"Complete with missing parts": modernist short fiction as interrogative text

Hunter, Adrian C. (1999) "Complete with missing parts": modernist short fiction as interrogative text. PhD thesis, University of Glasgow.

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Printed Thesis Information: https://eleanor.lib.gla.ac.uk/record=b1808580

Abstract

This thesis examines modernist short fiction in English from the 1890s to the 1980s, with particular reference to works by James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, Samuel Beckett and Donald Barthelme. The term 'interrogative' is evolved in the course of the study to describe the relationship of the reader and of interpretative discourse to the form. It is argued that the modernist story is marked by indeterminacy and a resistance to teleological structuration as a result of its narrative strategies of ellipsis, reticence and interdiction. Unlike those existing theories which emphasize 'unity' or 'ambiguity' in the short story, the interrogative approach takes as its starting point a post-Saussurean definition of language as differential and plurisignificant and uses this to demonstrate the form's constitutional resistance to determine critical exegesis.

Item Type: Thesis (PhD)
Qualification Level: Doctoral
Subjects: P Language and Literature > PR English literature
Colleges/Schools: College of Arts & Humanities > School of Critical Studies > English Literature
Supervisor's Name: Coyle, Dr. John
Date of Award: 1999
Depositing User: Elaine Ballantyne
Unique ID: glathesis:1999-3204
Copyright: Copyright of this thesis is held by the author.
Date Deposited: 17 Feb 2012
Last Modified: 10 Dec 2012 14:05
URI: https://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/3204

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