7 Enderby’s Dark Lady, or No End to Enderby (1984)
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Christopher W. Thurley
Abstract
Burgess’s 1984 novel Enderby’s Dark Lady is integral because it provides numerous examples of how the voice and opinions of the implied author-figure are transferred onto his fictional characters, landscapes, and plot devices. A prime example of what Bakhtin describes as being the job of a prose writer, to create ‘artistically calculated nuances on all the fundamental voices and tones of this heteroglossia’, this text exists as an illustration of how an author ‘cannot fail to be oriented toward the “already uttered”, the “already known”’. Using primary sources from archives and personal interviews from people who encountered Burgess while in North Carolina, this chapter ties in biographical and historical details to shed new light on what this text meant to Burgess and its significance to Burgess scholars. This chapter also continues analysing Burgess’s views of African Americans, with the discussion being complemented by and compared with previously used readings by Henry Louis Gates Jr, James Baldwin, and Toni Morrison in order to contextualize this discourse. In the discussion of Burgess’s views on race in the United States, as well his use of offensive and derogatory language within the novel, Bakhtin’s notions of heteroglossia provide useful critical tools, while the aforementioned African American writers and scholars allow an interrogation of Burgess’s presentations of race from an adversarial perspective.
Abstract
Burgess’s 1984 novel Enderby’s Dark Lady is integral because it provides numerous examples of how the voice and opinions of the implied author-figure are transferred onto his fictional characters, landscapes, and plot devices. A prime example of what Bakhtin describes as being the job of a prose writer, to create ‘artistically calculated nuances on all the fundamental voices and tones of this heteroglossia’, this text exists as an illustration of how an author ‘cannot fail to be oriented toward the “already uttered”, the “already known”’. Using primary sources from archives and personal interviews from people who encountered Burgess while in North Carolina, this chapter ties in biographical and historical details to shed new light on what this text meant to Burgess and its significance to Burgess scholars. This chapter also continues analysing Burgess’s views of African Americans, with the discussion being complemented by and compared with previously used readings by Henry Louis Gates Jr, James Baldwin, and Toni Morrison in order to contextualize this discourse. In the discussion of Burgess’s views on race in the United States, as well his use of offensive and derogatory language within the novel, Bakhtin’s notions of heteroglossia provide useful critical tools, while the aforementioned African American writers and scholars allow an interrogation of Burgess’s presentations of race from an adversarial perspective.
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Front Matter i
- Contents v
- List of illustrations vi
- Acknowledgements vii
- Introduction 1
- 1 On his mind (1956–66) 21
- 2 Burgess on the United States 47
- 3 M/F (1971) 94
- 4 The Clockwork Testament, or Enderby’s End (1974) and New York (1976) 158
- 5 Earthly Powers (1980) 240
- 6 The End of the World News (1982) 266
- 7 Enderby’s Dark Lady, or No End to Enderby (1984) 284
- 8 After America 337
- Conclusion 345
- Index 356
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Front Matter i
- Contents v
- List of illustrations vi
- Acknowledgements vii
- Introduction 1
- 1 On his mind (1956–66) 21
- 2 Burgess on the United States 47
- 3 M/F (1971) 94
- 4 The Clockwork Testament, or Enderby’s End (1974) and New York (1976) 158
- 5 Earthly Powers (1980) 240
- 6 The End of the World News (1982) 266
- 7 Enderby’s Dark Lady, or No End to Enderby (1984) 284
- 8 After America 337
- Conclusion 345
- Index 356
