Multiple Narratives, Versions and Truth in the Contemporary Novel

ISBN-13: 9783030321925 / Angielski / Twarda / 2019 / 122 str.

Nicholas Frangipane

Spis treści

1. Introduction

1.1 Moving Past Postmodernism

1.2 The Value of Fiction

1.3 Post-Postmodernism?

1.4 Truth?

2. Shifting Attitudes Towards the Verisimilitude of Narrative in Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Literature

2.1 A Modernist Sense of Unease

2.2 From Modernist Unease to Postmodernist Incredulity

2.3 Productive Potential in Contemporary Fiction

3. The Quality of Qualia: Truth and Ethics in Reflexive Double Narratives

3.1 Postmodernist and Post-Postmodernist Double Narratives: Similar Styles, Different Aims

3.2 Alice Munro and Qualia

3.3 The Distinction of (Non) Fiction?: Double Narratives and Ethics in Non-Fictional Texts

4. Joyful Solipsism: Implied Multiple Narratives in the Contemporary Novel

4.1 Unknowability in Contemporary Novels

5. Double Memories: Multiple Versions of Memories as a Way to Understand Characters and Ourselves

5.1 Stories and Minds

5.2 The Productive Potential of Two Versions of a Memory in Post-Postmodernist Fiction

6. Conclusion: A Dark Turn and Other Manifestations

6.1 Post-Postmodernism and Post-Truth

6.2 Other Manifestations 

O autorze

Nicholas Frangipane is Instructor of English at Suffolk University, USA. His essays have appeared in Poetics Today, Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, Hypermedia Joyce Studies and Brontë Studies.

Blurb

Multiple Narratives, Versions and Truth in the Contemporary Novel considers the shifting perception of truth in fiction. Nicholas Frangipane examines the narrative technique of telling multiple versions of the same sets of events, presenting both true and false versions of the events within a fictional work. This book looks closely at these “Reflexive Double Narratives” in order to understand the way many contemporary writers have attempted to work past postmodernism without forgetting its lessons. Frangipane explores how writers like Ian McEwan, Yann Martel and Alice Munro have departed from the radical experimentation of their predecessors and instead make sincere attempts to find ways that fictional writing can reveal enduring truths, and in so doing, redefine the meaning of “truth” itself and signal the emergence of post-postmodernism.