Andrea Macrae

Enhancing the critical apparatus for understanding metanarration: discourse deixis refined

Abstract This article explores the deictic functioning of metanarrative expressions in fiction. Current theoretical approaches to metanarration are reviewed, and classifying terminology revised. This critique enables the development of a more nuanced typology of metanarration, exposes the lack of linguistic analysis of the functioning of metanarrative expressions, and indicates the deictic contribution to this functioning. The role of deixis within metanarration is then further explicated. The category of discourse deixis is investigated and refined, and various subtypes of discourse deixis correlated with subtypes of metanarrative expressions. The analytical value of this approach is demonstrated through the study of discourse deixis in metanarrative extracts from Becketts (Pan Books, 1979 [1959]) The unnameable, Federmans (Fiction Collective, 1976) Take it or leave it and Barths (Random House, 1988 [1969]) Lost in the funhouse.

Positioning the Reader in Post-Apartheid Literature of Trauma: I and You in Zoë Wicomb’s David’s Story

This chapter investigates pronoun use in Zoe Wicomb’s David’s Story (2001). The narrator is the amanuensis of David, emerging from his role as a guerrilla anti-apartheid fighter, searching for his identity and place in the new South Africa. Tasked with writing David’s story, the narrator finds, submerged within his narrative, the story of Dulcie, a female fellow Griqua guerrilla fighter. Dulcie, however, is missing, a gap in the narrative, silenced and erased by David and absent from history. The novel traces the ethics and politics of the narrator’s use of ‘I’ and ‘you’ in her attempts to recuperate David’s story and within it Dulcie’s voice and place in the narratives at play.

Positions and Perspectives on Pronouns in Literature: The State of the Subject

This chapter serves as an introduction to the volume and an up-to-date review of the study of pronouns in literature. Firstly, we discuss the kinds of effects to which pronouns contribute in literary contexts, illustrating their interpretative significance and revealing their complex network of functions. This complexity leads us into the necessarily diverse array of scholarship which has to engaged with and analysed this functioning over the last 100 years. The next section of the introduction provides a historical overview of this scholarship, and outlines the latest developments and innovations in research into pronouns across a range of disciplines. Finally, the chapter introduces the structural logic of the volume, providing a summary of each contribution and highlighting the themes arching through the chapters.