpret queer identity and the relation of these tropes to early-1960s cultural conversations and institutional discourses on pre-Stonewall queer culture and pre-DSM-III medical and psychoanalytic discourse on homosexuality operative at the United States.
Abstract: Summary This essay (re‐)examines the critical reception of African‐American writer James Baldwin in the early 1960s, a reception that is itself marked as an interpretive act. The rhetorical and cultural tropes used to read and interpret queer identity and the relation of these tropes to early‐1960s cultural conversations and institutional discourses on pre‐Stonewall queer culture and pre‐DSM‐III medical and psychoanalytic discourses on homosexuality operative at the time in the United States are analyzed, as are the tropes used to read African‐American identity as they informed American civil rights discourses and the concomitant discourses of black struggle and resistance. While references are made to such texts by Baldwin as Another Country (1962), Giovanni's Room (1956), and The Fire Next Time (1963), the primary focus is not on Baldwin's homosexuality per se, or on gay or racial themes in his texts. Rather, the emphasis is on reading the cultural lenses and rhetorical practices that informed interpret...

7 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The Moor's Last Sigh (1995) is a zestful piling up of stories, "a final scandalous skein of shaggy-dog yarns" as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Summary Salman Rushdie's The Moor's Last Sigh (1995) is a zestful piling up of stories, “a final scandalous skein of shaggy‐dog yarns”, but in this diversity there is also thematic unity, brought a...

6 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the treatment of Star Wars in the popular South African comic strip Madam and Eve suggests that the films' mythologies have some role to play in the “New South Africa”.
Abstract: Summary The successful re‐release of George Lucas's Star Wars films has confirmed their popular appeal. Such an appeal can be traced to the films’ employment of popular cultural collage as much as to their investment in the initiatory scenarios of older forms such as myth, epic and folklore, which are integral to the space opera genre. Following the re‐release, the treatment of Star Wars in the popular South African comic strip Madam and Eve suggests that the films’ mythologies have some role to play in the “New South Africa”. Close analysis of a Mail and Guardian strip and five Cape Times strips reveals an acute and cynical use of the Star Wars mythologies to comment on contemporary politics. Play with the concepts of a “digitally remastered” new version of the films is used to highlight flaws in the concepts of moral reform in a “New South Africa”, and the juxtaposition of the destruction of the Death Star with the TRC allows the strip to problematise issues of moral polarity and guilt. The functioning ...

6 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, a basic teaching program is outlined which is designed to encourage students' awareness of the way modes of speech and thought presentation function in narrative and to enable students to place their stylistic analyses of the text against literary-critical commentaries on the same text, thereby problematising the connections between stylistic analysis and literary evaluation.
Abstract: Summary This article is about pedagogical stylistics in general and about the critical evaluation of fictional narrative in particular. It examines levels of narrative organisation in a passage from Ernest Hemingway's novella The Old Man and the Sea ([1952]1976) and makes specific reference to patterns of speech and thought presentation in the extract. A basic teaching programme is outlined which is designed to encourage students’ awareness of the way modes of speech and thought presentation function in narrative. The programme is also designed to enable students to place their stylistic analyses of the text against literary‐critical commentaries on the same text, thereby problematising the connections between stylistic analysis and literary evaluation.

5 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Parallelism as discussed by the authors is a common literary technique in fictional prose, which creates contrasting worlds within a given text, and is invoked by some sort of "textual" parallelism.
Abstract: The creation of contrasting worlds within a given text is a common literary technique in fictional prose. While such contrasts are invoked by some sort of “textual” parallelism, the term “paralleli...

4 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors reveal some of the reasons why such a phenomenon as the Abbey Theatre turned out to be more than a chance dramatic failure in the recent history of Ireland.
Abstract: Summary This paper aims to reveal some of the reasons why such a phenomenon as the Abbey Theatre turned out to be more than a chance dramatic failure in the recent history of Ireland. Many of the plays performed there frequently embodied an inversion of the most sacred values of a very restrictive ideological construct that would be known as the Irish nation by the political nationalists. John Millington Synge's linguistic representation of the Irish woman in a comedy like The Playboy of the Western World surprised the audience at every turn. The linguistically impolite behaviour of those female characters was impolitely answered by the so‐called “Playboy Riots”.

4 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Barth's later work is governed by the principle of what I have come to call "narrativist mimesis" as mentioned in this paper, which is the ultimate form of poststructuralist and post-mimesis.
Abstract: Summary Since his retirement in the early nineteen nineties as a professor of creative writing from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, John Barth has published three new works: Once Upon a Time: A Floating Opera (1994) ‐ which he calls a “semi‐novel semi‐reminiscence”; Further Fridays: Essays, Lectures, and Other Nonfiction (1995) ‐a collection of essays; and On With the Story: Stories (1996) ‐ a collection of short stories. The title and contents of this latest work confirm my earlier hypothesis that Barth's entire later work is governed by the principle of what I have come to call “narrativist mimesis”; the ultimate form of poststructuralist mimesis. His fictions have over the years developed an ongoing critique of forms of mimesis, moving from realist and mythemic to poststructuralist and narrativist mimesis.1 Concurrently we also see in Barth's later fiction that not only the genesis, but also the viability and survival of fiction as such, are other major concerns. Part of his programme forthe rep...

3 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Tarantino's Pulp Fiction (1994a) is a prime instance of post-modern meta-cinema, a highly eclectic anthology of narratives which oscillate between filmic genres as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Summary Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction (1994a) is a prime instance of postmodern meta‐cinema, a highly eclectic anthology of narratives which oscillate between filmic genres. Tarantino sets up his stories within the regime of the crime film, then overwrites this with the codes of comedy, using humorous conventions to defuse the suspense of the crime thriller and register its elements as comic. These two sets of conventions organise narrative materials in different ways, offering radically different forms of viewer identification and different forms of closure. The whole is organised as a comic mise en abyme in which the cultural debris of the text mirrors the subjectivity of its characters, and the fictional predicaments of its protagonists mirror the decoding dilemmas of the film's spectators. Pulp Fiction operates as a metatext which at once inhabits and dismantles the conventions of the crime movie and “performs” the cooperative principle of filmic narrativity.


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, a functional pragmatic approach is presented to the Free Indirect Discourse (FID) mode of speech and thought presentation which best expresses the poliphony of voices in a text and, by implication, the multiplicity of perspectives which modern writing has been exploring for various reasons.
Abstract: Summary This article approaches literary discourse from a functional pragmatic perspective which sees literature as an act of communication. From this angle and from an understanding of context of language use, Free Indirect Discourse (FID) can be considered as the mode of speech and thought presentation which best expresses the poliphony of voices in a text and, by implication, the multiplicity of perspectives which modern writing has been exploring for various reasons. Although not a modern invention, nor specific to English, this mode of writing can be very helpful to the English as a Foreign Literature (EFLit) learner. In the light of recent developments in linguistics, the present study reviews some theoretical models, discusses the stylistic implications of FID in an EFL context, and demonstrates how language and literature can be integrated from a functional perspective in a class intended for sensitising both language and literature learners to the perception, description, and creation of FID.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors examines the manner in which Pynchon and Coetzee deal with the subject of colonialism, primarily using Georges Bataille's Erotism: Death and Sensuality (1986) and Keith Booker's Literature and Domination (1993) to derive a critical formula concerning the linkage between the desire for domination, violence and the metaphor surrounding va...
Abstract: Summary In their fictional critiques of colonialism/imperialism, both Thomas Pynchon and J.M. Coetzee emphasize the ways in which the colonial powers misrepresent their intent through the conscious misuse of metaphorical language, especially that surrounding the paternal relationship. Pynchon's V. (1966) and Coetzee's Dusklands (1974) address the issue by presenting a number of settings in which such a distortion of language occurs. These disparate sections within the works span more than two hundred years of history, illustrating the longevity of such an approach on the part of European colonizers as well as the growing violence associated with this strategy. This article examines the manner in which Pynchon and Coetzee deal with the subject of colonialism, primarily using Georges Bataille's Erotism: Death and Sensuality (1986) and Keith Booker's Literature and Domination (1993) to derive a critical formula concerning the linkage between the desire for domination, violence and the metaphor surrounding va...

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The Quebec Tercentenary Festival adapted such a performance for the tercentenary celebrations in the summer of 1908; and this model was then employed for the celebration of Union in Cape Town, in October 1910 as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Summary A new performance genre, the “new pageantry”, was “invented” in England in 1905 and rapidly became recognised throughout England, North America and the British dominions as an effective means of celebrating centenaries and inaugural moments such as the establishment of Union in South Africa in 1910. The Quebec Tercentenary Festival adapted such a performance for the tercentenary celebrations in the summer of 1908; and this model was then employed for the celebration of Union in Cape Town, in October 1910. The question of “reconciliation” between Quebecois and English‐speaking Canadians was compared with the need for reconciliation between the Boers and the English‐speaking South Africans in that same decade. The genre of the “new pageantry”, the civic, national, and imperial reticulations by which the genre was performed and propagated, and the peripheral events that accompanied the more important performances, afford a composite and three‐dimensional model of period national and colonial (or impe...

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The story of a male protagonist's transformation into a heroic figure drives Leslie Marmon Siiko's novel Ceremony (1977), where his struggle exists within the context of the feminine principle and in a world created by Thought Woman, an American Indian mythic figure as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Summary The story of her male protagonist's transformation into a heroic figure drives Leslie Marmon Siiko's novel Ceremony (1977). His struggle exists within the context of the feminine principle and in a world created by “Thought‐Woman”, an American Indian mythic figure. Ts'eh Montano, the woman who becomes Tayo's lover, represents the feminine principle; in loving Tayo she leads him to a recognition of female power or the power‐to‐transform. This feminist reading of Ceremony intersects with Siiko's use of the traditional stories of her tribe ‐ the Laguna/Keres of New Mexico, in particular the Yellow Woman stories of the Pueblo oral tradition. Siiko's own story, “Yellow Woman”, provides a useful template in understanding the lineaments of Ceremony. In creating her novel, Silko's impulse is, therefore, both feminist and tribal and she maintains a strong belief in the tribal stories. Like other American Indian writers, Silko roots her aesthetics in the oral tradition. She engages her readers in an act of ...

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine the complex manner in which narrative and genre operate in the American television series Twin Peaks (1990/1991) and argue that the relation of male to female, and masculine to feminine, at work in Twin Peaks, may fruitfully be read in conjunction with generic shifts in the series.
Abstract: Summary In this paper I examine the complex manner in which narrative and genre operate in the American television series Twin Peaks (1990/1991). The role of the detective, in classic as well as postmodernist models of the detective story, is explored. Dale Cooper, the “literal” hero of Twin Peaks, is contrasted with earlier incarnations of similar protagonists. The most interesting index of the difference in this rendition of the detective hero lies in his relation to women. The classic roles which women are offered in the genre, as dead or deadly figures, are here intriguingly modified. I argue that the relation of male to female, and masculine to feminine, at work in Twin Peaks, may fruitfully be read in conjunction with generic shifts in the series. The interweaving of the detective and soap opera genres concludes with the jarring ending of the series. In the detailed discussion which follows I conclude that Twin Peaks offers a radical rereading of the detective story yet, at the end, disavows the imp...

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, a stylistic analysis of the description of the act of sighing in The Moor's Last Sigh (1995) by Salman Rushdie is presented, and the analysis brings together two disciplines: that of phonetics and that of narratology.
Abstract: Summary This article is a stylistic analysis of the description of the act of sighing in The Moor's Last Sigh (1995) by Salman Rushdie. The analysis bringstogethertwo disciplines: that of phonetics and that of narratology. It offers a description of sound repetition in a passage from the novel in which the act of sighing is elaborately described and metaphorised. The functions of sound repetition in this text include that of onomatopoeic transfer and of mediating the construction of metaphorical relations with regard to the central metaphor of sighing. The analysis further reveals that sighing has implications for narration and characterisation which are discussed in some detail within the context of recent narratological research. The article makes the point that the sound of language communicates in this narrative text in a way expected of poetic texts. This implies on the one hand that the language used in this narrative text has poetic qualities and on the other hand that the notion and occurrence of ...

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In a novel which focuses on the migration of African-Americans from the rural South to the urban North, Toni Morrison attempts to retrace the mechanism of cultural authority through the representation of repressed speech as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Summary In a novel which focuses on the migration of African‐Americans from the rural South to the urban North, Toni Morrison attempts to retrace the mechanism of cultural authority through the representation of repressed speech. In Jazz (1992) the author examines the social conflicts of recent African‐American immigrants and established middle‐class residents of the Northern city. The contestation for cultural authority between these groups is reflected by their assertion of differing linguistic idioms. In Toni Morrison's fiction, the questions of who is enabled to speak, of what may be spoken, and of how the language of the past may be “rewritten” are nowhere more crucial than in Jazz. Given the colonial position within American economy of Southern African‐Americans, it is not surprising that Morrison should be concerned with reclaiming language as a first step toward cultural assertion.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, a comparative approach to South African texts with those produced in the Americas, notably the African-American and Afro-Caribbean diasporas, is presented.
Abstract: Summary A comparative approach to South African texts with those produced in the Americas, notably the African‐American and Afro‐Caribbean diasporas, is currently still an under‐researched area in South African literary studies. It will be argued that what has been referred to as the strategic value of a “diasporic double consciousness” can offer fresh perspectives on fictions of childhood and particularly novels of development (especially the Bildungsroman) which track an emerging subjecthood located physically and metaphorically between developing and developed countries. The focus here is on a relational reading of differently situated fictions of childhood, adolescence and young adulthood set in Cape Town, Toronto and New York. An exploration of the fictional strategies employed by Dianne Case, Marlene Nourbese Philip and Jamaica Kincaid will show how the dialectic established between “verbal” and “social” text foregrounds cultural specificity while also offering scope for reassessing both diasporic a...

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the analysis of the poem "Leopold" by the Afrikaans poet T.T. Cloete investigates the possibility of metapoetics and draws attention to the functioning of poetic metalinguistics as an interpretive and creative process of reading.
Abstract: Summary Linguistic strategies in a poem intrigue competent readers as well as poets. In this article the analysis of the poem “Leopold” by the Afrikaans poet T.T. Cloete investigates the possibility of metapoetics. The poem appears in a volume entitled Idiolek (1986: 63). From this title it can be inferred that attention will be focused on distinctive individual linguistic expression. In Cloete's poem it becomes evident that the poetic style of the Dutch poet J.H. Leopold (1865–1925) is under scrutiny. It will become evident that the celebration of poetry as a maximum exploitation of language can be identified as a distinctive poetic style. The aim of the article is to draw attention to the functioning of poetic metalinguistics as an interpretive and creative process of reading.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Swanwick uses his fictions to engage in ironic and revisionist deconstruction and reorientation of previous varieties of science fiction and fantasy as mentioned in this paper, and this technique is explored in detail as applied in the six stories in A Geography.
Abstract: Summary After a preliminary discussion of late‐twentieth‐century parodic science fiction and fantasy, and of this school's uneasy combination of technical imitation of mainstream literary fiction and promotion of popular fiction as a subversive alternative to the mainstream, this article, concentrating on the 1997 short story collection A Geography of Unknown Lands by Michael Swanwick, discusses how this American author exemplifies the strengths and contradictions of this self‐conscious variety of speculative fiction. Swanwick uses his fictions to engage in ironic and revisionist deconstruction and reorientation of previous varieties of science fiction and fantasy. As introduction, Swanwick's novels are cited, indicating how they subvert and reinterpret traditional genre materials by bringing them into conflicting juxtaposition with more contemporary genre forms and trends. This technique is then explored in detail as applied in the six stories in A Geography. Two stories critique science fiction, one by ...

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper explored the intersection of transgressive sexual desire, literary convention and the boundaries of style in the Epilogue to Samuel Delany's science fiction masterpiece, Stars in my Pocket like Grains of Sand (1986).
Abstract: Summary This article explores the intersection of transgressive sexual desire, literary convention and the boundaries of style in the Epilogue to Samuel Delany's science fiction masterpiece, Stars in my Pocket like Grains of Sand (1986). My argument has three parts. First, I discuss themes of gender and transgression in Delany's autobiography, The Motion of Light in Water (1988). Second, I examine Delany's subversion of the codes of Romantic poetry in the Epilogue of Stars in my Pocket like Grains of Sand. Finally, I explore markers of gender and power in Marq Dyeth's speech in the Epilogue, where Delany uses his viewpoint character to plead eloquently that erotic desire should be valorised over public interests. I conclude that Delany radically undermines the possibility of closure in terms of gender, literary tradition and desire.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, a comparative study of the New Globe Theatre and Disneyland Paris is presented, in terms of both theory and personal experience, of the nature of these two cultural institutions in a postmodern world.
Abstract: Summary Both Disneyland and the New Globe Theatre in London, which purports to be a faithful copy of Shakespeare's Globe, are informed by specific concepts of historical authenticity, reconstruction and entertainment. Using the chance conjunction of the Globe Theatre and Disneyland Paris during the author's holiday in Europe, this article offers a comparative study, in terms of both theory and personal experience, of the nature of these two cultural institutions in a postmodern world.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In literature, the importance of the narrator in the narrative is generally recognised as discussed by the authors, and it is possible to deduce this attitude from the selection and arrangement of the narrative data, or from the narrative point of view (first or third-person narration), but also from the language and style of the text (language as the sum total of the structures available to the writer, while style concerns the characteristic choices in a given context).
Abstract: Summary In literature the importance of the narrator in the narrative is generally recognised. In interpretation the narrator represents a point of convergence for all the other narrative elements. It is obviously important for the reader of literature to be able to gauge the attitude or disposition of the narrator. In written texts it is possible to deduce this attitude from the selection and arrangement of the narrative data, or from the narrative point of view (first‐ or third‐person narration), but also, even especially, from the language and style of the text (language as “the sum total of the structures available to the writer, while style concerns the characteristic choices in a given context”, Traugott & Pratt 1980). The text selected as an example for this article is the short story “Vir vier stemme” (from Volmink 1981) by Hennie Aucamp. This text forms part of a literary tradition including works by, among others, Charles Dickens, William Faulkner and the Dutch author Louis Paul Boon. In these t...

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors explored the careful ways in which F. Scott Fitzgerald avoided a full confrontation with Gatsby as a character, or with the implications of Gatsbys's source of wealth: his criminality and his underground “gonnegtions”.
Abstract: Summary This article explores the careful ways in which F. Scott Fitzgerald in The Great Gatsby avoids a full confrontation with Gatsby as a character, or with the implications of Gatsby's source of wealth: his criminality and his underground “gonnegtions”. As a consequence, we are encouraged, through Nick Carraway's idealising and fantasising vision, to be caught up in Gatsby's romantic self‐construction. On the other hand, the tension between the narrator's irony and his romanticism enables us to discover a moral vision that endorses Nick's ability to endure beyond the disillusionment that destroys Gatsby.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This article explored some of the ideological assumptions at work behind African-Americans' imaged and imagined presence in post-apartheid South Africa, and pointed out the increasing disjuncture between the interests of African-American corporate elites and the ongoing political struggles of the majority of black South Africans.
Abstract: Summary This article explores some of the ideological assumptions at work behind African‐Americans’ imaged and imagined presence in postapartheid South Africa. The enduring ideological and material connections between black South Africans and African‐Americans are part of a long history of interaction. That history is clearly represented in ongoing African‐American reclamations of cultural connectedness with Africa, in which various sites on the continent act as a potential source for African‐American cultural salvation. In the wake of South Africa's nominal triumph over apartheid, African‐American involvement has shifted away from activist political involvement toward corporate presence, and South Africa is viewed as a site for African‐American economic salvation through the provision of new markets for the consumption of American goods. This shift suggests an increasing disjuncture between the interests of African‐American corporate elites and the ongoing political struggles of the majority of blacks wi...