Table Of Content

Secrecy and Community in 21st-Century Fiction i ii Secrecy and Community in 21st-Century Fiction Edited by Mar í a J. L ó pez and Pilar Villar-Arg á iz iii BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Inc 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in the United States of America 2021 Volume Editor’s Part of the Work © Marí a J. L ó pez and Pilar Villar-Argá iz, 2021 Each chapter © of Contributors, 2021 Cover image © Getty Images For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. xv constitute an extension of this copyright page. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writingfrom the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Inc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: López Sánchez-Vizcaíno, María Jesús, editor. | Villar-Argaiz, Pilar, editor. Title: Secrecy and community in 21st-century fi ction / edited by María J. López and Pilar Villar-Argáiz. Other titles: Secrecy and community in twenty-fi rst-century fi ction Description: New York : Bloomsbury Academic, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifi ers: LCCN 2020036642 (print) | LCCN 2020036643 (ebook) | ISBN 9781501365539 (hardback) | ISBN 9781501365546 (epub) | ISBN 9781501365553 (pdf) Subjects: LCSH: English fi ction–21st century–History and criticism. | Secrecy in literature. | Communities in literature. Classifi cation: LCC PR890.S423 S43 2021 (print) | LCC PR890.S423 (ebook) | DDC 823/.9209—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020036642 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020036643 ISBN: HB: 978-1-5013-6553-9 ePDF: 978-1-5013-6555-3 eBook: 978-1-5013-6554-6 Typeset by Refi neCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk To fi nd out more about our authors and books visit w ww.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our n ewsletters . iv In Loving Memory of Pilar Arg á iz Gonz á lez v vi Contents Notes on contributors ix Foreword Joseph Hillis Miller xiii Acknowledgements xv Introduction: Secrecy and community in twenty-fi rst-century fi ction Mar í a J. L ó pez 1 Part One Secrecy, literary form and the community of readers 1 Secrecy and community in ergodic texts: Derrida, Ali Smith and the experience of form Derek Attridge 23 2 Protective mimicry: Refl ections on the novel today N icholas Royle 37 3 ‘Where all is known and nothing understood’: Narrative sequence and textual secrets in Toni Morrison’s Love Paula Mart í n-Salv á n 55 4 Challenging stereotypes of femininity through secrets in Alice Munro’s fi ction Mercedes Dí az Due ñ as 71 5 Zo ë Wicomb and the secrets of the canon L iani Lochner 87 Part Two Communities of secrecy 6 Cryptaesthetic resistance and community in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Th e Lowland Mar í a Luisa Pascual Garrido 107 7 Queering the M ā ori crypt: Community and secrecy in Witi Ihimaera’s Th e Uncle’s Story Gerardo Rodrí guez-Salas 123 8 Secrecy, invisibility and community in Jeanette Winterson’s Th e Daylight Gate Juan L. Pérez-de-Luque 139 9 Novel mediums: Th e art of not speaking in (and of) Hilary Mantel’s B eyond Black Hannu Poutiainen 155 vii viii Contents Part Th ree Secrecy, postcolonialism and democracy 10 Shame and the idea of community in Ian Holding’s O f Beasts and Beings and W hat Happened to Us Mike Marais 173 11 ‘Whilst our souls negotiate’: Secrets and secrecy in Jonathan Franzen’s P urity Jes ú s Blanco Hidalga 189 12 Conversing with spectres: Secrets and ghosts in Viet Th anh Nguyen’s Th e Refugees Kim L. Worthington 207 Index 225 Contributors Derek Attridge is Emeritus Professor in the Department of English and Related Literature at the University of York (UK), and a fellow of the British Academy. His publications include Peculiar Language: Literature as Diff erence from the Renaissance to James Joyce (1988), Joyce Eff ects: On Language, Th eory, and History (2000), Th e Singularity of Literature (2004, 2017), R eading and Responsibility: Deconstruction’s Traces (2010), Th e Work of Literature (2015), Th e Experience of Poetry: From Homer’s Listeners to Shakespeare’s Readers (2019), and, as editor or co-editor, Post-Structuralism and the Question of History (1987), Jacques Derrida’s A cts of Literature (1992) and Th eory aft er ‘Th eory’ (2011). Mercedes D í az Due ñ as is a lecturer in the English department at the University of Granada (Spain). Her research interests focus on contemporary Canadian fi ction in English. She is also interested in communitarian theory, comparative literature, translation studies and discourse analysis. Her most recent essays have appeared with Versita, Palgrave Macmillan and Routledge. Mar í a Luisa Pascual Garrido is a senior lecturer at the University of Córdoba (Spain) in the Department of English Studies. Her research interests focus on theories related to community and secrecy in literature, contemporary and modern literature in English, gender studies and women’s writing, and literary translation and its reception. She has published articles and book chapters on those areas and several Spanish editions and translations of English-speaking authors. Her most recent book is M ary Astell. Escritos Feministas (2013). Jes ú s Blanco Hidalga teaches in the English department at the University of C ó rdoba (Spain). His research interests are modern and contemporary fi ction in English, critical theory and political thought. He is the author of J onathan Franzen and the Romance of Community: Narratives of Salvation (2017). Liani Lochner is Associate Professor of Anglophone Postcolonial Literature at Universit é Laval (Canada). Educated in South Africa and England, her research interests are in critical theory and world literature, and she has published related essays on the works of Zo ë Wicomb, J. M. Coetzee, Kazuo Ishiguro, Milan Kundera, Salman Rushdie and Aravind Adiga. Her current projects include a monograph on Wicomb’s writing and a book chapter, ‘Ishiguro and Colonialism’, for Th e Cambridge Companion to Kazuo Ishiguro (edited by Andrew Bennett). Mar í a J. Ló p ez is a senior lecturer in the English department at the University of C ó rdoba (Spain). She is the author of A cts of Visitation: Th e Narrative of J. M. Coetzee ix