Fictional Authority -- Female Writers and Narrative Voice

Author: None
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2002-05-01
Features: The novel texts discussed in this book engage with issues of authority through the narrative voices generated within the text. In various cases, the narrative voice serves as a focal point for intense confrontation, conflict, and challenge. This contradictory struggle is expressed through ideological forms of expression, and sometimes, the resolution of opposing conflicts is also achieved through the same means. The texts I explore in the book construct such narrative voices that strive to join the broader literary canon while also transforming it. These narrators are skeptical and avoid the authoritative atmosphere of the male literary world, often expressing critical views toward the male-dominated landscape. However, they are inevitably driven by social conventions and textual norms, continuously replicating the structures they seek to reform. Such narrators frequently question the authority they endorse or endorse the authority they question. In other words, as these narrators work to create fictional discourses of authority, they also reveal the fictional authority that Western novels have already taken shape. Moreover, the display of the fictional process 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, constructing fictional discourse about authority.