It seems it is especially postmodern literature that undermines the belief in a clear and direct relationship between the physical world and the language depicting it. Quite recently, especially the possible worlds theories and their application in literary theory have tried to explain this relationship. Analyzing the narrative techniques used by Donald Barthelme in his short story The Dragon, ...

The invitation to participate in the seminar on Theory was simultaneously pleasing and puzzling: I was pleased to be paired with Tilottama Rajan, towards whose work I am intellectually sympathetic, but puzzled by the rubric under which I was asked to articulate the relation of my Genealogy of the Romantic Symbol to her Dark Interpreter. My only contributions to what is conventionally understood...

This thesis proposes an account of the effects achieved by the poetic use of rhetorical tropes and schemes in the light of recent developments in pragmatic theory. More specifically it discusses and attempts to develop the relevance theory account of poetic effects. Much recent debate in literary studies has centred on the question as to whether literary communication is best explained in terms...

In classical literary theory it has been pointed out by several authors (Iser 1974, Eco, 1984) that the activity of reading fictional texts involves readers in interactions with at least

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, crime fiction is a topranking literary genre, and has become part of mainstream culture. The crime novel’s position of pre-eminence derives from its broad fan base and its readership, with publishing houses devoting whole series and large print runs to the genre. Evidence of the prevalence of a popular obsession with crime stories is also to be foun...

This paper examines the use of leprosy as a literary motif in poetry, narrative literature, and homilies from England and Scotland between the 1200s and 1500s, the time period during which a shift in leprosy’s literary connotations is visible. It tracks the changes in leprosy’s meaning, as it moves from a disease signifying holy suffering and nearness to God to a physical representation of a di...