Going Back to One’s Roots: The Revival of Oral Storytelling Techniques in The English Contemporary Novel

• Authors: Ana Cristina Băniceru
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

My paper examines the interplay between the sophisticated postmodernist techniques of intertextuality, parody, metafiction and a return to orality or better said of pseudo-orality, a simulated-oral discourse or what the Russian Formalists called “skaz”, brought about by much postcolonial, ethnic or feminist literature.

Keywords

EN

grotesque discourse; intertextuality; metafiction; oral discourse; pseudo-orality; skaz narratives; storytelling

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: Romanian Journal of English Studies
• Year: 2012
• Volume: 9
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 166-181

Dates

published

2012-12-01

online

2013-02-21

Contributors

author

Ana Cristina Băniceru

• West University of Timişoara

References

• Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1987 (1968). Rabelais and His World. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
• Bal, M. 1997. Narratology. Introduction to the Theory of Narrative. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
• Benjamin, W. 1973 (1936). “The Storyteller” in Illuminations. Fontana, pp. 90-101.
• Brooks, Peter. 1987. “The Storyteller”, Yale Journal of Criticism 1.1, 21-38.
• Faris, W. 1995. “Scheherazade’s Children: Magical Realism and Postmodern Fiction” in Parkinson, L., Z. Faris, W (eds). Magical Realism: Theory, History, Community. Durharn & London: Duke University Press, pp. 162-174.
• Fludernik, M. 1996. Towards a “Natural” Narratology. London: Routledge.
• Fludernik, M. 1993. The Fictions of Language and the Languages of Fiction: TheLinguistic Representation of Speech and Consciousness. London: Routledge.
• Goody, J. 2000. The Power of the Written Tradition. Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press.
• Hoogestraat, Jane. 1998. “Discoveries of Something New: Ong, Derrida, and Postcolonial Theory”. Weeks, D., L. Hoogestraat, J. (eds). Time, Memory, and the Verbal Arts- Essays on the Thought of Walter Ong. Massachusetts: Associated University Presses, pp. 51-61.
• Hutcheon, L. 1988. A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction. New York: Routledge.
• Hutcheon, L. 1999. “Modes and Forms of Narrative Narcissism: Introduction of a typology” in Onega, S. and Garcia Landa, J.A. (eds). Narratology: AnIntroduction. London and New York: Longman, pp. 203-214.
• Janmohamed, Abdul. 1998. “Sophisticated Primitivism: The Syncretism of Oral and Literate Modes in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart” in Iyasere, Solomon O. (ed). Understanding Things Fall Apart: Selected Essays and Criticism. New York: Whitston Publishing, pp. 86-105.
• Mey, J. L. 2000. When Voices Clash: A Study in Literary Pragmatics. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
• McHale, Brian. 1987. Postmodernist Fiction. London and New York: Routledge.
• Morson, G.S. Emerson, C. 1990. Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a Prosaics. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
• Ong, W.J. 2002. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. London and New York: Routledge
• Stanzel, F. K. 1996. “A New Approach to the Definitions of the Narrative Situations” in Onega, S. and Garcia Landa, J.A. (eds). Narratology: An Introduction. London and New York: Longman, pp. 161-171.
• Womack, Kenneth. 2006. “Russian Formalists, the Moscow Linguistic Circle, and Prague Structuralism: Boris Eichenbaum, Jan Mukarovsky, Victor Shklovsky, Yuri Tynyanov, Roman Jakobson” in Wolfreys, Julian (ed). Modern EuropeanCriticism and Theory. A Critical Guide. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 112-117.

Identifiers

DOI

10.2478/v10319-012-0018-7