Brian McHale, Postmodernist Fiction (1987) - Revision history

Olaf Simons at 11:25, 20 April 2008

2008-04-20T11:25:26Z

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	[[Category:1980s\|1987]]		[[Category:1980s\|1987]]
	[[Category:By author\|McHale, Brian]]		[[Category:By author\|McHale, Brian]]
	[[Category:~~On Literature~~\|1987]]		[[Category:Secondary sources\|1987]]

Olaf Simons at 15:45, 17 January 2008

2008-01-17T15:45:29Z

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	[[Category:1980s\|1987]]		[[Category:1980s\|1987]]
	[[Category:By author\|McHale, Brian]]		[[Category:By author\|McHale, Brian]]
			[[Category:On Literature\|1987]]

Anna Auguscik: /* 14: Love and death in the post-modernist novel */

2007-12-14T10:08:31Z

14: Love and death in the post-modernist novel

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	*219 - "Postmodern fiction, if critics such as John Gardner, Gerald Graff, and Charles Newman are to be believe, is morally bad art, and tends to corrupt its readers. It does so by denying external, objective reality. There was a time when denying the reality of the outside world could be seen as a bold gesture of resistance, a refusal to acquiesce in a coercive 'bourgeois' order of things. But that time has passed, and nowadays everything in our culture tends to deny reality and promote unreality, in the interests of maintaining high levels of consumption. It is no longer official reality which is coercive, but official ''unreality''; and postmodernist fiction, instead of resisting this coercive unreality, acquiesces in it, or even ''celebrates'' it. This means, ironically enough, that postmodernist fiction, for all its anti-realism, actually continues to be mimetic."		*219 - "Postmodern fiction, if critics such as John Gardner, Gerald Graff, and Charles Newman are to be believe, is morally bad art, and tends to corrupt its readers. It does so by denying external, objective reality. There was a time when denying the reality of the outside world could be seen as a bold gesture of resistance, a refusal to acquiesce in a coercive 'bourgeois' order of things. But that time has passed, and nowadays everything in our culture tends to deny reality and promote unreality, in the interests of maintaining high levels of consumption. It is no longer official reality which is coercive, but official ''unreality''; and postmodernist fiction, instead of resisting this coercive unreality, acquiesces in it, or even ''celebrates'' it. This means, ironically enough, that postmodernist fiction, for all its anti-realism, actually continues to be mimetic."
	*220 - "Everyone know now that the conventions of nineteenth-century fiction were just that, conventions, and not a transparent window on reality, and that there are other, equally legitimate means of getting access to the real besides Victorian realism." "In other words, writing is acceptably antirealistic only if it stands in some fairly explicit and direct relation to a form of realism."		*220 - "Everyone know now that the conventions of nineteenth-century fiction were just that, conventions, and not a transparent window on reality, and that there are other, equally legitimate means of getting access to the real besides Victorian realism." "In other words, writing is acceptably antirealistic only if it stands in some fairly explicit and direct relation to a form of realism."
	*222 - "Postmodernist fiction may e antirealistic, but antirealism is not its sole object of representation. Indeed, two of the favored themes to which it returns obsessively are about as deeply colored with 'traditional' literary values as anyone could wish. What could be more traditional than love and death?"		*222 - "Postmodernist fiction may be antirealistic, but antirealism is not its sole object of representation. Indeed, two of the favored themes to which it returns obsessively are about as deeply colored with 'traditional' literary values as anyone could wish. What could be more traditional than love and death?"
	====Love...====		====Love...====
	*222 - "Love as a principle of fiction is, in at least two of its senses, metaleptic. If authors love their characters, and if texts seduce their readers, then these relations involve violations of ontological boundaries."		*222 - "Love as a principle of fiction is, in at least two of its senses, metaleptic. If authors love their characters, and if texts seduce their readers, then these relations involve violations of ontological boundaries."
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	====Coda: the sense of Joyce's endings====		====Coda: the sense of Joyce's endings====
	*McHale suggests that while the endings of Joyce's "The Dead" from ''Dubliners'' and ''Ulysses'' are modernist portrayals of death because they emphasise representations of minds rather than representations of death and the world around the characters' minds is ontologically unproblematic, the ending of his ''Finnegans Wake'' is postmodernist because it [235] "models not only the ontological limit of death, but also the dream of a return", i.e. the last sentence breaks off in the middle and is continued with the first sentence of the novel.		*McHale suggests that while the endings of Joyce's "The Dead" from ''Dubliners'' and ''Ulysses'' are modernist portrayals of death because they emphasise representations of minds rather than representations of death and the world around the characters' minds is ontologically unproblematic, the ending of his ''Finnegans Wake'' is postmodernist because it [235] "models not only the ontological limit of death, but also the dream of a return", i.e. the last sentence breaks off in the middle and is continued with the first sentence of the novel.

	==Comment==		==Comment==

Anna Auguscik: /* Possible worlds */

2007-12-14T09:47:20Z

Possible worlds

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	#The stratum of schematized aspects		#The stratum of schematized aspects
	====Possible worlds====		====Possible worlds====
	*33 - As fiction is between belief and disbelief, "readers do not evaluate the logical possibility of the propositions they ~~fin~~ in literary texts in the light of the actual world […] but rather abandon the actual world and adopt (temporarily) the ''ontological perspective'' of the literary work" [cf. Thomas Pavel]. McHale uses the distinction of necessity, possibility and impossibility to discuss Umberto Eco's and Thomas Pavel's concepts.		*33 - As fiction is between belief and disbelief, "readers do not evaluate the logical possibility of the propositions they find in literary texts in the light of the actual world […] but rather abandon the actual world and adopt (temporarily) the ''ontological perspective'' of the literary work" [cf. Thomas Pavel]. McHale uses the distinction of necessity, possibility and impossibility to discuss Umberto Eco's and Thomas Pavel's concepts.
	*34 - "It is the tension and disparity among various characters' subworlds, and between their subworlds and the fictional 'real' world, that formed the basis of modernist and, before that, realist epistemological poetics." McHale uses the metaphor of fiction's semipermeable, instead of impermeable, epidermis.		*34 - "It is the tension and disparity among various characters' subworlds, and between their subworlds and the fictional 'real' world, that formed the basis of modernist and, before that, realist epistemological poetics." McHale uses the metaphor of fiction's semipermeable, instead of impermeable, epidermis.
	*35 - "what romantic irony always aims to accomplish: it foregrounds ontological boundaries and ontological structure" - [cf. definition of postmodern historical novels]		*35 - "what romantic irony always aims to accomplish: it foregrounds ontological boundaries and ontological structure" - [cf. definition of postmodern historical novels]
	*36 - "So entities can pass back and forth across the semipermeable membrane between two texts, as well as between the real world and the world of fiction."		*36 - "So entities can pass back and forth across the semipermeable membrane between two texts, as well as between the real world and the world of fiction."

	====The social construction of (un)reality====		====The social construction of (un)reality====
	*37 - "the postmodernist condition: an anarchic landscape of worlds in the plural"; McHale uses the sociological perspective of Berger and Luckmann who "regard reality as a kind of collective fiction",		*37 - "the postmodernist condition: an anarchic landscape of worlds in the plural"; McHale uses the sociological perspective of Berger and Luckmann who "regard reality as a kind of collective fiction",

Anna Auguscik: /* Pynchon */

2007-12-14T09:38:21Z

Pynchon

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	*21 - "Here characters of different and incompatible ontological statuses - real-world historical figures, corporate trade-marks […] and national symbols […], purely fictional characters - have been gathered together in an impossible, heterotopian locus which is also,		*21 - "Here characters of different and incompatible ontological statuses - real-world historical figures, corporate trade-marks […] and national symbols […], purely fictional characters - have been gathered together in an impossible, heterotopian locus which is also,
	====Pynchon====		====Pynchon====
	*21 - "in a stylization, the dominant of the original ~~8the~~ model being stylized) is preserved, while in parody it is not"		*21 - "in a stylization, the dominant of the original (the model being stylized) is preserved, while in parody it is not"
	*25 - Based on a phrase by Annie Dillard, McHale concludes that postmodernist fiction "gives us a pretext for doing unlicensed ontology in a teacup".		*25 - Based on a phrase by Annie Dillard, McHale concludes that postmodernist fiction "gives us a pretext for doing unlicensed ontology in a teacup".

	=== 2: Some ontologies of fiction===		=== 2: Some ontologies of fiction===
	*27 - McHale suggests to move from philosophical thematics - which "will only tell us that there ''is'' foregrounding; it will not tell us how this foregrounding has been accomplished, what strategies have been deployed - to poetical thematics. Also, he uses Thomas Pavel's definition of ontology as 'a theoretical description of a universe' with emphasis on the indefinite articles.		*27 - McHale suggests to move from philosophical thematics - which "will only tell us that there ''is'' foregrounding; it will not tell us how this foregrounding has been accomplished, what strategies have been deployed - to poetical thematics. Also, he uses Thomas Pavel's definition of ontology as 'a theoretical description of a universe' with emphasis on the indefinite articles.

Anna Auguscik: /* Something exists */

2007-12-03T16:07:29Z

<s>Something exists</s>

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	*101 - Contrary to postmodernist fiction, "cancelled events of modernist fiction occur in one or other character's subjective domain or subworld, not in the projected world of the text as such." [cf. Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses (1988)]		*101 - Contrary to postmodernist fiction, "cancelled events of modernist fiction occur in one or other character's subjective domain or subworld, not in the projected world of the text as such." [cf. Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses (1988)]
	====<s>Something exists</s>====		====<s>Something exists</s>====
	*103 - "Narrated events, then, can be un-narrated, ~~place~~ ''sous rature''; and, in much the same way, projected ''existents'' - locales, objects, characters, and so on - can have their existence revoked. The effect is most acute, of course, in the case of characters, since it is especially through projected people that the reader becomes involved in the fictional world."		*103 - "Narrated events, then, can be un-narrated, placed ''sous rature''; and, in much the same way, projected ''existents'' - locales, objects, characters, and so on - can have their existence revoked. The effect is most acute, of course, in the case of characters, since it is especially through projected people that the reader becomes involved in the fictional world."

	====Excluded middles, forking paths====		====Excluded middles, forking paths====
	*106 - McHale argues that Umberto Eco's explanation of texts which welcome the third alternative as subversive acts, "fails to capture the full ontological peculiarity of a world in which events apparently both do and do not happen, or in which the same event happens in two irreconcilably different ways."		*106 - McHale argues that Umberto Eco's explanation of texts which welcome the third alternative as subversive acts, "fails to capture the full ontological peculiarity of a world in which events apparently both do and do not happen, or in which the same event happens in two irreconcilably different ways."

Anton Kirchhofer: /* 8: Chinese-box worlds */

2007-12-03T13:39:40Z

8: Chinese-box worlds

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	*109 - Pre-modernist texts conventionally display a closed, modernist an open and postmodernist multiple or circular endings.		*109 - Pre-modernist texts conventionally display a closed, modernist an open and postmodernist multiple or circular endings.
	=== 8: Chinese-box worlds===		=== 8: Chinese-box worlds===
	*113 - McHale argues that recursive structures (e.g. the multiplication of hypodiegetic levels after ~~Gennette~~) are being foregrounded in postmodernist fiction through the employment of several strategies: they may occur very often, [114] they "may raise the spectre of a vertiginous infinite regress. Or they may dupe the reader into mistaking a representation at one narrative level for a representation at a lower or (more typically) higher level, production an effect of ''trompe-l'œil''. Or they may be subjected to various transgression of the logic of narrative levels, short-circuiting the recursive structure. Or, finally, a representation may be embedded within itself, transforming a recursive structure into a structure ''en abyme''. The consequence of all these disquieting puzzles and paradoxes is to foreground the ontological dimensions of the Chinese box of fiction."		*113 - McHale argues that recursive structures (e.g. the multiplication of hypodiegetic levels after Genette) are being foregrounded in postmodernist fiction through the employment of several strategies: they may occur very often, [114] they "may raise the spectre of a vertiginous infinite regress. Or they may dupe the reader into mistaking a representation at one narrative level for a representation at a lower or (more typically) higher level, production an effect of ''trompe-l'œil''. Or they may be subjected to various transgression of the logic of narrative levels, short-circuiting the recursive structure. Or, finally, a representation may be embedded within itself, transforming a recursive structure into a structure ''en abyme''. The consequence of all these disquieting puzzles and paradoxes is to foreground the ontological dimensions of the Chinese box of fiction."
	====Toward infinite regress====		====Toward infinite regress====
	====''Trompe-l'œil ''====		====''Trompe-l'œil ''====
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	*130 - "Introduced as one level in the text's ontological structure, the movies thus serve as the background for spectacular metalepses, violations of the ontological hierarchy which foreground postmodernism's ontological themes (including the theme of control)."		*130 - "Introduced as one level in the text's ontological structure, the movies thus serve as the background for spectacular metalepses, violations of the ontological hierarchy which foreground postmodernism's ontological themes (including the theme of control)."
	Part Four: Words		Part Four: Words

	=== 9: Tropological worlds===		=== 9: Tropological worlds===
	====Hesitation revisited====		====Hesitation revisited====

Anton Kirchhofer: /* The dominant */

2007-12-03T13:31:53Z

The dominant

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	====The dominant====		====The dominant====
	*7 - Instead of turning to a catalogue of postmodernist features (quotes David Lodge, Ihab Hassan, Peter Wollen's binary definitions of modern and post-modern), he opts for the conceptual tool of the dominant (cf. Roman Jacobson) in order not to view the two as oppositions but to show the transitions between them.		*7 - Instead of turning to a catalogue of postmodernist features (quotes David Lodge, Ihab Hassan, Peter Wollen's binary definitions of modern and post-modern), he opts for the conceptual tool of the dominant (cf. Roman Jacobson) in order not to view the two as oppositions but to show the transitions between them.
	*9 - Example of William Faulkner's ''Absalom! Absalom!''. "I will formulate it as a general thesis about '''modernist fiction''': the dominant of modernist fiction is ''epistemological''. That is, modernist fiction deploys strategies which engage and foreground questions such as those mentioned by Dick Higgins in my epigraph: 'How can I interpret this world of which I am a part? And what am I in it?' Other typical modernist questions might be added: What is there to be known?; Who ~~know~~ it?; How do they know it, and with what degree of certainty?; How is knowledge transmitted from one knower to another, and with what degree of reliability?; How does the object of knowledge change as it passes from knower to knower?; What are the limits of the knowable? And so on." The above mentioned questions are handled "through the use of characteristically modernist (or epistemological) devices: the multiplication and juxtaposition of perspectives, the focalization of all the evidence through a single 'center of consciousness' […], virtuoso variants on interior monologue […] ,and so on."		*9 - Example of William Faulkner's ''Absalom! Absalom!''. "I will formulate it as a general thesis about '''modernist fiction''': the dominant of modernist fiction is ''epistemological''. That is, modernist fiction deploys strategies which engage and foreground questions such as those mentioned by Dick Higgins in my epigraph: 'How can I interpret this world of which I am a part? And what am I in it?' Other typical modernist questions might be added: What is there to be known?; Who knows it?; How do they know it, and with what degree of certainty?; How is knowledge transmitted from one knower to another, and with what degree of reliability?; How does the object of knowledge change as it passes from knower to knower?; What are the limits of the knowable? And so on." The above mentioned questions are handled "through the use of characteristically modernist (or epistemological) devices: the multiplication and juxtaposition of perspectives, the focalization of all the evidence through a single 'center of consciousness' […], virtuoso variants on interior monologue […] ,and so on."
	*10 - Faulkner's novel crosses the boundary between modernist and postmodernist because it shifts its "dominant from problems of ''knowing'' to problems of ''modes of being''. "This brings me to a second general thesis, this time about '''postmodernist fiction''': the dominant of postmodernist fiction is ''ontological''. That is, postmodernist fiction deploys strategies which engage and foreground questions like the ones Dick Higgins calls 'post-cognitive': 'Which world is this? What is to be done in it? Which of my selves is to do it?' Other typical postmodernist questions bear either on the ontology of the literary text itself or on the ontology of the world which it projects, for instance. What is a world?; What kinds of world are there, how are they constituted, and how do they differ?; what happens when different kinds of world are placed in confrontation, or when boundaries between worlds are violated?; What is the mode of existence of a text, and what is the mode of existence of the world (or worlds) it projects?; How is a projected world structured? And so on."		*10 - Faulkner's novel crosses the boundary between modernist and postmodernist because it shifts its "dominant from problems of ''knowing'' to problems of ''modes of being''. "This brings me to a second general thesis, this time about '''postmodernist fiction''': the dominant of postmodernist fiction is ''ontological''. That is, postmodernist fiction deploys strategies which engage and foreground questions like the ones Dick Higgins calls 'post-cognitive': 'Which world is this? What is to be done in it? Which of my selves is to do it?' Other typical postmodernist questions bear either on the ontology of the literary text itself or on the ontology of the world which it projects, for instance. What is a world?; What kinds of world are there, how are they constituted, and how do they differ?; what happens when different kinds of world are placed in confrontation, or when boundaries between worlds are violated?; What is the mode of existence of a text, and what is the mode of existence of the world (or worlds) it projects?; How is a projected world structured? And so on."
	*11 - The above mentioned definitions are to be seen from the perspective of the dominant, i.e. it is not a question of either or but rather that of which set of questions is to be asked first, i.e. both sets need to be asked, they are "bidirectional and reversible".		*11 - The above mentioned definitions are to be seen from the perspective of the dominant, i.e. it is not a question of either or but rather that of which set of questions is to be asked first, i.e. both sets need to be asked, they are "bidirectional and reversible".

	====Beckett====		====Beckett====
	*13 - When a text can be looked at from two angles, at one time displaying a focus on epistemological issues, at another on ontological issues, McHale speaks of "limit-modernist", or "late-modernism".		*13 - When a text can be looked at from two angles, at one time displaying a focus on epistemological issues, at another on ontological issues, McHale speaks of "limit-modernist", or "late-modernism".

Anna Auguscik at 09:47, 3 December 2007

2007-12-03T09:47:25Z

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	*196 - "Indeed, the workings of ''all'' postmodernist world-making machines are visible, in one way or another, to one degree or another; this, precisely, is what makes them postmodernist."		*196 - "Indeed, the workings of ''all'' postmodernist world-making machines are visible, in one way or another, to one degree or another; this, precisely, is what makes them postmodernist."
	===13: Authors: dead and posthumous===		===13: Authors: dead and posthumous===
	*197 - "The author occupies an ontological level superior to the world; by breaking the frame around his world, the author foreground hi own superior reality. The metafictional gesture of ~~fram~~-breaking is, in other words, a form of superrealism."		*197 - "The author occupies an ontological level superior to the world; by breaking the frame around his world, the author foreground hi own superior reality. The metafictional gesture of frame-breaking is, in other words, a form of superrealism."
	*198 - "In an effort to stabilize this dizzying upward spiral of fictions, metafictions, meta-metafictions, and so to infinite regress, various postmodernist writers have tried introducing into their texts what appears to be the one irreducibly real reality in their performance as writing - namely, the act of writing itself."		*198 - "In an effort to stabilize this dizzying upward spiral of fictions, metafictions, meta-metafictions, and so to infinite regress, various postmodernist writers have tried introducing into their texts what appears to be the one irreducibly real reality in their performance as writing - namely, the act of writing itself."
	====The dead author====		====The dead author====
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	*230 - "[…] other postmodernist writers have attempted to imagine transcendence; filibustering fate even beyond the supposedly ultimate limit of death itself, they project discourse ''into'' death. Here is one of the most serious functions of the fantastic in postmodernist writing, this attempt to imagine a posthumous discourse, a voice from beyond the grave."		*230 - "[…] other postmodernist writers have attempted to imagine transcendence; filibustering fate even beyond the supposedly ultimate limit of death itself, they project discourse ''into'' death. Here is one of the most serious functions of the fantastic in postmodernist writing, this attempt to imagine a posthumous discourse, a voice from beyond the grave."
	*231 - "In other words, postmodernist fiction is ''about'' death in a way that other writing, of other periods, is not. Indeed, insofar as postmodernist fiction foregrounds ontological themes and ontological structure, we might say that it is ''always'' about death. Death is the one ontological boundary that we are all certain to experience, the only one we shall al inevitably have to cross. In as sense, every ontological boundary is an analogue or metaphor of death; so foregrounding ontological boundaries is a means of foregrounding death, of making death, the unthinkable, available to the imagination, if only in a displace way."		*231 - "In other words, postmodernist fiction is ''about'' death in a way that other writing, of other periods, is not. Indeed, insofar as postmodernist fiction foregrounds ontological themes and ontological structure, we might say that it is ''always'' about death. Death is the one ontological boundary that we are all certain to experience, the only one we shall al inevitably have to cross. In as sense, every ontological boundary is an analogue or metaphor of death; so foregrounding ontological boundaries is a means of foregrounding death, of making death, the unthinkable, available to the imagination, if only in a displace way."
	*232 - "So perhaps this reputedly nonserious and irresponsible form of writing turns out to be 'about' something after all, and something supremely serious, at that. […] Postmodernist writing ~~enable~~ us to experiment with imagining our own death, to ''rehearse'' our own death. We have all but lost the ''ars moriendi''; we no longer have anyone to teach us how to die well, or at leas no one we can trust or take seriously. Postmodernist writing may be one of our last resources for preparing ourselves, in imagination, for the single act which we must assuredly all perform unaided, with no hope of doing it over if we get it wrong the first time."		*232 - "So perhaps this reputedly nonserious and irresponsible form of writing turns out to be 'about' something after all, and something supremely serious, at that. […] Postmodernist writing enables us to experiment with imagining our own death, to ''rehearse'' our own death. We have all but lost the ''ars moriendi''; we no longer have anyone to teach us how to die well, or at leas no one we can trust or take seriously. Postmodernist writing may be one of our last resources for preparing ourselves, in imagination, for the single act which we must assuredly all perform unaided, with no hope of doing it over if we get it wrong the first time."
	====Coda: the sense of Joyce's endings====		====Coda: the sense of Joyce's endings====
	*McHale suggests that while the endings of Joyce's "The Dead" from ''Dubliners'' and ''Ulysses'' are modernist portrayals of death because they emphasise representations of minds rather than representations of death and the world around the characters' minds is ontologically unproblematic, the ending of his ''Finnegans Wake'' is postmodernist because it [235] "models not only the ontological limit of death, but also the dream of a return", i.e. the last sentence breaks off in the middle and is continued with the first sentence of the novel.		*McHale suggests that while the endings of Joyce's "The Dead" from ''Dubliners'' and ''Ulysses'' are modernist portrayals of death because they emphasise representations of minds rather than representations of death and the world around the characters' minds is ontologically unproblematic, the ending of his ''Finnegans Wake'' is postmodernist because it [235] "models not only the ontological limit of death, but also the dream of a return", i.e. the last sentence breaks off in the middle and is continued with the first sentence of the novel.

Anna Auguscik at 09:42, 3 December 2007

2007-12-03T09:42:51Z

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	Part Six: How I learned to stop worrying and love postmodernism		Part Six: How I learned to stop worrying and love postmodernism
	===14: Love and death in the post-modernist novel===		===14: Love and death in the post-modernist novel===
			*219 - "Postmodern fiction, if critics such as John Gardner, Gerald Graff, and Charles Newman are to be believe, is morally bad art, and tends to corrupt its readers. It does so by denying external, objective reality. There was a time when denying the reality of the outside world could be seen as a bold gesture of resistance, a refusal to acquiesce in a coercive 'bourgeois' order of things. But that time has passed, and nowadays everything in our culture tends to deny reality and promote unreality, in the interests of maintaining high levels of consumption. It is no longer official reality which is coercive, but official ''unreality''; and postmodernist fiction, instead of resisting this coercive unreality, acquiesces in it, or even ''celebrates'' it. This means, ironically enough, that postmodernist fiction, for all its anti-realism, actually continues to be mimetic."
			*220 - "Everyone know now that the conventions of nineteenth-century fiction were just that, conventions, and not a transparent window on reality, and that there are other, equally legitimate means of getting access to the real besides Victorian realism." "In other words, writing is acceptably antirealistic only if it stands in some fairly explicit and direct relation to a form of realism."
			*222 - "Postmodernist fiction may e antirealistic, but antirealism is not its sole object of representation. Indeed, two of the favored themes to which it returns obsessively are about as deeply colored with 'traditional' literary values as anyone could wish. What could be more traditional than love and death?"
	====Love...====		====Love...====
			*222 - "Love as a principle of fiction is, in at least two of its senses, metaleptic. If authors love their characters, and if texts seduce their readers, then these relations involve violations of ontological boundaries."
			*223 - "The changed function of metaleptic relation in postmodernist writing can be traced through the changing fortunes of the second-person pronoun: ''you''. […] The second-person pronoun does occur in modernist and late-modernist contexts, but in such a way as to lose its function of direct address."
			*224 - "Postmodernist writing extends and deepens this aura of the uncanny, exploiting the relational potential of the second-person pronoun. The post-modernist second-person functions as an invitation to the reader to project himself or herself into the gap opened in the discourse by the presence of ''you''."
			*225 - "If a metaleptic relation is to be sustained with the reader by means of the second-person pronoun throughout a long text, various contextual strategies will have to be brought to bear: the inherent 'shiftiness' of ''you'' will have to be exploited to its utmost. This strategic shiftiness produces a kind of 'hovering' or 'floating' ''you'', one in which equivocation is kept alive and in the foreground to the end of the text, and the reader continues to be able to project himself or herself into the discourse-situation."
			*226 - "Postmodernist representations of sadomasochism function as models of the 'sadistic' relation between text and reader; here the metaleptic relation with the reader is mirrored by the text's content. […] Metalepsis, the violation of ontological boundaries, is a model or mirror of love. Implicit in the postmodernist use of the second person, this analogy is actually made explicit in certain texts."
			*227 - "It should be clear now what I mean when I say postmodernist writing is 'about' love. I am not so much interested in its potential for representing love between fictional characters, or for investigating the theme of love […], as in its ''modeling'' of erotic relations through foregrounded violations of ontological boundaries […]. Love, then, is less an object of representation than a ''meta''object, less a theme than a ''meta''theme. It characterizes not the fictional interactions ''in'' the text's world, but rather the interactions ''between'' the text and its world on the one hand, and the reader and his or her world on the other."
	====...and death====		====...and death====
			*228 - "[…] death is more typically functional: it set stories going […] or, of course, brings them to an end. To put it differently, death often marks the ''limits'' of the representation." "The modernist and late-modernist death-bed monologue not only continues and transforms the Victorian death-scene tradition, it also revives a much older ''topos'' of death and fiction, that of ''les hommes-récit'', story-persons." E.g. Scheherazade. "When modernist and late-modernist monologuists filibuster fate, the 'archaic' equation of life with discourse, death with silence remains more or less in the background; the postmodernist bring it into the foreground."
			*230 - "[…] other postmodernist writers have attempted to imagine transcendence; filibustering fate even beyond the supposedly ultimate limit of death itself, they project discourse ''into'' death. Here is one of the most serious functions of the fantastic in postmodernist writing, this attempt to imagine a posthumous discourse, a voice from beyond the grave."
			*231 - "In other words, postmodernist fiction is ''about'' death in a way that other writing, of other periods, is not. Indeed, insofar as postmodernist fiction foregrounds ontological themes and ontological structure, we might say that it is ''always'' about death. Death is the one ontological boundary that we are all certain to experience, the only one we shall al inevitably have to cross. In as sense, every ontological boundary is an analogue or metaphor of death; so foregrounding ontological boundaries is a means of foregrounding death, of making death, the unthinkable, available to the imagination, if only in a displace way."
			*232 - "So perhaps this reputedly nonserious and irresponsible form of writing turns out to be 'about' something after all, and something supremely serious, at that. […] Postmodernist writing enable us to experiment with imagining our own death, to ''rehearse'' our own death. We have all but lost the ''ars moriendi''; we no longer have anyone to teach us how to die well, or at leas no one we can trust or take seriously. Postmodernist writing may be one of our last resources for preparing ourselves, in imagination, for the single act which we must assuredly all perform unaided, with no hope of doing it over if we get it wrong the first time."
	====Coda: the sense of Joyce's endings====		====Coda: the sense of Joyce's endings====
			*McHale suggests that while the endings of Joyce's "The Dead" from ''Dubliners'' and ''Ulysses'' are modernist portrayals of death because they emphasise representations of minds rather than representations of death and the world around the characters' minds is ontologically unproblematic, the ending of his ''Finnegans Wake'' is postmodernist because it [235] "models not only the ontological limit of death, but also the dream of a return", i.e. the last sentence breaks off in the middle and is continued with the first sentence of the novel.
	==Comment==		==Comment==

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