(Im)politeness in McEwan’s Fiction

(Im)politeness in McEwan’s Fiction PDF Author: Urszula Kizelbach
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031186907
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 239

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Book Description
This book is a pragma-stylistic study of Ian McEwan’s fiction, providing a qualitative analysis of his selected novels using (im)politeness theory. (Im)politeness is investigated on two levels of analysis: the level of the plot and the story world (intradiegetic level) and the level of the communication between the implied author and implied reader in fiction (extradiegetic level). The pragmatic theory of (im)politeness serves the aim of internal characterisation and helps readers to better understand and explain the characters’ motivations and actions, based on the stylistic analysis of their speech and thoughts and point of view. More importantly, the book introduces the notion of “the impoliteness of the literary fiction” – a state of affairs where the implied author (or narrator) expresses their impolite beliefs to the reader through the text, which has face-threatening consequences for the audience, e.g. moral shock or disgust, dissociation from the protagonist, feeling hurt or ‘put out’. Extradiegetic impoliteness, one of the key characteristics of McEwan’s fiction, offers an alternative to the literary concept of “a secret communion of the author and reader” (Booth 1961), describing an ideal connection, or good rapport, between these two participants of fictional communication. This book aims to unite literary scholars and linguists in the debate on the benefits of combining pragmatics and stylistics in literary analysis, and it will be of interest to a wide audience in both fields.

(Im)politeness in McEwan’s Fiction

(Im)politeness in McEwan’s Fiction PDF Author: Urszula Kizelbach
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031186907
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 239

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Book Description
This book is a pragma-stylistic study of Ian McEwan’s fiction, providing a qualitative analysis of his selected novels using (im)politeness theory. (Im)politeness is investigated on two levels of analysis: the level of the plot and the story world (intradiegetic level) and the level of the communication between the implied author and implied reader in fiction (extradiegetic level). The pragmatic theory of (im)politeness serves the aim of internal characterisation and helps readers to better understand and explain the characters’ motivations and actions, based on the stylistic analysis of their speech and thoughts and point of view. More importantly, the book introduces the notion of “the impoliteness of the literary fiction” – a state of affairs where the implied author (or narrator) expresses their impolite beliefs to the reader through the text, which has face-threatening consequences for the audience, e.g. moral shock or disgust, dissociation from the protagonist, feeling hurt or ‘put out’. Extradiegetic impoliteness, one of the key characteristics of McEwan’s fiction, offers an alternative to the literary concept of “a secret communion of the author and reader” (Booth 1961), describing an ideal connection, or good rapport, between these two participants of fictional communication. This book aims to unite literary scholars and linguists in the debate on the benefits of combining pragmatics and stylistics in literary analysis, and it will be of interest to a wide audience in both fields.

Mind Presentation in Ian McEwan's Fiction

Mind Presentation in Ian McEwan's Fiction PDF Author: Karam Nayebpour
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 3838269799
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
This book explores the central fictional minds in three of Ian McEwan's most popular narratives. Mind presentation constitutes the main part of characterization in the second phase of McEwan's writing, where his plot structure depends to a large degree on the presentation of the characters’ mental workings. In Amsterdam (1998), Atonement (2003), and On Chesil Beach (2007), the construction process of the fictional minds, the degree their functioning is impacted by their experiences, and the way their mental aspect controls their behavior and relationships is critical to the stories. Relying on insights and methods from cognitive narratology, this study follows two purposes: It firstly analyzes the function of fictional minds and their operational modes in these narratives. Secondly, it explores the impact of the characters' experiences on both their mental functioning and their behavior, especially with view of their relationships. Nayebpour reveals that the plot structure of these narratives highly depends on the lack of a sound balance between the two aspects of the represented minds (intermental/joint thought and intramental/individual thought) as well as on the dominance of the intramental one. The tragic atmosphere in these narratives, Nayebpour argues, is the result of this imbalance.

Ian McEwan: Sex, Death, and History

Ian McEwan: Sex, Death, and History PDF Author: Eluned Summers-Bremmer
Publisher: Cambria Press
ISBN: 1604978708
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Ian McEwan's works have always shown an interest in the question of how fiction operates. This interest does not usually manifest on the formal level. A few of the early stories aside, his fictions are not formally experimental. McEwan tends to opt for those reliable patternings of space, time and narrative progression that enable readers to trust the authorial environment sufficiently to identify with characters and become invested, to some extent, in what happens to them. Despite McEwan's commitment, by and large, to naturalistic means of telling a story, his later novels also demonstrate a concern with opacity, as characters often pursue courses of action for reasons that are unclear to them. Equally often, these actions bear some relation to the intrinsic opacity or enigma of one's sexual desires, one's relation to one's mortality, or one's relation to the actions of those human beings who have gone before one, as this book will show. It is this focus on enigma in McEwan's work, whether sexual, mortal, or historical, that lends it to a psychoanalytic reading such as the kind pursued in this book, because for psychoanalysis there is no such thing as full access to one's self or to one's feelings or motivations. Given that one's relation to history is also opaque in the sense that one grasps fully-or imagines one grasps fully-only those historical events which predate or otherwise excludes one, this study seeks historical reasons for why McEwan sometimes blocks readerly identification with characters in the early fiction. For these characters are also products of their environments, environments which the characters' relative opacity and unlikeability seems to offset and exaggerate or present in a manner showcased for one's judgment. And in this way the characters' environment is denaturalized, to say the least. This book reveals how all of these works explore, to some extent, the human tendency to act and feel, in particular situations, in profound contradistinction to how one might prefer to think one would. This failure to coincide with one's image of how one would have expected, or preferred, to behave-The Innocent's Leonard Marnham is not the cool, experienced lover of his imaginings, any more than Solar's Michael Beard is going to revamp his lifestyle or career-produces instances of affective or imaginative excess, troubling images or feelings that can often only be allayed or dealt with by a further failure to coincide with one's desires. In this book, author Eluned Summers-Bremner shows that McEwan's interests in opacity not only become clear in significance and import but that his interests in human failure to coincide with one's views about the past and hopes for the future also appear as what they are: an ongoing concern with how one relates to the complex operation of human history.

Swing Low

Swing Low PDF Author: Miriam Toews
Publisher: Arcade Publishing
ISBN: 9781559705875
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
"One morning Mel Toews put on his coat and hat and walked out of town, prepared to die. A loving husband and father, faithful member of the Mennonite church, and immensely popular school teacher, he was a pillar of his close-knit community. Yet after a lifetime of struggle, he could no longer face the darkness of manic depression. Now his daughter Miriam, an award-winning writer, has given her father a voice for his whole story. In Swing Low, Miriam recounts Mel's life as she imagines he would have told it, right up to the day he took his final walk. Toews takes us deep inside the experience of depression, but she also gives us winsome and hilarious tales of country life: growing up on a farm, courting a wife, becoming a teacher, and rearing a strong, happy family in the midst of private torment." --

Beatrice And Virgil [may-10]

Beatrice And Virgil [may-10] PDF Author: Yann Martel
Publisher: Penguin Books India
ISBN: 0670084514
Category : Animals
Languages : en
Pages : 205

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Book Description
When Henry receives a letter from an elderly taxidermist, it poses a puzzle that he cannot resist. As he is pulled further into the world of this strange and calculating man, Henry becomes increasingly involved with the lives of a donkey and a howler monkey--named Beatrice and Virgil--and the epic journey they undertake together.

Rethinking Language, Text and Context

Rethinking Language, Text and Context PDF Author: Ruth Page
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351183206
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 323

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Book Description
This collection of original research highlights the legacy of Michael Toolan’s pioneering contributions to the field of stylistics and in so doing provides a critical overview of the ways in which language, text, and context are analyzed in the field and its related disciplines. Featuring work from an international range of contributors, the book illustrates how the field of stylistics has evolved in the 25 years since the publication of Toolan’s seminal Language, Text and Context, which laid the foundation for the analysis of the language and style in literary texts. The volume demonstrates how technological innovations and the development of new interdisciplinary methodologies, including those from corpus, cognitive, and multimodal stylistics, point to the greater degree of interplay between language, text, and context exemplified in current research and how this dynamic relationship can be understood by featuring examples from a variety of texts and media. Underscoring the significance of Michael Toolan’s extensive work in the field in the evolution of literary linguistic research, this volume is key reading for students and researchers in stylistics, discourse studies, corpus linguistics, and interdisciplinary literary studies.

A Visit From the Goon Squad

A Visit From the Goon Squad PDF Author: Jennifer Egan
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 1849017409
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 309

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Book Description
WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION NEW YORK TIMES TOP 10 BOOKS OF 2010 Jennifer Egan's spellbinding novel circles the lives of Bennie Salazar, an ageing former punk rocker and record executive, and Sasha, the troubled young woman he employs. We first meet Sasha in her mid-thirties, on her therapist's couch in New York City, confronting her longstanding compulsion to steal. We meet Bennie at the melancholy nadir of his adult life - divorced, struggling to connect with his nine-year-old son, listening to a washed-up band in the basement of a suburban house. Although Bennie and Sasha never discover each other's pasts, the reader does, in intimate detail, along with the secret lives of a host of other characters whose paths intersect with theirs, over many years, in many places. With music pulsing on every page, this is a startling, exhilarating novel of self-destruction and redemption. Breathtaking work from one of our boldest writers. 'Irresistible. Fiction of the highest quality' Sunday Times 'Egan's precise, calm underwater prose is a persistent pleasure' Daily Telegraph 'Stories that defy narrative convention' Financial Times 'A must-read' Sunday Times

A Ranch to Keep

A Ranch to Keep PDF Author: Claire McEwen
Publisher: Harlequin
ISBN: 0373608292
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 380

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Book Description
What she planned...or what she wants? Samantha Rylant's life is coming together as planned--promising career, awesome friends, perfect boyfriend. Then she inherits her grandmother's ranch and sweet childhood memories come rushing back to her. Now this city girl is torn, wondering where she truly belongs. And the gorgeous cowboy down the lane is only complicating matters! Jack Baron and his handsome, aggravating self are around every corner offering a helping hand, sharing his unwanted opinions and in general messing with Sam's heart. The logical thing to do is to sell the ranch and return to San Francisco. But maybe this is one decision that requires the heart, not the head....

First Love, Last Rites

First Love, Last Rites PDF Author: Ian McEwan
Publisher: Rosetta Books
ISBN: 0795301898
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 166

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Book Description
Somerset Maugham Award winner: Dark early fiction by the author of Nutshell—“A splendid magician of fear” (The Village Voice Literary Supplement). Taut, brooding, and densely atmospheric, the stories here show us how murder can arise out of boredom, perversity from adolescent curiosity—and how sheer evil can become the solution to unbearable loneliness. These short fiction pieces from the early career of the New York Times–bestselling and Man Booker Prize–winning author of Atonement and On Chesil Beach are claustrophobic tales of childhood, twisted psychology, and disjointed family life as terrifying as anything by Stephen King—and finely crafted with a lyricism and an intensity that compels us to confront our secret kinship with what repels us. “A powerful talent that is both weird and wonderful.” —The Boston Sunday Globe “Ian McEwan’s fictional world combin[es] the bleak, dreamlike quality of de Chirico’s city-scapes with the strange eroticism of canvases by Balthus. Menace lies crouched between the lines of his neat, angular prose, and weird, grisly things occur in his books with nearly casual aplomb.” —The New York Times

Black Dogs

Black Dogs PDF Author: Ian McEwan
Publisher: Vintage Canada
ISBN: 0307367002
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 177

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Book Description
Set in late 1980s Europe at the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Black Dogs is the intimate story of the crumbling of Bernard and June Tremaine’s marriage, as witnessed by their son-in-law, Jeremy, who seeks to comprehend how their deep love could be defeated by ideological differences that seem irreconcilable. In writing June’s memoirs, Jeremy is led back to a moment, that was, for June, as devastating and irreversible in its consequences as the changes sweeping Europe in Jeremy’s own time. Ian McEwan weaves the sinister reality of civilization’s darkest moods—its black dogs—with the tensions that both create love and destroy it.