scholarly journals Keats's Haggard Shadow

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 123-138
Author(s):  
Jeroen Vermeulen
Keyword(s):  
The Novel ◽  
Historiographic Metafiction ◽  
Plot Structure

This article discusses how John Keats’s biography and poetry exerted influence on the development of the plot, structure, protagonists and metaphorical framework of Patrick McGrath’s novel Dr Haggard’s Disease (1993). Furthermore, it contends that the novel does not simply aim to pay tribute to Keats or to function as a literary emulation or even mimicry of Keats’s life and oeuvre. Instead, the novel suggests a postmodernist comment on Keatsian Romanticism as expressed in Keats’s poetry. An interpretation of Dr Haggard’s Disease as historiographic metafiction with an emphasis on the intertextual links between McGrath’s novel and Keats’s work makes clear that the novel’s narrator and protagonist, Edward Haggard, by way of subversion and distortion devaluates the Keatsian dichotomies of real/ideal and Truth/Beauty.

scholarly journals History as a discourse in Jeanette Winterson's "The passion" : the politics of alterity

2000 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 7
Author(s):  
María del Mar Asensio Aróstegui
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Napoleonic Wars ◽  
Historical Novels ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Political Choice ◽  
Historiographic Metafiction ◽  
Historical Material ◽  
The Fantastic ◽  
The French Revolution

Set in the historical context of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars, Jeanette Winterson's The Passion is an outstanding example of the kind of fiction that Elizabeth Wesseling (1991: vii) calls postmodernist historical novels, that is, "novelistic adaptations of historical material". Besides, being profoundly self-reflexive, the novel also falls under Linda Hutcheon's (1988) category of historiographic metafiction. The present paper focuses on Winterson's political choice of two representatives of historically silenced groups, a soldier and a woman, who use two apparently opposed narrative modes, the historical and the fantastic, to tell a story that both exposes history as a discursive construct and provides an alternative fantastic discourse for the representation of feminine desire.

scholarly journals The Frigate Pallada by I. A. Goncharov as a Literary Monument of Artistic Ethnology

2019 ◽  
pp. 181-188
Author(s):  
Гульзада Гадульяновна Багаутдинова
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Main Principle ◽  
Chinese People ◽  
Foreign Countries ◽  
The One ◽  
Plot Structure

Жанровая природа «Фрегата “Паллада”» И. А. Гончарова сложна и эклектична. Несмотря на ее мозаичность, структура текста отличается четкостью, она выверена и хорошо продумана. В этом произведении повествуется о разных странах, континентах, а также населяющих их народах и этносах. В статье рассматривается одна из глав книги с точки зрения художественно-этнологического дискурса: автор-повествователь описывает нравы, род занятий, этнические особенности китайского народа, но делает это весьма живо, занимательно, эмоционально, т. е. на художественном уровне. Основным композиционным принципом произведения «Фрегат “Паллада”» становится сопоставление: выявляются сходные и отличительные признаки китайского и других этносов (американцев, англичан, русских). Кроме того, показаны и этнические особенности разных групп китайцев (китайцы Шанхая, Гонконга, Сингапура). В результате сопоставительного анализа автор приходит к выводу, что глава «Шанхай» написана большим писателем-беллетристом, не документалистом: Гончаров использует художественные приемы, определившие своеобразие его художественного мира, в том числе и романного (разнообразные ритмообразующие факторы; изящные и тонкие проявления комического начала; «архитектурную» структурированность; четкую и аргументированную авторскую позицию; гуманизм). The genre nature of The Frigate "Pallada" by Ivan Goncharov is complex and eclectic. Despite its mosaic character, the structure of the text looks precise and elaborate. The novel tells about foreign countries, continents, and nations living there. The paper focuses on one chapter of the novel; its artistic ethnology is regarded. The author-narrator depicts customs, occupations, and ethnic peculiarities of the Chinese people in a vivid, amusing, emotional way thus providing an artistic level of the description. The main principle of plot structure is the one of comparison: similar and peculiar features of the Chinese and other nations (Americans, Englishmen, Russians) are defined. Moreover, ethnic peculiarities of various groups among the Chinese are displayed (people of Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Singapore). Summing up the comparative analysis, the author concludes that the chapter entitled Shanghai seems to be written by a belletrist rather than by a documentary writer. Ivan Goncharov resorts to artistic devices typical of his fiction and novels (a variety of rhythm making factors; graceful and subtle manifestations of the comic; architectural structure; author’s viewpoint, well-grounded and precise; humanism)

scholarly journals Revisiting Official History in Evangel Athial’s Hitler and the Decline of Shah Dynasty

2020 ◽  
pp. 117-124
Author(s):  
Raj Kishor Singh
Keyword(s):  
Historical Novel ◽  
Main Idea ◽  
Personal History ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Historiographic Metafiction ◽  
Official History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Writings ◽  
Historical Accounts

This article aims to analyze Athial’s Hitler and the Decline of Shah Dynasty to prove that the author reimagines and rewrites official history in his novel with combination and blurring of fact and fiction. It is studied from theoretical parameters of historiographic metafiction. Through an amalgamation of fact and fiction, the novel challenges the traditional version of the official history of Nepal and Germany. The subjectivity inherent in historiographic narratives is further explored through Athial’s representation of historical character Hitler in the novel. The presence of major characters creates confusion about the nature of the novel as a work of fiction or as historiographic account. Through the use of irony and supernatural elements, Hitler and the Decline of Shah Dynasty becomes a parody of historiographic narratives which claim to be objective. The blurring of the boundaries between fiction and history and constructedness of history through discourse is the main idea in this paper. The writer imitates the genre of the historical novel but reveals its limitations and corresponds to what Linda Hutcheon calls historiographic metafiction. The novel mines the elements of the then history of Hitler, Germany, and Nepalese Shah Dynasty with the personal history of the author to revise and redefine the official version of history. This revisiting of mainstream history helps to establish the notion of plurality of historical accounts and a rejection of objectivity in historical writings. This novel has metafictional mode of writing, and the author represents metafictional parody in which historical incidents are repeated with a difference to show that history is discourse and is always open to interpretation.

scholarly journals WAR POETICS IN TS - ZH. ZHIMBIEV'S NOVEL "THE YEAR OF THE FIERY SNAKE"

2022 ◽  
pp. 51-54
Author(s):  
Э. С. Доржиева
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
National Character ◽  
Daily Routine ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Compositional Structure ◽  
Artistic Experience ◽  
The People ◽  
Great Patriotic War ◽  
Moral Qualities ◽  
Plot Structure

В статье рассматриваются этнопоэтические истоки сюжетостроения в прозе Бурятии 2 - й половины 20 века. В основу обзора положен анализ романа «Год огненной змеи» Ц. - Ж. Жимбиева. Выявляются особенности использования символов и понятий этнопоэтики в названии произведения, сюжетной структуре романа и художественный опыт самого писателя в осмыслении начала Великой Отечественной войны, совпавшей по восточному календарю - литэ с годом огненной змеи. Автором статьи смысловое наполнение образа змеи, в мифологии монголоязычных народов выступающей символом врага, опасности, рассматривается в связи и противопоставлении с понятиями «война» как пожирающий огонь (пожар) и «враг» как змея, от которого страдает «народ». На основе анализа сюжетно - композиционной структуры романа доказывается, что чередованием глав «День» и «Ночь» Ц. - Ж. Жимбиев актуализирует смысловую логику понятия «война» как противоестественное состояние жизни, когда всё меняется местами: день становится мрачным и беспросветным проявлением темного, а ночь позволяет уйти от дневного мрака будней в сказочно - загадочное со звездами и небом. Обоснован вывод о том, что соединение реального и мифологического придает сюжету романа особую художественную полноту и национальный колорит, способствует усилению трагического смысла событий года «змеи», раскрывает характеры, моральные качества литературных героев. The article deals with the ethnopoetic origins of plot - building in prose of Buryatia of the second half of the twentieth century. The review is based on the analysis of Ts-Zh. Zhimbiev's novel "The Year of the Fiery Snake". It identifies the features of the use of symbols and concepts of ethnopoetics in the title, the plot structure of the novel and artistic experience of the writer in understanding the beginning of the Great Patriotic war, which, according to the Chinese calendar, coincided with the year of the fiery snake. The meaning of the snake's image, which in the mythology of Mongolian - speaking peoples serving as a symbol of an enemy, danger, is considered by the author of the article in connection and opposition with concepts "war" like a consuming flame (fire) and "enemy" like a snake that oppresses "the people" Based on the analysis of the plot - compositional structure of the novel, it is proved that alternating chapters "Day" and "Night" Ts-Zh. Zhimbiev actualizes the semantic logic of the concept "war" as an unnatural state of life, when everything swaps over: the day becomes a dark and gloomy expression of darkness, and the night allows you to escape from dark daily routine into a fabulous mystery with the stars in the sky. The conclusion is proved that the conjunction of real and mythological essence gives the plot of the novel special artistic completeness and national character, enhances sense of tragic events of the year of the "snake', and reveals literary heroes' tempers and moral qualities.

Population Thinking and Narrative Networks: Dickens, Joyce, and The Wire

2021 ◽  
Vol 82 (3) ◽  
pp. 315-343
Author(s):  
Sam Alexander
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Form ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Population Thinking ◽  
Network Analyses ◽  
Bleak House ◽  
Character System ◽  
Irish Context ◽  
Literary Character ◽  
The Wire ◽  
Plot Structure

Abstract Recent approaches to literary character treat fictional population as a defining element of narrative form but continue to read novels at the level of individual characters. This essay uses the tools of narrative network analysis to bridge the gap between microlevel readings and the interpretation of the novel’s character-system as a population. Network analyses of three highly populous works—Charles Dickens’s Bleak House, James Joyce’s Ulysses, and David Simon’s HBO series The Wire—yield measures of social density and character centrality that show how Joyce adapted a Dickensian network plot that emerged amid the population explosion of nineteenth-century Britain to an Irish context marked by demographic decline. This adaptation of Dickens’s plot structure prepared it for a similar use in The Wire. Both Joyce and Simon use a large fictional network to periodically decenter their protagonists and undermine the typological assumptions of much realist fiction. The essay suggests that, rather than read these developments as evidence of a formal rupture between modernism and realism, we view Bleak House, Ulysses, and The Wire as playing a role in an understudied tradition of “population thinking” in the novel.

The Decomposition of the Elephants: Double-Reading Daniel Deronda

PMLA ◽  
1978 ◽  
Vol 93 (2) ◽  
pp. 215-227 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cynthia Chase
Keyword(s):  
The Novel ◽  
Double Reading ◽  
Daniel Deronda ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Plot Structure

A letter to the hero in Daniel Deronda offers an interpretation of George Eliot’s novel, an account of its rhetorical principles: the Deronda plot discloses not the “effects of causes” but the “present causes of past effects.” This metaleptic plot structure contradicts the linking of origin, cause, and identity affirmed in the story of Deronda’s Jewish birth. The story must shift between constative and performative conceptions of language and must finally invoke the notion of an actual, nonlinguistic fact or act. The relevant referent is Deronda’s circumcision, which the novel must occlude; otherwise the story of discovering identity could not unfold. The scandal of this referent is its status as an exemplary signifier, alluding to the divine pact with Abraham, a story of the institution of signification. Circumcision is an emblem of the novel’s allusive or citational mode: the narrative makes its starting point, not a subject, but a rhetorical operation.

scholarly journals Abstract Representations of Plot Structure

2015 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Micha Elsner
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Random Permutations ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Popular Entertainment ◽  
Emotional Words ◽  
English Writing ◽  
Discourse Modeling ◽  
High Level ◽  
Plot Structure

Since the 18th century, the novel has been one of the defining forms of English writing, a mainstay of popular entertainment and academic criticism. Despite its importance, however, there are few computational studies of the large-scale structure of novels—and many popular representations for discourse modeling do not work very well for novelistic texts. This paper describes a high-level representation of plot structure which tracks the frequency of mentions of different characters, topics and emotional words over time. The representation can distinguish with high accuracy between real novels and artificially permuted surrogates; characters are important for eliminating random permutations, while topics are effective at distinguishing beginnings from ends.

scholarly journals Merging Fact, Fiction and Myth: Reading TD Ramakrishnan’s Sugandhi Enna Aandaal Devanayaki as a Historiographic Metafiction

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Subin Varghese
Keyword(s):  
Social Space ◽  
Political History ◽  
Historical Trauma ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Historiographic Metafiction ◽  
Alternate History ◽  
Fictional Space ◽  
Female Perspective

TD Ramakrishnan’s novel Sugandhi Enna Aandaal Devanayaki is a mixture of the mythological, metaphysical and historical into a fictional space which transcends the boundaries of nation. The novel is a quest for retelling the historical trauma of Sreelanka. In the search for Sugandhi a Tamil liberation activist, the narrator stumbles upon the mythical Sugandhi from the   folklore, creating tension between faction and reality. In the search for the mythical Sugandhi Ramakrishnan uses ‘SusinaSupina’ and arrives at Devanayaki belonging to 7th century AD Pallava Dynasty.   As fact, fiction and myth blur into the contemporary social space, the myth of Devanayaki merges with Rajani Thirinagame creating the notion of the alternate history from a female perspective. In the novel History blurs into myth, reality into fiction, contemporary into past, individual into society and body into spirit.TD Ramakrishnan deconstructs the millennium old Tamil- Sinhalese political history using the alternate history from mythology and folklore.   This paper is an attempt to read the novel Sugandhi Enna AandaalDevanayaki as a Historiographic metafiction.

scholarly journals Analysis of Actantial Model in Suzanne Collins’ "The Hunger Games"

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 85-94
Author(s):  
Uliya Dzikriya
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Analysis ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Chronological Order ◽  
Hunger Games ◽  
The Hunger Games ◽  
Main Plot ◽  
Plot Structure

This study aims to analyze plot structure in Collins’ The Hunger Games. There are several questions that researcher wants to find, what the elements of plot are, how do the elements of plot compose the plot structure of the story, and what kind of plot is applied in the novel. This study is a qualitative analysis by applying A.J. Greimas approach. The data were collected by reading, identifying, interpreting and analyzed using the approach and theories which used in this study by using actants. The result of this study were the elements of plot consist of beginning, problem of the story, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution. To find out the main plot structure, this study classifies the function of each character into six actants, they are sender, receiver, subject, object, helper and opponent. Finally, the researcher concluded what kind of plot and how the ending of the novel is. The plot of the novel is dramatic or cronological plot because the story through in chronological order. In addition, the novel is closed plot because the problem of the story is solved. Keywords: Actant, Greimas, Plot, Sructuralism

scholarly journals Getting the Goods in Little Dorrit

2020 ◽  
Vol 75 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-183
Author(s):  
Kathleen Frederickson
Keyword(s):  
Economic Value ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Critical Attention ◽  
Plot Structure ◽  
Financial Losses ◽  
Origin Point

Kathleen Frederickson “Getting the Goods in Little Dorrit: Quarantine’s Queer Logistics” (pp. 159–183) Most queer readings of Charles Dickens’s Little Dorrit (1857) have focused on Miss Wade as a figure of proto-sexological pathology. Flipping critical attention to Tattycoram instead allows us to reexamine sexuality and quarantine in economic terms. Dickens chooses quarantine over other possible spaces of touch and confinement because it flags Tattycoram’s entry into the plot around these economics of circulation—the ability to profit from the movement rather than the production of commodities. In the 1820s, when Little Dorrit is set, a vocal anti-quarantine lobby was stridently lamenting the financial losses occasioned by holding goods in quarantine as they came into Europe from the Levant—a lament that was especially loud when it came to the costs incurred by northern mill owners who were importing increasingly large quantities of cotton from plague-prone Egypt. Dickens invokes the quarantine as the origin point of the connection between Tattycoram and Miss Wade to route a set of Gothic thematics through a scanty but significant plot structure that relies on what I call “logistical aesthetics,” by which I mean logistics rendered as form and tone, even when emptied of substantial parts of its diegetic function. Little Dorrit mixes its interest in the circulation of capital with the economics of inheritance, figured most prominently in the movement of the iron box containing the details of Arthur Clennam’s parentage. Tattycoram’s couriering of this box borrows the logistical urgency of anti-quarantine critique seemingly in the service of narrative resolution, drawing on logistics as a formal resource that substitutes narrative value for an absented economic value that, the novel suggests, occupies the place of her queerness. This joint focus on delivery and inheritance, moreover, strongly shapes the politics of kinship, intimacy, and desire for Tattycoram and Miss Wade.

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