The Construction of Narrative in Three Modernist Moments: Riverrun Past A Carafe to The Red Wheelbarrow

Abstract

The construction of narrative has been debated by a full range of intellectuals, including philosophers of language, semioticians, narratologists, and neuropsychologists. Some of the questions raised about the structure of narrative occur in modernist writers who intentionally violated received narrative structure, presented deliberately cryptic and fragmented texts, recast what constitutes ordered and organized thought. At one end, we may seem to have familiar and traditional stories with clear beginnings, middles and endings, though this is a much debated issue. At another end, we might ask, what is a narrative? Or, how befuddling can a text or experience be, and still be construed as ordered sequence, as narrative?
My essay looks at three famous modernist moments to examine their relation to narrative: the opening line of Finnegans Wake, the first "Object" in Gertrude Stein's Tender Buttons, and William Carlos Williams' "The Red Wheelbarrow." These texts challenge notions of connectedness central to traditional narrative and indicate identity as it is coming to be understood by contemporary neuroscience. The role of narrative in the construction identity may well be both necessary and false. These modernist texts suggest both. By making challenging demands on readers, these texts insist on the construction meaning, and its tenuousness. As such, identity as form or understanding or conclusion rests on connection and alienation.



Author Information
Dennis Leavens, American University of Armenia, Armenia

Paper Information
Conference: ACAH2013
Stream: Arts & Humanities

This paper is part of the ACAH2013 Conference Proceedings (View)
Full Paper
View / Download the full paper in a new tab/window


To cite this article:
Leavens D. (2013) The Construction of Narrative in Three Modernist Moments: Riverrun Past A Carafe to The Red Wheelbarrow ISSN: 2186-229X – The Asian Conference on Arts and Humanities 2013 – Official Conference Proceedings https://doi.org/10.22492/2186-229X.20130274
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.22492/2186-229X.20130274


Comments & Feedback

Place a comment using your LinkedIn profile

Comments

Share on activity feed

Powered by WP LinkPress

Share this Research

Posted by James Alexander Gordon