scholarly journals Postmodern Narrative Techniques in Robert Coover’s Story Collection; Pricksongs & Descants

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (5) ◽  
pp. 75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hassan Abootalebi
Keyword(s):  
Story Collection ◽  
Narrative Techniques

scholarly journals Postmodern Narrative Techniques in Robert Coover’s Collection; Pricksongs & Descants

2015 ◽  
Vol 52 ◽  
pp. 70-75
Author(s):  
Hassan Abootalebi
Keyword(s):  
Robert Coover ◽  
American Writer ◽  
Salient Features ◽  
Story Collection ◽  
Narrative Techniques

The modes of narration in postmodernist fiction are not identical with those of modernists and realists. They contravene readers’ expectations, making them most often astounded and baffled. This study sets out to discuss some of the techniques used by the American writer Robert Coover in his story collection; Pricksongs & Descants (1969) which are associated with postmodernist fiction. These strategies including metafictional techniques, fragmentation, ontological concern, and temporal distortion, will in the subsequent sections of this paper be explicated and elucidated. In this regard, the term postmodernism will be first defined and elaborated, and then some of the salient features of Coover’s selected work stated above, will be examined in order to demonstrate the title-mentioned claim. Not all the stories of the collection will in this study be provided an analysis of, but those which are of greater significance and are noticeable in incorporating postmodern strategies.

On the Margins of Modernism

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Rosenmeier
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
Chinese Literature ◽  
Popular Literature ◽  
Extensive Study ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Chinese Fiction ◽  
Scant Attention ◽  
Narrative Techniques ◽  
Chinese Writing

Xu Xu and Wumingshi were among the most widely read authors in China during and after the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945). Despite being an integral part of the Chinese literary scene, their bestselling fiction has, however, been given scant attention in histories of Chinese writing. This book is the first extensive study of Xu Xu and Wumingshi in English or any other Western language and it re-establishes their importance within the popular Chinese literature of the 1940s. Their romantic novels and short stories were often set abroad and featured a wide range of stereotypes, from pirates, spies and patriotic soldiers to ghosts, spirits and exotic women who confounded the mostly cosmopolitan male protagonists. Christopher Rosenmeier’s detailed analysis of these popular novels and short stories shows that such romances broke new ground by incorporating and adapting narrative techniques and themes from the Shanghai modernist writers of the 1930s, notably Shi Zhecun and Mu Shiying. The study thereby contests the view that modernism had little lasting impact on Chinese fiction, and it demonstrates that the popular literature of the 1940s was more innovative than usually imagined, with authors, such as those studied here, successfully crossing the boundaries between the popular and the elite, as well as between romanticism and modernism, in their bestselling works.

Forming Provisional Identities

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer J. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Contemporary Fiction ◽  
Short Story Cycle ◽  
Literary Responses ◽  
American Literary History ◽  
Story Cycle ◽  
Narrative Techniques

The introduction argues that the short story cycle is the preeminent genre for articulating the uncertainty that characterizes literary responses to modernity. The introduction outlines two vital contributions of the cycle to American literary history: 1. the absence of textual harmony in the cycle initiated new, pervasive narrative techniques of proliferating perspectives and disrupting chronology that inflect modern and contemporary fiction and 2. the form of the cycle enables the expression of subjectivity without fixity. Contingency and multiplicity are so central to our social-media infused culture that provisionality is its defining characteristic, but this book shows that the seeds for this go back almost to the nation’s founding.

A Compact Embodiment of Pluralities and Denial of Origins: Atwood’s The Year of The Flood

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 141
Author(s):  
Rana Sağıroğlu
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Margaret Atwood ◽  
Rapid Change ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The World ◽  
Narrative Techniques ◽  
Why Questions ◽  
Near Future

Margaret Atwood, one of the most spectacular authors of postmodern movement, achieved to unite debatable and in demand critical points of 21st century such as science fiction, postmodernism and ecocriticism in the novel The Year of The Flood written in 2009. The novel could be regarded as an ecocritical manifesto and a dystopic mirror against today’s degenerated world, tending to a superficial base to keep the already order in use, by moving away from the fundamental solution of all humanity: nature. Although Atwood does not want her works to be called science fiction, it is obvious that science fiction plays an introductory role and gives the novel a ground explaining all ‘why’ questions of the novel. However, Atwood is not unjust while claiming that her works are not science fiction because of the inevitable rapid change of 21st century world becoming addicted to technology, especially Internet. It is easily observed by the reader that what she fictionalises throughout the novel is quite close to possibility, and the world may witness in the near future what she creates in the novel as science fiction. Additionally, postmodernism serves to the novel as the answerer of ‘how’ questions: How the world embraces pluralities, how heterogeneous social order is needed, and how impossible to run the world by dichotomies of patriarchal social order anymore. And lastly, ecocriticism gives the answers of ‘why’ questions of the novel: Why humanity is in chaos, why humanity has organized the world according to its own needs as if there were no living creatures apart from humanity. Therefore, The Year of The Flood meets the reader as a compact embodiment of science fiction, postmodernism and ecocriticism not only with its theme, but also with its narrative techniques.

Migration, Identity, and Colonial Fantasies in a Fifth-Century Story Collection

2021 ◽  
Vol 80 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-127
Author(s):  
Xiaofei Tian
Keyword(s):  
Real Estate ◽  
South China ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Story Collection

At the turn of the fifth century, a story about a man contesting real estate with a ghost circulated in several different versions in South China. In one of the versions, a young man discovered three lacquer coffins when digging a tomb for his deceased father and had the coffins reburied elsewhere. That night, he dreamed of Lu Su 魯肅 (172–217), the powerful minister in the southern Kingdom of Wu, who angrily announced that he would exact revenge. He also dreamed of his late father, who told him that Lu Su was fighting with him over the gravesite. Later, the young man found copious blood on his father's seating mat.

scholarly journals “Only I Am the Brahma”: Religion and Narrative in the Netflix Thriller Series Sacred Games (2018–2019)

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (7) ◽  
pp. 478
Author(s):  
Ana Ashraf
Keyword(s):  
Gain Control ◽  
Political Ideologies ◽  
Nuclear Attack ◽  
Narrative Techniques ◽  
The Way

Sacred Games (2018–2019), based on Vikram Chandra’s novel of the same title, is India’s first Netflix crime thriller series. This series shows how the lives of a Sikh policeman, Sartaj Singh, and a powerful gangster, Ganesh Eknath Gaitonde, weave together in a mission to save Mumbai from a nuclear attack. The series immediately received critical acclaim and viewers’ appreciation, but the way the series represents the (mis)use of metanarratives of religious and political ideologies, as they come to influence Gaitonde’s life, needs further perusal. For this purpose, this article investigates how Gaitonde’s life, and its abrupt end, are shaped and challenged by the larger ideological and religious metanarratives of his milieu. At the same time, this article examines Gaitonde’s ability to gain control over his own narrative despite the overwhelming presence of these metanarratives. More specifically, Gaitonde’s transgressive will and his desire to tell his story are brought under scrutiny. Along with the analysis of Gaitonde’s character, this article also examines how the use of various cinematic and narrative techniques heightens self-reflexivity and metafictionality in Sacred Games and emphasizes the role of mini-narratives as unique, singular, and contingent, in contrast to the generic, universal, and permanent tones of metanarratives.

Modern Narrative Techniques: Jarry, the Pre-Text

SubStance ◽  
1982 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda Klieger Stillman
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Techniques

Narratieve technieken ter verdediging van Sextus Roscius

Lampas ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 431-440
Author(s):  
Lidewij van Gils
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Techniques

Summary Forensic narratives, narrationes, provide the speaker with a number of typically narrative advantages in the process of persuasion. It is, for instance, easier to present the perspective of an outsider in the form of a story than as part of an argumentation. Moreover, a narrative allows the narrator to portray an exceptional situation as acceptable and to insert various voices without the risk of seeming inconsistent. Stereotypes can also play a subtle and persuasive role in a story. This article will show how Cicero, in his defence of Roscius Amerinus, has used all these narrative techniques.

scholarly journals Il Cairo: luoghi semi-ufficiali e personaggi eccentrici nei romanzi di Shalabī e Abū Julayyil

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cristina Dozio
Keyword(s):  
Local Culture ◽  
Literary Representation ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Literary Geography ◽  
Binary Oppositions ◽  
Narrative Techniques ◽  
The City

Cairo is a constantly expanding and changing megalopolis, whose residents negotiate the binary oppositions of centre/periphery, development/poverty, and local/global. This paper investigates the literary representation of the Egyptian capital in four novels by Shalabī and Abū Julayyil published between 1981 and 2008. Firstly, it overviews recent scholarship about the literary geography of Cairo. Then, it examines the narrative techniques employed by Shalabī and Abū Julayyil to portray semi-official spaces, such as historical palaces now in decline, hash dens, shantytowns, and buildings on the verge of collapse. I argue that these spaces interact with the rest of the city, while developing a highly local culture, embodied by eccentric humorous characters.

scholarly journals Petite idole énigmatique aux yeux allongés et pleins de rêve ». Les stéréotypes orientalistes dans Le Harem entr’ouvert d’A.-R. de Lens

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 200-210
Author(s):  
Małgorzata Sokołowicz
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Short Story Collection ◽  
Story Collection

The present paper describes some orientalist stereotypes concerning women and manifesting themselves in Le Harem entr’ouvert (1919), a short story collection by Aline Réveillaud de Lens (1881–1925), a French painter and writer, whose works are devoted mainly to North Africa. The paper focuses on three, most common, stereotypical representations of the Oriental woman according to which she is, firstly, a beautiful odalisque serving the man; secondly, extremely sensual and thus unfaithful and, finally, jealous and, sometimes, very cruel. The author attempts to explain the origins of those representations and to answer the question why A.-R. de Lens used them in her writings

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