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5 - Pronominal ‘Veering’ in Quilt by Nicholas Royle (2010)

from PART II - The Role of ‘You’ in the Writing of Traumatic Events

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 January 2022

Sandrine Sorlin
Affiliation:
Université Paul Valéry, Montpellier
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Summary

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.

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The Stylistics of ‘You'
Second-Person Pronoun and its Pragmatic Effects
, pp. 105 - 124
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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