A Rhetoric of the Unreal. Studies in Narrative and Structure, Especially of the Fantastic

Britton, Celia; Brooke-Rose, Christine

doi:10.2307/1772074

Cited by 24 publications

(7 citation statements)

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“…As highlighted by Todorov, modal expressions function at both the uttered (l'énoncé) and uttering (l'énonciation) levels to render the narrative ambiguous, thus arousing hesitation. Just as Brooke-Rose extends Todorov's notion of hesitation with two modes of rhetoric (the unreal as real, and the real as unreal 11 ), the effects of monstration and sideration are not content with figurative language on the brink of being taken literally. When the supernatural is present, modal expressions are not the only type of figurative language encountered; hypotyposis also plays a significant role.…”

Section: On the Threshold Between Hypotyposis And Metalepsis: The Möbmentioning

confidence: 96%

From Hypotyposis to Metalepsis: Narrative Devices in Contemporary Fantastic Fiction

Chen¹

2008

Forum for Modern Language Studies

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Post-Todorovian fantastic discourse extends Todorov's argument concerning the significance of taking figurative meanings literally. His assumption that the supernatural is born of language is extended to mean "language creates reality" or language refers to "another possible reality" thanks to the animated hypotyposis and metalepsis. The extreme representation of hypotyposis often brings forth metalepsis, which underlies Gérard Genette's treatise on metalepsis: from figure to fiction. Metalepsis can be employed to effect transgression on three different levels: that of the author and his/her product, that of the diegetic story and the hypodiegetic story, and, finally, that of the reader and the work. Contemporary fantastic fiction, revolving as it often does around the theme of books and stories, takes the figure of hypotyposis literally in order to transgress diegetic frames. The represented reader, who exists on the diegetic level, thus interferes on a hypodiegetic level in the work he/she is reading, or the hypodiegetic characters come out of the work read by diegetic characters to interfere in the diegetic fictional world. This article attempts to examine the functioning of these three different modes in a variety of literary texts. Firstly, in subscribing to the fantastic tradition of hesitation, the narrative Möbius strip of ambiguity emerges on the threshold between hypotyposis and metalepsis. Secondly, as the diegetic fantastic story intrudes into the intradiegetic narration, the mise en abyme becomes metaleptic. And finally, the magic metalepsis of words that spins a fantastic diegetic world is intruded into by existences on a hypodiegetic level.

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Section: On the Threshold Between Hypotyposis And Metalepsis: The Möbmentioning

confidence: 96%

From Hypotyposis to Metalepsis: Narrative Devices in Contemporary Fantastic Fiction

Chen¹

2008

Forum for Modern Language Studies

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“…Later, in 1982's A Rhetoric of the Unreal, she was able to conclude that 'man is now wholly decentralised', because the advances on modern physics throw the notion of an 'ordered, systemisable universe' into doubt. 23 She posits a world in which we are still experiencing the aftershocks of a series of scientific advances: 'After Einstein's equivalence of matter and energy, after de Broglie's dual nature of particle and light wave, after Planck's demonstration that energy is emitted in discontinuous quanta, and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle' (Rhetoric, p. 7). Again, she highlights how 'observable phenomena are affected by the instrument observing them' meaning that 'a certain tolerance of ambiguity was introduced into science, and man is now faced with a philosophy of indeterminacy' (Rhetoric, p. 7).…”

Section: A Certain Tolerance Of Ambiguity: the Uncertainty Principle mentioning

confidence: 99%

Indeterminate Brooke-Rose

Jordan

2017

Textual Practice

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Christine Brooke-Rose is fascinated by the notion of indeterminacy, and throughout her career draws parallels between the science of uncertainty and the shifts in thinking engendered by quantum theory and the experimental literature of the sixties and seventies. Indeterminacy is an ambiguous term when applied to the literary text. If we call a text indeterminate we might mean that it has contradictory meanings or is open to multiple, equally weighted, possible interpretations, ones which the text itself does nothing to resolve. Here I offer a reading of Brooke-Rose's novel Such (1966) which argues that the novel is less indeterminate than it is about indeterminacy; that it does not so much present ambiguous or contradictory interpretive lines as offer a reflection on what the act of interpretation does, and what it might make happen; that it does not withhold knowledge from the reader so much as make the reader question the ways in which knowledge is itself implicated in the world around us. In the end the novel offers us what amounts to an ethics of indeterminacy, suggesting that we should be wary of all acts of interpretation, and alert to their potential for malignity or invasiveness.

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“…What is more troubling than their treatment of Hellboy, however, is that the intense beauty of the elemental's death—undoubtedly the most inspired scene in the film—is lost on them. As Christine Brook‐Rose argues, “Never before; it is felt, has man been so squarely faced with the possible annihilation of mankind and all his works, his planet and perhaps more,” but “into a mere backdrop, apocalyptic no doubt, but a backdrop we cease to see” (Brook‐Rose 8–9). In an analysis of ideology, Slvoj Zizek claims that “it seems easier to imagine ‘the end of the world’ than a far more modest change in the mode of production, as if liberal capitalism is the ‘real’ that will somehow survive even under conditions of global ecological catastrophe” (55).…”

Section: Demonizing the Humanmentioning

confidence: 99%

Remembering Why We Once Feared the Dark: Reclaiming Humanity Through Fantasy in Guillermo del Toro's Hellboy II

Vinci¹

2012

The J of Popular Culture

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A Rhetoric of the Unreal. Studies in Narrative and Structure, Especially of the Fantastic

Cited by 24 publications

References 0 publications

From Hypotyposis to Metalepsis: Narrative Devices in Contemporary Fantastic Fiction

From Hypotyposis to Metalepsis: Narrative Devices in Contemporary Fantastic Fiction

Indeterminate Brooke-Rose

Remembering Why We Once Feared the Dark: Reclaiming Humanity Through Fantasy in Guillermo del Toro's Hellboy II

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