Year: 2011
Type: dissertation
Abstract: The categories of reader and writer have often been conceived as binary opposites representing the poles of passivity and production.The idea of this dichotomy between reading and writing has dissolved as the recognition of the indeterminacy of the text is mirrored by postmodern conceptions of the contingent nature of subjectivity.However, the novel form as we know it emerged during the post-enlightenment age when the subject was conceived as singular and original and the individual life as narrative.The issue of who gets to speak and how that speech is received continues to be a major thematic concern in the novel to the present time.This exegesis examines the locus of narrative authority as played out between representations of the author and reader, and reading and writing, in Foe and The French Lieutenant's Woman.The same two novels also show how 'writing starts with reading' as Cixous says.Reading and writing share an impetus to
Author: Dani Connolly
Language: English
Subfield: Literature and Literary Theory
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
Funder: Murdoch University
OpenAlex ID: W1578627992