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Enacting Hallucinatory Experience in Fiction: Metalepsis, Agency, and the Phenomenology of Reading in Muriel Spark's The Comforters

Foxwell, John

Enacting Hallucinatory Experience in Fiction: Metalepsis, Agency, and the Phenomenology of Reading in Muriel Spark's The Comforters Thumbnail


Authors

John Foxwell j.m.r.foxwell@durham.ac.uk
PGR Student Doctor of Philosophy



Abstract

This article examines Muriel Spark’s first novel, The Comforters, in the light of her autobiographical account of the hallucinations she experienced prior to writing the novel. In particular, it focuses on how Spark represents hallucinatory experience through the use of experimental metafictional devices, such as the metaleptic intrusion of the narrative voice into the storyworld. These devices, it is argued, can be viewed as carrying out two distinct yet integrated functions, on the one hand conveying aspects of the phenomenology of auditory verbal hallucinations by eliciting a certain type of readerly response, while on the other serving to represent the destabilization of the protagonist’s senses of self and agency which is attendant upon her hallucinatory experiences.

Citation

Foxwell, J. (2019). Enacting Hallucinatory Experience in Fiction: Metalepsis, Agency, and the Phenomenology of Reading in Muriel Spark's The Comforters. Style (Fayetteville), 50(2), 139-157. https://doi.org/10.1353/sty.2016.0007

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Jan 20, 2016
Online Publication Date Jul 12, 2019
Publication Date Jul 12, 2019
Deposit Date Jul 12, 2019
Publicly Available Date Jul 15, 2019
Journal Style
Print ISSN 0039-4238
Publisher Penn State University Press
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 50
Issue 2
Pages 139-157
DOI https://doi.org/10.1353/sty.2016.0007
Related Public URLs https://muse-jhu-edu.ezphost.dur.ac.uk/article/618455

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