"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.

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