Fictional Authority: Female Writers and Narrative Voice

Author: Lanshe
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2002-05-01
Features: The novel texts discussed in this book address issues of authority through the narrative voices generated within the texts. In various cases, the narrative voices serve as focal points of intense confrontation, conflict, and challenge, with this contradictory struggle expressed through ideologically charged formal means. Sometimes, when opposing conflicts are resolved, it is also achieved through the same formal means. The texts I explore in the book construct narrative voices that strive to engage with and transform the broader literary canon through writing. These narrators are skeptical and avoid the authoritative atmosphere of the male literary world, often expressing critical views on the male-dominated landscape. However, they are inevitably driven by social conventions and textual norms, continuously replicating the very structures they seek to reform. Such narrators frequently question the authority they endorse or endorse the authority they question. In other words, while these narrators are engaged in creating fictional discourses of authority, they also reveal the fictional authority that Western novels have already taken shape. Moreover, the process of revealing fiction ultimately leads to the re-establishment of authority. Some texts demonstrate this dilemma at the thematic level, constructing fictional authority or, to put it another way, fictional discourses about authority.