A Text World Theory Reading of the Absurd in Rose Tremain's Trespass | ||
| هرمس | ||
| Article 3, Volume 5, Issue 3, July 2016, Pages 9-42 PDF (461.21 K) | ||
| Document Type: المقالة الأصلية | ||
| DOI: 10.21608/herms.2016.395056 | ||
| Author | ||
| Hanan Barakat | ||
| Lecturer at the Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Arts, Helwan University | ||
| Abstract | ||
| This paper investigates how far Tremain's Trespass is informed by a vision of absurdity. The study elicits how the life and death of the protagonist represents a major absurdist truism of the contradictory relationship between man's expectations and the response of the world. Rather than embarking on an investigation of the absurdist thematic features in the novel, the present study focuses on its absurd discoursal structures. The central framework of analysis is Joanna Gavins' Text World Theory. As the novel has at its centre a protagonist who tries to change his world, the paper offers a cognitive oriented approach to his conceptual world. The present study proves that Trespass exists on the boundaries of the absurd. A major absurdist feature described by Albert Camus as the world's negative response to man's hopes is detected in the novel. Other absurdist features, pointed out by Joanna Gavins, of man's separateness from the world, narratorial unreliability and dysfunctional communication with others are proven to be embedded in the novel, and focused on in this study. | ||
| Keywords | ||
| absurd; deictics; Gavins; mental models; modality; Text World; Tremain | ||
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