A Curious Little Footnote”: Footnotes as a Narrative Device in Contemporary American Fiction
| Thesis title in Czech: | Poznámky jako narativní technika v současné americké literatuře |
|---|---|
| Thesis title in English: | A Curious Little Footnote”: Footnotes as a Narrative Device in Contemporary American Fiction |
| Key words: | poznámky|paratext|současná americká literatura|globální literatura|Junot Díaz|Hanya Yanagihara |
| English key words: | footnote|paratext|contemporary American fiction|global literature|Junot Díaz|Hanya Yanagihara |
| Academic year of topic announcement: | 2020/2021 |
| Thesis type: | Bachelor's thesis |
| Thesis language: | angličtina |
| Department: | Department of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures (21-UALK) |
| Supervisor: | doc. Justin Quinn, Ph.D. |
| Author: | hidden - assigned and confirmed by the Study Dept. |
| Date of registration: | 04.01.2021 |
| Date of assignment: | 04.01.2021 |
| Administrator's approval: | not processed yet |
| Confirmed by Study dept. on: | 07.01.2021 |
| Date and time of defence: | 07.09.2021 09:30 |
| Date of electronic submission: | 16.08.2021 |
| Date of proceeded defence: | 07.09.2021 |
| Submitted/finalized: | committed by student and finalized |
| Opponents: | PhDr. Hana Ulmanová, Ph.D. |
| Guidelines |
| This thesis examines footnotes as a narrative device in three selected works of contemporary American fiction. Footnotes have been used in fiction for various narrative purposes before; this thesis, however, aims to explore how footnotes and other paratextual elements had to change and adapt to help literature reflect the increasingly complex landscape of the globalized world. Three contemporary novels will be analyzed in that context: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz, The People in the Trees by Hanya Yanagihara and A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki. The works chosen were written by bicultural (and bilingual) writers and all deal, to different degrees, with culture clashes and intercultural relationship. These writers and their works grapple with the questions of identity and belonging, translation and translatability, processing of historical collective trauma, as well as contemporary issues of immigration, new ethics and environmental protection. The objective is to demonstrate how analyzing footnotes (and other paratextual components) and their relationship with the narrative can be illuminating in tackling all these matters global literature is concerned with. |
| References |
| List of secondary sources:
Benstock, Shari. “At the Margin of Discourse: Footnotes in the Fictional Text.” PMLA 98.2 (1983): 204-25. Díaz, Junot. The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. London, United Kingdom: Faber & Faber, 2009. Genette, Gérard. Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation. Literature, Culture, Theory / Cambridge University Press. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Grafton, Anthony. The footnote: a curious history. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1997. Jackson, H. J. Marginalia: Readers Writing in Books. New Haven: Yale UP, 2001. Jackson, Kevin. Invisible Forms: A Guide to Literary Curiosities. New York: Dunne, 2000. Maloney, Edward. "Footnotes in Fiction: A Rhetorical Approach." Electronic Thesis or Dissertation. Ohio State University, 2005. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. 10 Nov 2020. Ozeki, Ruth. A Tale for the Time Being. Edinburgh, United Kingdom: Canongate Books, 2019. Vargas, Jennifer Harford. “Dictating a Zafa: The Power of Narrative Form in Junot Díaz's ‘The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.’” MELUS, vol. 39, no. 3 (2014) JSTOR 15 Dec 2020. Yanagihara, Hanya. The People in The Trees. London, United Kingdom: Picador, 2018. Zerby, Chuck. The Devil’s Details: A History of Footnotes. Montpelier, VT: Invisible Cities, 2002. |