from PART II - The Role of ‘You’ in the Writing of Traumatic Events
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 January 2022
What is particularly interesting in Quilt (2010) by Nicholas Royle narrating the impossible mourning of a man after the death of his beloved father, is its diverse pronominal shifts (it starts as a first-person narrative before becoming a third- then a second-person one), grammatically reflecting the slow disappearance of the first-person protagonist from the narrator’s position and then from the narrative altogether. The clearly-marked ‘you’ passages in Quilt highlight the ghostly presence of a narrator speaking on behalf of a character who is trying to keep it all together but is slowly losing it. The chapter displays that not only does the novel go down the pronominal hierarchy in the switch from first-person to third-person narrative via the second person, but it also stylistically subverts the Animacy Hierarchy through a generic ‘you’ that knits together different pockets of voices in a most experimental way. Royle’s novel is completed by an afterword calling on to the reader in a classical manner, which serves as a transition to Parts III and IV devoted to this (para)textual call to the reader/viewer.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.