Includes bibliographical references (pages 202-211) and index.
Contents:
Introduction: Cordelia's Silence, Spoken Violence -- 1. The Exemplary Becomes Problematic, or Gendered Silence: Austen's Mansfield Park -- 2. The Secrets of Silence: Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, Musil's Tonka -- 3. Refusal, or The Mute Provocateurs: Melville's Bartleby Meets Gombrowicz's Yvonne -- 4. The Other of Monologue: Strindberg, Camus, Beckett -- 5. Interrogation, or Forced to Silence: Rankin, Harris, Pinter, Duras -- 6. Literature as Coerced Speech: Handke's Kaspar -- 7. Epilogue: The Silence of the Sirens.
Summary:
"In Peter Handke's play Kaspar, a young man is forced to learn to speak: a process that is a form of physical torture to him. In Jane Austen's Mansfield Park, the young heroine desires to keep as silent as possible, since speech directed at her causes such pain. We are not allowed to remain silent, even when the cost of speech is torture and pain. Silence and Subject in Modern Literature uses a wide variety of texts from forms such as the modern crime novel, via popular classics from authors such as Jane Austen, to avant-garde plays by Samuel Beckett and Handke, to study literary representations of the power relations in which we are forced to speak. Informed by critical theory by Foucault and Bakhtin among others, and touching on fields as diverse as rhetoric, feminism, and the concept of literature, Silence and Subject in Modern Literature engages closely with a central issue in modern life: spoken violence"-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.