Studies in Literature and Culture. Volume 7

Grzegorz Maziarczyk
ISBN: 978-83-7702-645-8
Pages: 316
Format: 220 x 205 mm
Year: 2013
Language: English

This study is an inquiry into the elements that establish the physical presence of the novel as book in the world and constitute a material vehicle for a verbal message. It develops a theoretical framework for a medium-specific analysis of printed narrative fiction by combining the concepts derived from narratology, multimodal discourse analysis, semiotics and literary-theoretical accounts of the signifying potential of the printed codex.  It focuses on three basic levels of textual materiality - typeface, layout and book as physical object - as well as multimodal combinations of multiple semiotic resources and analyses their role in selected contemporary novels in English.
While the use of medium-focused devices is far from a completely new phenomenon in the history of narrative fiction, it is only at the turn of the 20^th and 21^st centuries that engagement with textual materiality became a clear tendency, observable not only in the literary avant-garde but also in mainstream fiction. Juxtaposing the books published in the 1960s and 1970s by B.S. Johnson, Raymond Federman and William H. Gass with the latest examples of typographically innovative fiction by such authors as Mark Z. Danielewski, Steve Tomasula and Graham Rawle, this study seeks not only to outline the full range of the materiality-centred strategies in contemporary fiction but also to chart the changes in their forms and functions from the 1960s to the current Digital Age.


TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. Towards a medium-specific analysis of printed  narrative fiction
Print and the history of the novel
Narratology and the question of medium
The medium vs. the mode
The multimodal novel
From graphic devices to hybrid texts
Metareference, iconicity and narrative functions
Conclusion
 
2. Typographic variations
Discursive fluctuations: Douglas Coupland's JPod
Alterations in perspective: Irvine Welsh's Marabou Stork Nightmares
The narrator as type(face): Graham Rawle's Woman's World
Conclusion
 
3. Spatial configurations
Typographic figures: Steven Hall's The Raw Shark Texts
Signifying absence: blank space in B. S. Johnson's House Mother Normal and Ronald Sukenick's Long Talking Bad Condition Blues
Split textualities: B. S. Johnson's Albert Angelo and J.M. Coetzee's Diary of a Bad Year
"Spatial displacement of words": Raymond Federman's Double or Nothing
Conclusion

4. Physical Objects
The double bind of form: Raymond Federman's The Voice in the Closet/La Voix dans le Cabinet de Debarras
The novel on the move: Mark Z. Danielewski's Only Revolutions
The novel in a box: B. S. Johnson's The Unfortunates
Conclusion

5. Multimodal combinations
The book as multimodal (dis)embodiment: William H. Gass's Willie Masters' Lonesome Wife
The book as house: Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves
The (post-)book as (post-)human body: Steve Tomasula's VAS: An Opera in Flatland
The book as (just) a multimodal medium: Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Conclusion

Conclusion

Works  cited
Summary in  Polish
Author index
Subject index