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Postmodern fiction brings forward those qualities that stray from a direct and clear
representation of the world. The qualities that are associated with postmodern fiction
such as metafiction, fragmentation, anti-authoritarianism, fusion of high and low
culture, irony, intertextuality, experimentation, pastiche and pluralism create stories that
are fragmented, self-reflexive, unreliable, challenging, and explorable. Such narratives
create reading experiences that require more participation in the process of making
meaning compared to linear narratives. Calling this quality that encourages the reader to
re-read the story in a narrative “cyclicality,” this thesis argues that In the Lake of the
Woods (1994) by Tim O’Brien, S. (2013) by Jeffrey Jacob Abrams and Doug Dorst, and
Only Revolutions (2006) by Mark Danielewski are postmodern texts which offer
varying degrees of cyclicality.
In analyzing the cyclicality in the novels mentioned, this study uses the framework
outlined in Gerard Genette’s Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method (1983), in
which Genette studies those aspects of a narrative that make it obscure. The first
category he points out is the “tense” of narration and the problematization of time in
relation to the text. The second is “mood” which focuses on the perspectives that
narrators assume in relaying the story. The third category is the “voice” of narration and
its relative position to the events in narrative, its narrative levels, metafictional qualities
and the narrating person. The final category is the narrative text and the novel’s
material reality. By focusing on these four categories, this thesis aims to analyze how
these novels create narratives that present cyclical reading experiences.
Künye
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