Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/2440/119700
Type: Theses
Title: Dignity of boundary
Author: Sedlack, Robert
Issue Date: 2017
School/Discipline: School of Humanities
Abstract: The thesis couples my creative work, Jack London Slept Here, with an exegesis that argues for an “ethical” approach to the foregrounding of fictional dialogue. My argument will take into consideration the role of the reader and characterisation through dialogue rather than author-intention and self-interest. It invites participation and collaboration as a gesture of abdication of control. My original contribution to knowledge will be found in my argument that this ethical invitation is not the product of ideological positioning or experimentation with novelistic technique, but rather, the result of courage – manifesting through risk; humility – manifesting through erasure; and ultimately, a respect for the boundaries of reader and character. The novel is composed entirely through a series of interviews with my protagonist in his house on a dead-end alley in Hollywood. These interviews take place shortly before and after a shooting massacre at a nearby golf and country club. The interview structure has afforded me the opportunity and challenge to not just reduce narrative description but to eliminate it altogether. It has allowed me to forego all reliance upon speech tags to convey the emotions of the characters. There are no interior monologues and any attempt to interpret character consciousness must be made by the reader based upon their relationship to the dialogue presented to them. The exegesis will investigate the foregrounding of fictional dialogue as a narrative choice for the unobtrusive author and how this function requires a collaborating reader. Bronwen Thomas, who has made significant contributions in the scholarly study of fictional dialogue with her book, Fictional Dialogue: Speech and Conversation in the Modern and Postmodern Novel, was initially inspired by novelist and critic David Lodge’s assertion that novelists who foreground dialogue “have been somewhat undervalued by academic criticism because their foregrounding of dialogue makes them resistant to a method of analysis biased in favour of lyric expressiveness.” [After Bakhtin: Essays on Fiction and Criticism. London: Routledge, 1990. 83.] My research takes the form of a critical reflection of the dialogue novels of William Gaddis, Henry Green and Manuel Puig by employing the theoretical lens of the nineteenth-century German author and theorist, Friedrich Spielhagen.
Advisor: Castro, Brian
McEntee, Joy
Edmonds, Phillip
Dissertation Note: Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Humanities, 2017.
Keywords: creative writing
dialogue
collaborating reader
boundary
Spielhagen
Bakhtin
hooptedoodle
Henry Green
Manuel Puig
William Gaddis
Compton-Burnett
Elmore Leonard
narcissistic
objectivity
Description: Vol. 1 [Novel] "Jack London slept here" -- Vol. 2 [Exegesis] "Foregrounding dialogue: an ethical approach through courageous risk"
Provenance: This electronic version is made publicly available by the University of Adelaide in accordance with its open access policy for student theses. Copyright in this thesis remains with the author. This thesis may incorporate third party material which has been used by the author pursuant to Fair Dealing exceptions. If you are the owner of any included third party copyright material you wish to be removed from this electronic version, please complete the take down form located at: http://www.adelaide.edu.au/legals
Appears in Collections:Research Theses

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04whole.pdfExegesis619.64 kBAdobe PDFView/Open
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