Title: Writing and Reading: Intertextuality and the Anxieties of Inter pretation in Mark McWatt's Suspended Sentences 1
Abstract:In this paper I am paying critical attention to two short stories from Mark McWatt's first prose work, Suspended Sentences (2005) - Still Life: Bougainvilla and Body Parts and Tyranny of Influence to ...In this paper I am paying critical attention to two short stories from Mark McWatt's first prose work, Suspended Sentences (2005) - Still Life: Bougainvilla and Body Parts and Tyranny of Influence to demonstrate the ways that they thematise influence (the need to create) writing (the work that goes into the creative process), and reading (the challenge and anxieties of interpretation). In my analysis of these stories I will show how they dramatise the twin processes of form and content, and writing and reading within an intertextual framework. The stories in this collection are intertextual not only with other literary sources, but also contain images (both literally and implied) imported from the extra-literary arts, in this case, painting. This is seen in McWatt's use of an interarts dialogue in the stories mentioned above where the use of painting forms not only a framing device for the stories but also works as an example of pleonasm or self-reflexive or self-conscious representation. While the painting described in Still Life forms the denouement of the story, that in Tyranny, namely, Antonello Da Messina's Dead Christ, Supported by an Angel, provides the setting and backdrop for the story - the plot unfolds inside of the painting. By employing such intertextuality in these stories, the narratives open a space that is more suited to the inclusion of the characters'/surrogate authors' use of memory, imagination and perception and the revitalisation of the hermeneutic role of the reader as integrated critic. I refer also to the ways that the stories (and the entire text), in illustrating the work of the writer and the creative process, draw on a number of sources and influences within what may be referred to as a cross cultural complex (Harris 1983: 3).Read More
Publication Year: 2016
Publication Date: 2016-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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