Phototextuality as a Phenomenon of Present-Day British Prose

• Authors: Volha Sudliankova
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Like many other world literatures, the English literature of the last few decades has been marked by an intensive search for new narrative techniques, for innovative ways and means of arranging a plot and portraying characters. The search has resulted, among other things, into merging literature with visual arts like painting, film and photography. This phenomenon got the name of ekphrasis and has become a popular field of literary research lately. Suffice it to cast a glance at several of the novels published around the year 2000 to see that incorporation of photographic images into fiction allows writers to use new means of organizing literary texts, to employ non-conventional devices of structuring a plot and delineating personages as well as to pose various problems of aesthetic, ethical, ideological nature. We suggest to look briefly at seven novels published in the last three decades to see the various roles assigned to photography by their authors: Out of this World (1988) by Graham Swift, Ulverton (1992) by Adam Thorpe, Master Georgie (1998) by Beryl Bainbridge, The Dark Room (2001) by Rachel Seiffert, The Photograph (2003) by Penelope Lively, Double Vision (2003) by Pat Barker and The Rain Before It Falls (2007) by Jonathan Coe. The scenes of the novels are set widely apart and have time spans of various duration. Ulverton and Master Georgie have a mid-19th century setting, The Dark Room is centered round WWII, Out of this World and The Rain before It Falls contain their heroes’ long life stories, while The Photograph and Double Vision are set at the end of the last century and their characters are our contemporaries. The novels also differ by the particular place photographs occur in the novels, by the roles they play there, as well as by the issues associated with them.

Keywords

EN

ekphrasis; initiate/trigger a plot; merging of literature and photography; phototext; phototextuality; plot structuring element; verbal representation; visual images

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: CLEaR
• Year: 2016
• Volume: 3
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 9-15

Dates

published

2016-09-01

online

2016-11-02

Contributors

author

Volha Sudliankova

• Minsk State Linguistic University,

Identifiers

DOI

10.1515/clear-2016-0009