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‘The Shudder of the Dying Day in Every Blade of Grass’: Whose Words? Voice, Veracity and the Representation of Memory

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Literature and Stylistics for Language Learners
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Abstract

This chapter explores how we read narrative point of view, and some of the implications between narrative and memory, resonance and immediacy. The texts, from three novels widely different in historical and geographical space and time, have been used at various levels worldwide in courses on narrative and narratology, teaching reading, and World Englishes. It will be seen that the texts selected bring out interesting questions of interpretation, the reliability or otherwise of the narrator, perceptions of what might constitute ‘poetic’ language, and how reading between the lines becomes differently vital as the reader negotiates narrative stances, viewpoints, and the conditions of the narrator’s storytelling.

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© 2007 John McRae

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McRae, J. (2007). ‘The Shudder of the Dying Day in Every Blade of Grass’: Whose Words? Voice, Veracity and the Representation of Memory. In: Watson, G., Zyngier, S. (eds) Literature and Stylistics for Language Learners. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230624856_4

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