The essay tries to explore the metafiction elements in Michael Cunningham’s novel The Hours.The work,The Hours,is in fact a fiction about how the fiction becomes a fiction and also a fiction about the previous fictio...The essay tries to explore the metafiction elements in Michael Cunningham’s novel The Hours.The work,The Hours,is in fact a fiction about how the fiction becomes a fiction and also a fiction about the previous fiction,Mrs.Dalloway.Through the deconstruction of the previous work,the reality and history are re-defined by The Hours.展开更多
Throughout Jazz （2004）, Morrison revises language and stakes a generic revolution within her linguistic one. Problematising language, she interrogates its role by disrupting all metaphoric operation and normative op...Throughout Jazz （2004）, Morrison revises language and stakes a generic revolution within her linguistic one. Problematising language, she interrogates its role by disrupting all metaphoric operation and normative operations of traditional Westem narratology, challenging ontological distinction, and undermining a novelistic claim of/for reality. Morrison creates the novel as a parody of itself. As a metafictional object, she （re）visions the fiction with multiple agendas--a means to interrogate the reality of its constitution and to implicate the political consequences inherent in that constitutional process of construction. By creating a series of antagonisms, oppositions, contradictions, equivalences, and intertextualities, Morrison transforms （and transmutes） novelistic ＂hostility＂ into a generic ＂trauma＂ simultaneously rendering it as realistic experience, historic event, personal story, collective memory, narrative device, and psychological phenomena. Exposing trauma by virtue of its linguistic symptoms, Morrison draws attention to the underlying mechanisms, structures, and apparatuses of Western linguistic codes that determine, produce, and maintain the ultimate （un）knowability of the past. This paper will examine all these and how the elliptical tendency of language surfaces the psychological disfigurement of the characters within the form of linguistic codes revealing the metaphorical tendency in Jazz to manifest its own reflective construction （and self-conscious deconstruction）.展开更多
In Michel Houellebecq＇s novel The Map and the Territory （2010）, the references to visual art, painting, and photography take a central place in the narrative. In addition to the verbal representation of artworks, t...In Michel Houellebecq＇s novel The Map and the Territory （2010）, the references to visual art, painting, and photography take a central place in the narrative. In addition to the verbal representation of artworks, there is an entire system of commentary, interpretation, and criticism of art. The references to visual art appear explicitly as ekphrases which splice the narrative time and again. The unique nature of ekphrasis in The Map and the Territory lies in its representation of art devoid of an origin in the real wodd; for the paintings in The Map and the Territory do not exist in reality but are pure literary paintings, in the full meaning of the word, as the artworks mentioned in the story have an existence restricted to Houellebecq＇s novel. The article analyses the ekphrases in The Map and the Territory and argues that they are a virtual visuality mediated by words, employing solely the technique of ekphrasis as an enhancer of meanings in a text and thereby foregrounding its artifice. It further argues that the ekphrases are open to a field of interpretive possibilities by contemporary society, as every ekphrasis features within it subversion and a contemplation on contemporary reality展开更多
Published in the early 1960s, The Golden Notebook emerges with distinct metafictional features. Its unique structure and rich content enable Doris Lessing to display her proficient metafictional writing skill which ef...Published in the early 1960s, The Golden Notebook emerges with distinct metafictional features. Its unique structure and rich content enable Doris Lessing to display her proficient metafictional writing skill which effectively helps readers draw a demarcation between art and reality. Besides, the metafictional short novel of The Shadow of the Third paves the way for expressing the novel＇s central theme-＂breakdown＂.展开更多
The language of The Blind Assassin bears a strong taste of game. Narrative language interweaves critical remarks. Escaping from the context and breaking the continuity of narration, the narrator directly comments on t...The language of The Blind Assassin bears a strong taste of game. Narrative language interweaves critical remarks. Escaping from the context and breaking the continuity of narration, the narrator directly comments on the narration, through which the novel also obtains continual adjustment, as if it is gifted a kind of dynamic self-consciousness. The title of the novel is also a kind of word game. The blind assassin＇ s physical blindness forms a sharp contrast with Iris＇ s absence of nerves.展开更多
Beloved is a masterpiece which helps African American writer Toni Morrison to win the Nobel Prize. In the novel,Morrison uses the postmodernist mefafictional devices to strongly indict the cruelty and inhumanity of sl...Beloved is a masterpiece which helps African American writer Toni Morrison to win the Nobel Prize. In the novel,Morrison uses the postmodernist mefafictional devices to strongly indict the cruelty and inhumanity of slavery and concern the fu ture destiny of the black community. This paper interprets metafictional narrative strategies in Beloved from fragmented narrative,multi-narrative perspectives, interior monologue and indeterminate narrative text.展开更多
This paper explores metafiction’s role in fictional science picturebooks and its resolution of the contradictions between fictional stories and scientific knowledge in existing research by analysing two children’s p...This paper explores metafiction’s role in fictional science picturebooks and its resolution of the contradictions between fictional stories and scientific knowledge in existing research by analysing two children’s picturebooks,Wolves(Gravett,2015)and The Magic School Bus(Cole,1995).The paper first identifies both books as metafictive science picturebooks by analysing their content.Secondly,the author analyses the structure of the two picturebooks and exposes that they both have two narrative lines as the composite structure:science knowledge and fictional stories.Thirdly,the article discusses the metafictive elements in Wolves and The Magic School Bus from the content perspectives,which are relevant to“reality”,in order to evaluate how metafiction enhances fictional science picturebooks in supporting children’s learning of science,conveying knowledge to children,and avoiding children’s misunderstanding of fiction and scientific information.展开更多
As one of the masterpieces for Don Delillo, Libra was regarded as a classic postmodern novel once after its publication. Based on Kennedy assassination, this novel mainly deals with the isolation and dissimilation fee...As one of the masterpieces for Don Delillo, Libra was regarded as a classic postmodern novel once after its publication. Based on Kennedy assassination, this novel mainly deals with the isolation and dissimilation feelings for the American citizens. As a representative postmodern novel, Libra＇s stylistic features and narrative strategies are both quite typical. This thesis will discuss its narrative angles, its narrative structure and its dialogue expressions in order to understand Libra＇s postmodern narrative technique.展开更多
Looking at the last decades of the 19th and 20th century from our vantage point encourages parallels to be drawn between the two periods： in fact, both are affected by a process of cultural fragmentation, social, and...Looking at the last decades of the 19th and 20th century from our vantage point encourages parallels to be drawn between the two periods： in fact, both are affected by a process of cultural fragmentation, social, and epistemological transformations and crises that permeate the whole civil society. In the specific field of English literature, the genre of the fantastic is undoubtedly a common presence. In Fantasy： The Literature of Subversion, Jackson （1981） noted the re-emergence of the fantastic as a transgressive force at moments of cultural stress and repression. Waugh （1995） held a similar view in The Harvest of the Sixties. At the end of the 20th century, in its postmodernist shape, fantastic literature becomes one of the favourite genres of a number of feminist writers, and among them, Jeanette Winterson transforms it into a truly transgressive genre. This paper examines Winterson＇s The Passion （1996） and Sexing the Cherry （1990） in the light of Jackson＇s theory of the fantastic, as a narrative that establishes an oppositional dialogic relationship with the ＂real＂, to interrogate it and collapse the traditional distinction between the normative and the ＂other＂. In The Passion, the real is signified by the dominant ideological discourse, exemplified by Napoleon; the fantastic by Villanelle＇s webbed feet and her ability to walk on water. In Sexing the Cherry, the real is represented by the Puritans with their bigoted and hypocritical morality; the fantastic by the huge Dog-Woman and her foundling son, Jordan. Besides, in both novels, the female body is metamorphosed to challenge the view of a ＂normal＂, acceptable femininity; what emerges is a monstrous and sublime body that collapses distinctions between gender boundaries. In Sexing the Cherry （1990）, Winterson created the grotesque, gigantic body of the Dog-Woman, a figure of Kristevan ＂abjection＂. In The Passion （1996）, she gave life to the hybrid body of Villanelle, an oxymoronic combination of the terrible beautiful. The conclusion of the paper argues that Winterson deploys the fantastic to deconstruct the gendered subject of the dominant signifying order and create a dislocated world outside commercial culture, where new voices can be heard, speaking for unheard, neglected groups, particularly women.展开更多
文摘The essay tries to explore the metafiction elements in Michael Cunningham’s novel The Hours.The work,The Hours,is in fact a fiction about how the fiction becomes a fiction and also a fiction about the previous fiction,Mrs.Dalloway.Through the deconstruction of the previous work,the reality and history are re-defined by The Hours.
文摘Throughout Jazz （2004）, Morrison revises language and stakes a generic revolution within her linguistic one. Problematising language, she interrogates its role by disrupting all metaphoric operation and normative operations of traditional Westem narratology, challenging ontological distinction, and undermining a novelistic claim of/for reality. Morrison creates the novel as a parody of itself. As a metafictional object, she （re）visions the fiction with multiple agendas--a means to interrogate the reality of its constitution and to implicate the political consequences inherent in that constitutional process of construction. By creating a series of antagonisms, oppositions, contradictions, equivalences, and intertextualities, Morrison transforms （and transmutes） novelistic ＂hostility＂ into a generic ＂trauma＂ simultaneously rendering it as realistic experience, historic event, personal story, collective memory, narrative device, and psychological phenomena. Exposing trauma by virtue of its linguistic symptoms, Morrison draws attention to the underlying mechanisms, structures, and apparatuses of Western linguistic codes that determine, produce, and maintain the ultimate （un）knowability of the past. This paper will examine all these and how the elliptical tendency of language surfaces the psychological disfigurement of the characters within the form of linguistic codes revealing the metaphorical tendency in Jazz to manifest its own reflective construction （and self-conscious deconstruction）.
文摘In Michel Houellebecq＇s novel The Map and the Territory （2010）, the references to visual art, painting, and photography take a central place in the narrative. In addition to the verbal representation of artworks, there is an entire system of commentary, interpretation, and criticism of art. The references to visual art appear explicitly as ekphrases which splice the narrative time and again. The unique nature of ekphrasis in The Map and the Territory lies in its representation of art devoid of an origin in the real wodd; for the paintings in The Map and the Territory do not exist in reality but are pure literary paintings, in the full meaning of the word, as the artworks mentioned in the story have an existence restricted to Houellebecq＇s novel. The article analyses the ekphrases in The Map and the Territory and argues that they are a virtual visuality mediated by words, employing solely the technique of ekphrasis as an enhancer of meanings in a text and thereby foregrounding its artifice. It further argues that the ekphrases are open to a field of interpretive possibilities by contemporary society, as every ekphrasis features within it subversion and a contemplation on contemporary reality
文摘Published in the early 1960s, The Golden Notebook emerges with distinct metafictional features. Its unique structure and rich content enable Doris Lessing to display her proficient metafictional writing skill which effectively helps readers draw a demarcation between art and reality. Besides, the metafictional short novel of The Shadow of the Third paves the way for expressing the novel＇s central theme-＂breakdown＂.
文摘The language of The Blind Assassin bears a strong taste of game. Narrative language interweaves critical remarks. Escaping from the context and breaking the continuity of narration, the narrator directly comments on the narration, through which the novel also obtains continual adjustment, as if it is gifted a kind of dynamic self-consciousness. The title of the novel is also a kind of word game. The blind assassin＇ s physical blindness forms a sharp contrast with Iris＇ s absence of nerves.
文摘Beloved is a masterpiece which helps African American writer Toni Morrison to win the Nobel Prize. In the novel,Morrison uses the postmodernist mefafictional devices to strongly indict the cruelty and inhumanity of slavery and concern the fu ture destiny of the black community. This paper interprets metafictional narrative strategies in Beloved from fragmented narrative,multi-narrative perspectives, interior monologue and indeterminate narrative text.
文摘This paper explores metafiction’s role in fictional science picturebooks and its resolution of the contradictions between fictional stories and scientific knowledge in existing research by analysing two children’s picturebooks,Wolves(Gravett,2015)and The Magic School Bus(Cole,1995).The paper first identifies both books as metafictive science picturebooks by analysing their content.Secondly,the author analyses the structure of the two picturebooks and exposes that they both have two narrative lines as the composite structure:science knowledge and fictional stories.Thirdly,the article discusses the metafictive elements in Wolves and The Magic School Bus from the content perspectives,which are relevant to“reality”,in order to evaluate how metafiction enhances fictional science picturebooks in supporting children’s learning of science,conveying knowledge to children,and avoiding children’s misunderstanding of fiction and scientific information.
文摘As one of the masterpieces for Don Delillo, Libra was regarded as a classic postmodern novel once after its publication. Based on Kennedy assassination, this novel mainly deals with the isolation and dissimilation feelings for the American citizens. As a representative postmodern novel, Libra＇s stylistic features and narrative strategies are both quite typical. This thesis will discuss its narrative angles, its narrative structure and its dialogue expressions in order to understand Libra＇s postmodern narrative technique.
文摘Looking at the last decades of the 19th and 20th century from our vantage point encourages parallels to be drawn between the two periods： in fact, both are affected by a process of cultural fragmentation, social, and epistemological transformations and crises that permeate the whole civil society. In the specific field of English literature, the genre of the fantastic is undoubtedly a common presence. In Fantasy： The Literature of Subversion, Jackson （1981） noted the re-emergence of the fantastic as a transgressive force at moments of cultural stress and repression. Waugh （1995） held a similar view in The Harvest of the Sixties. At the end of the 20th century, in its postmodernist shape, fantastic literature becomes one of the favourite genres of a number of feminist writers, and among them, Jeanette Winterson transforms it into a truly transgressive genre. This paper examines Winterson＇s The Passion （1996） and Sexing the Cherry （1990） in the light of Jackson＇s theory of the fantastic, as a narrative that establishes an oppositional dialogic relationship with the ＂real＂, to interrogate it and collapse the traditional distinction between the normative and the ＂other＂. In The Passion, the real is signified by the dominant ideological discourse, exemplified by Napoleon; the fantastic by Villanelle＇s webbed feet and her ability to walk on water. In Sexing the Cherry, the real is represented by the Puritans with their bigoted and hypocritical morality; the fantastic by the huge Dog-Woman and her foundling son, Jordan. Besides, in both novels, the female body is metamorphosed to challenge the view of a ＂normal＂, acceptable femininity; what emerges is a monstrous and sublime body that collapses distinctions between gender boundaries. In Sexing the Cherry （1990）, Winterson created the grotesque, gigantic body of the Dog-Woman, a figure of Kristevan ＂abjection＂. In The Passion （1996）, she gave life to the hybrid body of Villanelle, an oxymoronic combination of the terrible beautiful. The conclusion of the paper argues that Winterson deploys the fantastic to deconstruct the gendered subject of the dominant signifying order and create a dislocated world outside commercial culture, where new voices can be heard, speaking for unheard, neglected groups, particularly women.
