“Ways of worldmaking”: A study of narrative transmission in Henry James's The Aspern Papers
Year: 1993
Type: article
Abstract: Summary In this paper I argue that an understanding of modality ‐ especially when deployed in so‐called unreliable homodiegetic narration ‐ essentially requires an understanding of the referential functions of language. These functions, often performed by ¡mplicatures and, in Goodman's terms, “exemplifications”, create the “worlds” whose cognisability becomes a presupposition upon which our grasp of the relevant modality is predicated. James's novella, The Aspern Papers, offers a complex form of such a narrative transmission; one that would remain, I argue, only partially recoverable without the deployment of the text immanent postulates proffered by my theoretical exposition of the ironic modalities of unreliable homodiegetic narrative.
Source: Journal of Literary Studies
Author: Jenny de Reuck
Institution: Murdoch University
Language: English
Subfield: Literature and Literary Theory
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $388
OpenAlex ID: W2989288036