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Covert modernist techniques in Australian fiction
- Source :
- Language, Context and Text. 1:313-340
- Publication Year :
- 2019
- Publisher :
- John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2019.
-
Abstract
- Peter Carey’s short story American dreams (Carey 1994 [1974]) presents a recalibration of consciousness as a small Australian town gradually becomes Americanized. The text foregrounds epistemological concerns by demonstrating a clear tendency toward delayed understanding. For this reason, I argue that the story is an instance of modernist fiction: a label not previously applied to Carey’s stories. In contrast with popular modernist techniques such as free indirect discourse and stream of consciousness, the techniques presented in the text appear to be covert, which may at least partially explain why the story has managed to avoid being labelled modernist by literary critics until now. Using analytical tools grounded in systemic functional grammar and appraisal categories, I demonstrate how linguistic analysis can lay bare the covert modernist techniques at work in the story, indicating that such an approach can be a useful complement to non-linguistic literary criticism.
- Subjects :
- 050101 languages & linguistics
media_common.quotation_subject
05 social sciences
050401 social sciences methods
Art
Free indirect speech
0504 sociology
Covert
Aesthetics
Reading (process)
Systemic functional grammar
Literary criticism
0501 psychology and cognitive sciences
Consciousness
Complement (linguistics)
Stream of consciousness (psychology)
media_common
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 25897241 and 25897233
- Volume :
- 1
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Language, Context and Text
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi...........ef9f463cfdcbce242059a9312f9b9cfe