Buch | Kapitel
The voices in fiction
pp. 173-186
Abstrakt
Fiction is simultaneously the most fascinating and the most challenging object of timbre analysis. This chapter analyses how polyphony, narrative shifts, semantic and syntactic parallelism and other means of the language create a unique aesthetic in each individual piece of artistic writing and generate a recognizable timbre or the voice of the author, where he or she does not want to be too explicit. E.M. Forster, for instance, in his A Room with a View sets the scene in Florence where the two ladies seem to be displeased about the room they have in a pensione. But the dialogue is delicately interspersed with lexical elements used in describing a theatrical performance. When a reader succeeds in observing this fact he or she begins to hear new timbres in the voices of the protagonists and starts noticing the elements that were formerly beyond his or her attention, occupying the side line and going parallel to the main narrative. The experience of "hearing" this theatrical timbre in the reader's mind and perceiving the interplay of timbres related to scene-making discloses a new plane of cognition that is over and above a plain chain of events. Thus, the mental hearing of the text by the reader appears to be a totally new experience, when discovered, making the book the object of unfathomable attraction for the reader with a mental hold that makes a piece of writing totally unforgettable.
Publication details
Published in:
Konurbaev Marklen (2016) The style and timbre of English speech and literature. Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.
Seiten: 173-186
Referenz:
Konurbaev Marklen (2016) The voices in fiction, In: The style and timbre of English speech and literature, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 173–186.