<i>Ekphrasis</i>and the novel: the presence of paintings in John Banville's fiction

McMinn, Joseph

doi:10.1080/02666286.2002.10404984

Cited by 6 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…Banville's eighth novel Ghosts (1993) has been analysed with reference to the predominant critical paradigms normally applied to his fiction: meditations on creativity (Hand 2002), metafictionality and the narcissism of fiction (Mc-Minn 1999;O'Connell 2013), affinities between writing and the visual arts (McMinn 2002;D'hoker 2004), the problem of selfhood and the self's mode of being in the world (D'hoker 2004). Joseph McMinn detects in Banville's fiction a progression "from a mythology of science to one of art" and argues that the "art trilogy" -of which Ghosts is the middle part -"charts [the narrator's] growing uncertainty about the necessary difference between art and reality, authenticity and fakery" (1999: 12).…”

Section: "Something In Between"mentioning

confidence: 99%

John Banville’s „Ghosts”: “A different way of being alive”

Kucała¹

2017

awr

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This article analyses the ontological status of the characters who inhabit the world of John Banville’s novel Ghosts. While the problem of volatile selfhood recurs in Banville’s fiction, in this novel the very existence of the characters within the fictional world remains doubtful. It is argued here that the numerous metafictional elements in the text are central to its interpretation. The novel itself should be treated as a work in progress or a design for a novel rather than a completed project. The narrative initiates and ultimately resists familiar patterns; the characters’ peculiar way of being alive seems to stem from an intersection of empirical reality and an obscure realm of fantasy, imagination as well as textual and artistic allusions. Correspondingly, the narrator’s status as a literary character is ambiguous. The article suggests that the narrator is the most likely creator of the characters within the fictional world and is himself a playful author-substitute in the novel. In conclusion, a reading that treats Ghosts as a postmodern artefact appears to provide a viable framework for resolving the apparent contradictions and ambiguities in the status of the characters.

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Section: "Something In Between"mentioning

confidence: 99%