Writing and Orality: Nationality, Culture and Nineteenth-Century Scottish Fiction

ISBN-13: 9780198121800 / Angielski / Twarda / 1996 / 264 str.

Penny Fielding

Opis

Speech and writing form the basis of much modern critical thinking, but there is little consensus about what they are or whether there is any essential difference between them. In this book, Fielding explores the concepts of nationality and culture in the context of 19th-century Scottish fiction, namely Walter Scott, James Hogg, R.L. Stevenson and Margaret Oliphant. Through this exploration, she concludes that the differences between speech and writing are created by social forces.

Recenzje

This is a highly accomplished study ... Her wide-ranging chapters surveying the currents of orality and literature in the nineteenth century contain some of the best material in the book, though they are surpassed by the analyses of Oliphant's short stories. Fielding deserves particular credit for her theoretically aware appreciation of Oliphant's important late work ... This is Fielding's first book and an impressive debut. Few critics have written so well about the authorial power of Stevenson and Oliphant, and no one has written so well about speech and textuality in their work. I hope Fielding's next book will be even more ambitious in scope, and that it will come soon.