“A Ball of String Full of Knots”: Narrative Strategies in Jeanette Winterson’s Early Novels and Their Later Development

• Název práce v češtině: „Klubko plné uzlíků“: Narativní strategie v rané tvorbě Jeanette Wintersonové a jejich následný vývoj
• Název v anglickém jazyce: “A Ball of String Full of Knots”: Narrative Strategies in Jeanette Winterson’s Early Novels and Their Later Development
• Klíčová slova: Jeanette Wintersonová, romány, britská literatura, naratologie, vypravěč, vložené příběhy, postmodernismus, feminismus
• Klíčová slova anglicky: Jeanette Winterson, novels, British literature, narratology, narrator, embedded narratives, postmodernism, feminism
• Akademický rok vypsání: 2013/2014
• Typ práce: bakalářská práce
• Jazyk práce: angličtina
• Ústav: Ústav anglofonních literatur a kultur (21-UALK)
• Vedoucí / školitel: PhDr. Soňa Nováková, CSc.
• Řešitel: skrytý - zadáno a potvrzeno stud. odd.
• Datum přihlášení: 28.05.2014
• Datum zadání: 28.05.2014
• Schválení administrátorem: zatím neschvalováno
• Datum potvrzení stud. oddělením: 11.06.2014
• Datum a čas obhajoby: 07.09.2015 00:00
• Datum odevzdání elektronické podoby: 10.08.2015
• Datum proběhlé obhajoby: 07.09.2015
• Odevzdaná/finalizovaná: odevzdaná studentem a finalizovaná
• Oponenti: PhDr. Zdeněk Beran, Ph.D.

Zásady pro vypracování

A major theme in Jeanette Winterson’s novels is the defiance of norms and this is reflected in the way she forms her narratives as well. Already her first novels contain inserted stories from settings that are different from that of the main narrative, often realized by dreams or fantasies of the characters. These are closely connected with the main story, expanding it, providing it with additional perspectives, or just mirroring it in a different setting. In this sense they are not digressions; they develop the same or similar themes and often feature the same motifs. The interpolated stories do not represent a mere escape from the reality to a whole new world, for the worlds are always linked, together creating the message of the given novel.
Weaving the often imaginative stories into the main narrative is connected with juxtaposing facts and fiction, which is a common theme of Winterson’s early novels (Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, The Passion, Sexing the Cherry). They refuse a given unitary truth and treat facts, history, the Bible, etc. as something subject to individual interpretation and in parity with fiction and storytelling. The fragmentation also impacts Winterson’s conception of time and the temporal framework of her novels, since time is not only a theme in the novels, but it also serves as an instrument, with which the narrative itself is formed. This allows for an interesting treatment of the issue and offers freedom for literary experimentation, e.g. it provides grounds for the inserting, mingling and blending of the narratives.
It is clear that the plots of Winterson’s works are entirely subordinate to her experiments with the form, narrative and time and to the discussion of her views on reality, time, storytelling, language, imagination, sexuality, social issues and many others. But the next four novels (Written on the Body, Art & Lies, Gut Symmetries, The PowerBook) take the themes and tendencies of the early novels to the extreme. The time is no longer a mere interesting motif, but becomes one of the central topics of the books, and the storytelling moves even further away from the conventional reality and truth. If earlier novels contained features of magic realism, interpolated stories and discussed facts and fiction, these subsequent novels introduce, for example, an unsexed narrator without a name, some of their characters exist simultaneously in the past as well as in the present and they sometimes even lack something that could be described as a central narrative, or they have several of them.
Winterson’s career continued, however, as she wrote many more novels. Some of them are considered children’s literature, but others retain the complexity of the novels that came before. In these it would be worth examining, whether Winterson followed the tendency of more and more radical experimenting, if she perhaps returned to the style of her early novels, or if she found something completely new. It is safe to say that she did not abandon the themes of time, language and storytelling, but her approach to these could have changed, along with the way these ideas influence the narratives of the novels.
Thus, the thesis will deal primarily with the first novels of Jeanette Winterson, especially their use of time, narrators and narrative structures, above all of the interpolated stories. It will include a discussion of how these work with the themes of the novels, i.e. how and why they help to create and communicate the messages of the novels. This will then be compared to the practices of the subsequent novels that were published until the turn of the millennium, specifically into what Winterson’s narrative strategies evolved and how it influenced the way the themes are discussed in the books. Finally, the thesis would include a reflection upon the tendencies in the books published later.

Seznam odborné literatury

Primary sources:
Winterson, Jeanette. Art & Lies. London: Vintage, 1995.
---. The Daylight Gate. London: Hammer, 2012.
---. Gut Symmetries. London: Granta Books, 1998.
---. Lighthousekeeping. London: Harper Perennial, 2005.
---. Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. London: Pandora Press, 1989.
---. The Passion. New York: Grove Press, 1987.
---. The PowerBook. London: Vintage, 2001.
---. Sexing the Cherry. London: Vintage, 1990.
---. The Stone Gods. London: Penguin Books, 2008.
---. Weight. Edinburgh: Canongate Books Ltd, 2006.
---. Written on the Body. London: Vintage, 2001.
Secondary sources:
Baal, Mieke. Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative. 2nd ed. Toronto: University of Toronto Incorporated, 1997.
Bowers, Maggie Ann. Magic(al) Realism. N.p.: Taylor & Francis E-Library, 2005. E-book.
Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble. 2nd ed. London: Routlege, 2010.
Fludernik, Monika. An Introduction to Narratology. Trans. Patricia Häusler-Greenfield and Monika Fludernik. N.p.: Taylor & Francis E-Library, 2009. E-book.
Franková, Milada. "Jeanette Wintersonová." Britské spisovateky na přelomu tisíciletí. Brno: Masarykova Univerzita, 2003. 141-156.
Genette, Gérard. Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method. Trans. Jane E. Lewin. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983.
Hutcheon, Linda. A Poetics of Postmodernism. N.p.: Taylor & Francis E-Library, 2004. E-book.
Lyotard, Jean-François. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984.
McHale, Brian. Postmodernist Fiction. N.p.: Taylor & Francis E-Library, 2004. E-book.
Onega, Susana. "“I’m Telling You Stories, Trust Me.”: History/Story-telling in Jeanette Winterson’s Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit." Logomachia: Forms of Opposition in English Language/Literature. E. Douka-Kabitoglou ed. Thessaloniki: Hellenic Association for the Study of English, 1994. 171-185.
Reisman, Mara. "Integrating Fantasy and Reality in Jeanette Winterson’s Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit." Rocky Mountain Review Vol. 65, No. 1 (2011): 11-35. JSTOR. Web. 25 May 2014.
Watkins, Susan. Twentieth-century Women Novelists: Feminist Theory into Practice. New York: Palgrave, 2001.
White, Hayden. Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-century Europe. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975.