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Reading Strategies and Impossible Worlds in Fiction: With Reference to Lincoln in the Bardo

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Published/Copyright: November 16, 2020
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Abstract

Postmodern fiction is marked by impossible worlds, the appreciation of which challenges readers and draws upon different cognitive operations. The present study reacts to the reading strategies proposed by Alber, J. 2016. Unnatural Narrative: Impossible Worlds in Fiction and Drama. Lincoln, NB and London: University of Nebraska Press. It adopts and adapts these strategies in a case study of Saunders’s experimental novel, Lincoln in the Bardo (2017). There is an attempt to investigate the cognitive operations that are activated in the process of communicating with and understanding such texts. The study evinces the pros and cons of Alber’s reading strategies. It proposes the cognitive operation of schematization in both online and offline forms as another reading strategy which helps readers understand impossibilities in texts.


Corresponding author: Dr. Roghayeh Farsi, Department of English, University of Neyshabur, Adib Blv. 2nd, Neyshabur, Khorasan Razavi, Islamic Republic of Iran, E-mail:

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Published Online: 2020-11-16
Published in Print: 2020-11-26

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