Fictional Dialogue and the Construction of Interaction in Rosa Liksom’s Short Stories

This article analyzes the dynamics of fictional dialogue in three short stories by the Finnish author Rosa Liksom. These stories are constructed almost entirely of dialogue, with minimal involvement on the part of the narrator. We adopt two different approaches to dialogue. First, we analyze dialogue from a micro level, as interaction between the characters within the storyworlds, then from a more holistic perspective, paying attention to how dialogue contributes to the rhetorical structure and ethical interpretation of the stories. We show that resorting mainly to dialogue as a narrative mode works as a way of depicting tensions between Liksom’s characters, and between them and the surrounding fictional world. This, in turn, engages the reader in an interpretative process to understand the story’s logic both within the fictional worlds and on the level of communication between the implied author and the authorial audience.

Witnesses for the Defense in the Gospel of Luke

Assuming that the Third Gospel’s audience faced the public relations problem of a crucified Messiah, this chapter argues that the Gospel of Luke is an insiders’ defense of Jesus despite his ignominious death on a cross. Furthermore, while the chapter reviews various methodological approaches to the Lukan author, its own brand of audience-oriented criticism seeks to reconstruct the horizon of expectations and repertoires by which the Gospel’s authorial audience would likely have understood the Third Gospel’s defense. Accordingly, it avers that the Third Gospel negotiated a politics of respectability by imagining Jesus and his followers not solely as prophets and philosophers but as benefactors whose cosmopolitan reach rivaled the Roman Empire’s own claims of worldwide benefaction. Finally, the chapter appraises the Gospel’s defense for its ethical utility under very different circumstances in the world today.

Reworking the Puzzle of Faith and Deeds in James 2.14–26

The natural starting point for any interpretation of the Epistle of James is its praescriptio, where the author defines for his readers their own communal identity by addressing them as ‘the twelve tribes in the diaspora’. Whatever intentions may have lurked behind the attributive expression , the peculiar designation of the authorial audience as ‘the twelve tribes’ casts the readership with surprising clarity in the role of the true Israel. Although the author does not make further comment upon the relationship of his intended readers to the dominant Judaism of his day, it is surely correct to assume that an organizational separation had occurred. The community which James elsewhere refers to as the ⋯κκλησ⋯α (5.14) and which boasts its own teachers (3.1) and elders (5.14) had most certainly set itself apart in some degree from the entity whose title it is said to possess.