“Ways of worldmaking”: A study of narrative transmission in Henry James's The Aspern Papers

De Reuck, J. (1993) “Ways of worldmaking”: A study of narrative transmission in Henry James's The Aspern Papers. Journal of Literary Studies, 9 (3-4). pp. 355-370.

Abstract

In this paper I argue that an understanding of modality ‐ especially when deployed in so‐called unreliable homodiegetic narration ‐ essentially requires an understanding of the referential functions of language. These functions, often performed by ¡mplicatures and, in Goodman's terms, “exemplifications”, create the “worlds” whose cognisability becomes a presupposition upon which our grasp of the relevant modality is predicated. James's novella, The Aspern Papers, offers a complex form of such a narrative transmission; one that would remain, I argue, only partially recoverable without the deployment of the text immanent postulates proffered by my theoretical exposition of the ironic modalities of unreliable homodiegetic narrative.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Murdoch Affiliation(s):	School of Social Sciences and Humanities
Publisher:	Routledge as part of the Taylor and Francis Group
URI:	http://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/id/eprint/26479

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