Archive for the ‘narrator’ tag
The Conventions of Unconventionality: An Overview of Metafiction
An overview of major themes I found while studying metafiction for the Metaclass, a self-study course for a masters of literature at San Francisco State University. This summary will also serve as a guide to the posts I have written over the last four months (with notes about a few others I intend to write). It is not meant to be a comprehensive list of meta conventions, but an addition to the the list found under Meta-Meta and Metafiction. (Nor is this intended to be a summary of themes I developed about writing and teaching, the metaclass aspect. Those themes may be found in Putting It All Together: Collaborative and Integrated Reading and Writing.)
Who Wrote Don Quixote?
Don Quixote is the first modern novel. But who wrote it? In the preface, the narrator states, “though I seem to be the father [I am] but the step-father of Don Quixote” (15). He has compiled and translated a book, we learn, written mostly by Cid Hamet Ben Engeli, “Arabian historiographer” (68), who gathered his material from various sources.
Chaucer: A Bad Poet and a Didactic Bore
What? What did that title just say? Now hold on just a moment! Who the hell does this Ronosaurus Rex think he is anyway, calling the first Great Poet (with a capital G and a capital P) in the English language “a bad poet and a didactic bore”? When I read “The Wife of Bath’s Tale,” for example, I remember delightful comedy, complex poetry and deep insight.
Meta Bleak House
Bleak House by Charles Dickens is a printed text and the book frequently reminds readers of that fact, so that readers can not accept the text literally, but are goaded into carefully and skeptically examining the two narratives and the various documents central to the story.
The world of the novel is soaked in ink. The view from Lady Dedlock’s window is “alternately a lead-coloured view, and a view in Indian ink” (8). Miss Jellyby’s fingers and face are covered with ink stains and she complains that she “can’t do anything hardly, except write” (41). The desk and table of the “law-writer” Nemo, are described as a “wilderness marked with a rain of ink” (122). The homeless boy Jo, when asked about the inquest, refers to it as the “ink-which” (208).
A Realistic Story of a Little Girl with Dimples
Is this a realistic narrative? A little girl with dimples and pink ribbons gets the puppy she wanted for her birthday, even though her mother had said they couldn’t afford it. The girl wraps her pudgy arms around her mom’s neck and declares, “Thanks, Mommy. I love you so much.”
Not very realistic? Why not? Such things don’t happen? Or does the tale sound like the type of story that makes people smile and feel good. It may be “heart-warming,” but it isn’t what we call “realistic.”
“Where is Truth?”; I Ask You
The impossibility of producing a truthful account of any event, however uncomplicated it might seem, I tried to show in “Who is Writing This?” and “A Not Not-True Blog of a Short, Simple Morning.” Every piece of writing, fiction or non-, requires the creation of a speaker, who may (or may not) share certain characteristics in common with the writer, for example a name, a gender, a context. Nevertheless, this speaker is not the writer. Make no mistake. Even the most honest speaker must necessarily present themselves more simplify or preface every utterance with a story as long as their lives. Read the rest of this entry »
