Text to Reader: A Communicative Approach to Fowles, Barth, Cortazar, and Boon

172 Pages·1983·16.496 MB·English

by  Theo D'Haen

TEXT TO READER
UTRECHT PUBLICATIONS IN
GENERAL AND COMPARATIVE LITERATURE
Utrechtse Publikaties voor Algemene Literatuurwetenschap
(UPAL)
Series Editors:
Keith Busby
. de Deugd
J.J. Oversteegen
Institute of General and Comparative Literature
Utrecht, The Netherlands
The volumes to be included in the series will fall into three main groups:
a) studies which contribute to the understanding of the problems of literary
theory, past and present;
b) works which can be said to fill existing lacunae in the fields of general and
comparative literature, including text editions;
c) works which reflect the research interests of the department itself. This
includes comparative literature from the Middle Ages to the present, as well
as particular aspects of and approaches to the theory of literature.
Volume 16
Theo D'Haen
Text to Reader: A Communicative Approach to
Fowles, Barth, Cortázar and Boon
TEXT TO READER
A COMMUNICATIVE APPROACH TO
FOWLES, BARTH, CORTÁZAR AND BOON
THEO D'HAEN
University of Utrecht
JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY
AMSTERDAM/PHILADELPHIA
1983
©Copyright 1983-John Benjamins B.V.
ISBN 90 272 2201 0 (Pb)/ISBN 90 272 2191 X (Hb)
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint,
microfilm or any other means without written permission from the publisher.
For Ann
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following publishers and copyright
holders for permission to quote:
De Arbeiderspers (Amsterdam) for excerpts from De Kapellekensbaan by
Louis Paul Boon, copyright 1953, 1956, 1979 Louis Paul Boon.
Twayne Publishers, a Division of G.K. Hall and Company (Boston) for excerpts
from Chapel Road by Louis Paul Boon, translated by Adrienne Dixon, copy­
right 1972 by Twayne.
Putnam's Sons, (New York) for excerpts from Letters by John Barth, copy­
right 1979 by John Barth.
John Fowles, for excerpts from The French Lieutenant's Woman by John
Fowles, copyright 1969 by John Fowles.
Julio Cortázar for excerpts from Libro de Manuel by Julio Cortázar, copyright
1973 by Julio Cortázar.
Pantheon Books, a Division of Random House Inc. (New York), for excerpts
from A Manual for Manuel by Julio Cortázar, translated by Gregory Rabassa,
copyright 1978 by Random House.
Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following persons or companies for
permission to use the photographs on the cover of this book:
for the picture of John Fowles: Fay Godwin, London,
for the picture of John Barth: Helen Marcus, New York,
for the picture of Julio Cortázar: Chino Lope,
for the picture of Louis Paul Boon: De Arbeiderspers, Amsterdam.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE . ix
Chapter
I. THE NOVEL AS ACT AND EXPERIENCE 1
II. JOHN FOWLES'S THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT'S WOMAN 25
III. JOHN BARTH'S LETTERS 43
IV. JULIO CORTÁZAR'S LIBRO DE MANUEL 69
V. LOUIS PAUL BOON'S DE KAPELLEKENSBAAN 95
VI. CONCLUSION 125
NOTES 129
BIBLIOGRAPHY 155

PREFACE
In literary studies the first half of the twentieth century saw a shift from an
almost exclusive concern with literary history to an almost equally exclusive
concern with formal analysis. In the nineteen fifties and sixties the study of
literary history, and interest in the very concept and theory of literary history,
reached a low ebb.
Recently, there has been a re-emergence of interest in literary history, a
phenomenon the most telling expression of which may well be the success of
the journal New Literary History (1969-)· Yet, this re-emergence has tended
toward a kind of literary history different from that practiced half a century
ago. The emphasis now is much more on the theory of literary history, on the
relation literary history bears to other kinds of history, and on methodology.
The present study is meant as a contribution to the renewed debate on
literary history. Text to Reader: A Communicative Approach to Fowles, Barth,
Cortàzar, and Boon, tries to correlate literary history and more general history. Its
aim is to find a critical method that links a novel's form toits socio-cultural context.
To էհե end, the first chapter sketches a communicative approach to the novel,
and combines elements from reception aesthetics, speech act theory, and frame
analysis. The basis of էհե communicative approach is the aesthetic response
theory of Wolfgang Iser. Iser analyses a literary work of art as entering into a
dialogue with its period norms via its repertoire — and specifically via its reper­
toriai negations — and as guiding its reader's experiences through the effects
it achieves by its use of narrative strategies - and specifically of strategical
blanks. As Iser's definition of these blanks — discontinuity between narrative
perspectives — and his description of how, in specific instances, these blanks
guide the reader's experiences ե rather vague, it is suggested that speech act
theory as applied to literature both by literary and linguistic theoreticians, and
Erving Goffman's "frame analysis" might contribute toward refining Iser's
notions. Specifically, it is argued that a reader has certain conventional speech
act and frame expectations with regard to a novel, and that anything problema-
tizing these expectations leads to Iser's "discontinuity" and hence functions
as a blank.
 PREFACE
Separate chapters apply the approach sketched in the first chapter to John
Fowles's The French Lieutenant's Woman, John Barth's Letters, Julio Cortázar's
Libro de Manuel, and Louis Paul Boon's De Kapellekensbaan. The com­
municative approach enables us to reconstruct the communicative interchange
taking place between the texts and their period readers and to determine how
these readers are guided in their reading experience by the blanks that follow
from the problematic aspects of each of these novels. The relationship the novels
establish with their period audience combined with their repertoire give us
insight into the dialectic each novel conducts with its society. The particular
form of each novel — its repertoire and strategies combined and interrelated —
is determined by the particular effects its author wants his work to achieve in
the mind of his period readers: the form of The French Lieutenant's Woman,
Letters, Libro de Manuel, and De Kapellekensbaan directly issues from the
attitudes Fowles, Barth, Cortázar, and Boon want their readers to adopt vis-à-
vis their society as a result of their reading experience.
Although here applied exclusively to four contemporary novels, the com­
municative approach advocated in this study also offers the possibility of study­
ing changes in repertoire and technique as they manifest themselves over longer
periods of the genre's history as directly issuing from changes in the socio-
cultural context because it investigates the particular form a novel takes as
correlative to that novel's communicative function.
Finally, it is a pleasure to acknowledge my indebtedness to Sarah Lawall, for
her help and encouragement, and to E.M. Beekman, W. Moebius, D.C. Freeman,
and M.L. Pratt for the time they spent in reading and commenting upon either
this study as a whole or parts of it. Of course, the responsibility for the final
text rests with me, and I alone am to blame for all remaining mistakes, inaccura­
cies, or shortcomings.
Thanks are also due to the editors of Tijdschrift van de Vrije Universiteit
van Brussel, where an earlier version of chapter 1 of the present study first
appeared.