John Benjamins Publishing Company
Tony Harrison and the rhetorics of reality
Abstract
This article develops some of the ideas derived from literary pragmatics and particularly those outlined in Sell’s (1994) ‘Literary gossip, literary theory, literary pragmatics’. My purpose is to explore my own growing dissatisfaction with some of Tony Harrison’s poetry of the mid 1980s (and particularly v) by investigating afresh the circumstances in which it was written and the various commentaries that have appeared, both popular and scholarly. By paying close attention to Harrison’s use of various ‘voices’ and the deictic properties of the pronouns he uses to identify the different speakers, I come to the conclusion that Harrison is essentially ‘monologic’ rather than ‘heteroglossic’ and that his poetry therefore fails to represent the social diversity of the Thatcher years in Britain.
Abstract
This article develops some of the ideas derived from literary pragmatics and particularly those outlined in Sell’s (1994) ‘Literary gossip, literary theory, literary pragmatics’. My purpose is to explore my own growing dissatisfaction with some of Tony Harrison’s poetry of the mid 1980s (and particularly v) by investigating afresh the circumstances in which it was written and the various commentaries that have appeared, both popular and scholarly. By paying close attention to Harrison’s use of various ‘voices’ and the deictic properties of the pronouns he uses to identify the different speakers, I come to the conclusion that Harrison is essentially ‘monologic’ rather than ‘heteroglossic’ and that his poetry therefore fails to represent the social diversity of the Thatcher years in Britain.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Tabula gratulatoria vii
- Contributors ix
- Introduction 1
- “This verse marks that” 17
- Humanized intertexts 31
- Appearance and reality in Jane Austen’s Persuasion 49
- Green flowers and golden eyes 61
- “When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean” 77
- Place and communicative personae 89
- Tony Harrison and the rhetorics of reality 107
- Truthful (hi)stories in Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost 119
- Pragmatic Penelope or timeless tales for the times 135
- Three fallacies in interpreting literature 145
- Index 157
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Tabula gratulatoria vii
- Contributors ix
- Introduction 1
- “This verse marks that” 17
- Humanized intertexts 31
- Appearance and reality in Jane Austen’s Persuasion 49
- Green flowers and golden eyes 61
- “When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean” 77
- Place and communicative personae 89
- Tony Harrison and the rhetorics of reality 107
- Truthful (hi)stories in Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost 119
- Pragmatic Penelope or timeless tales for the times 135
- Three fallacies in interpreting literature 145
- Index 157
