This thesis explores the afterlife of Raymond Carver in relation to a number of important writers and artists that claim Carver as an influence and who are working within countries or cultures that have recently made, or are in the process of making, the transition from embedded liberalism to neoliberalism. This project argues that while Carver's influence has been conventionally limited to what critic A.O. Scott calls 'a briefly fashionable school of experimental fiction', in recent years his writing has come to represent a 'return' to a more 'real' form of literature, one that, his advocates would argue, is more 'authentic' than other kinds of recent writing. Carver's 'authenticity' is closely tied to the idea that his fiction is a response to his own working-class experience and is seen to be more broadly synecdochic of the socioeconomic struggles faced by many other Americans during this period. Given the cultural and aesthetic differences between Carver's life and work, and those studied in the main chapters of this thesis - Jay McInerney, Haruki Murakami and Alejandro González Iñárritu - I argue that Carver's afterlife is best viewed as being a social phenomenon, born out of the social relations, historical circumstances and economic forms that resulted from the US's move to neoliberalism in the late-1970s. My introduction historicizes this transition and argues that while Carver may have struggled to make productive sense of his socioeconomic circumstance, it affected his life in very pointed and particular ways, trapping him between the conventional American dream of individual freedom and equal opportunity and the reality of inequality and social immobility. For those who claim Carver as an influence, his fiction represents a zone where the difference between hegemonic narratives and lived experience is explored and embodies a model of how to negotiate, for better or worse, the complex and shifting foundations of this recent political transition. My introduction then continues to argue that of equal importance to Carver's afterlife is the fact that, in his late-writing in particular, Carver's work represents a 'retreat' from the shortterm, competition-based notions of neoliberal labour towards a non-incorporated residual alternative that has particular artisanal tenets associated with craftsmanship. Carver's texts operate beyond their initial cultural and historical moment by becoming distinctive sites of resistance to the hegemonic norms of late-capitalism. In this way, I argue, Carver's 'authenticity' combines with a consolatory craftsmanship to become a coping mechanism that offers other writers and artists working in neoliberalism a way of navigating a world which seems to exceed the frame of conceptual mapping. By working through a series of short case studies on Stuart Evers, Denis Johnson and Ray Lawrence, and then moving on to more detailed explorations in my three central chapters, this thesis will consider how this is the case in relation to a number of important artists who claim Carver as an influence. Chapter one utilises my archival research to historicize the relationship between Carver and McInerney and argues that Carver's pedagogy pushed McInerney towards the idea that the writing process is connected to residual narratives of American craft. It also contends that many of the orthodox ideas that Carver held about literature proved particularly enabling for McInerney's novel Brightness Falls, which, through parody and satire, signals a retreat from postmodern experimentation towards a more 'Carveresque' realism. Chapter two similarly chronicles Carver's relationship with Murakami and argues that, for Murakami, Carver's fiction is an important example of writing that explores the difference between hegemonic narratives and lived experience. The chapter moves on to argue that what some critics view as Carver's reformed post-alcoholic fiction helped facilitate Murakami's own unorthodox spiritual response to the twin tragedies of the Kobe earthquake and Tokyo gas attack in 1995. Chapter three proceeds on slightly different lines in that it considers Iñárritu's Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) and argues that while Iñárritu uses Carver as the foundation for his film, the film is particularly interesting because it is, itself, a study of Carver's afterlife. My final chapter suggests that while there is merit in viewing Carver as an 'authentic' artist (a kind of model for negotiating neoliberal culture), the totality of that solution is more ambivalent than his advocates might initially suggest.

The thesis Vypravěčské strategie v povídkách Raymonda Carvera deals with the literary concept of a narrator. It's results - typologically different narrators and their characterizations - are based on reading and analysis of all published Carver's short stories. The thesis is divided into two main parts - into the theoretical part in which we briefly introduce the development and fundamental concepts of narrator in the literary theory (e.g. in concepts of F. K. Stanzel, K. Friedmann, G. Genette, T. Todorov, D. Cohn, S. Chatman, J. Culler, J. H. Miller and W. C. Booth) and into the practical part which analyses and characterizes those narrative strategies and types with the use of previously introduced terms and theories. The result of this thesis is a lucid list of different narrative types in Carver's short stories.

No description available.

Cette étude se penche sur les œuvres de Russell Banks, Raymond Carver et Richard Ford, qui ont débuté leur carrière dans les années 1960-1970. À une époque où les milieux académiques s’intéressent davantage à l’autoréflexivité et aux jeux métafictionnels des écrivains postmodernes, les trois auteurs revendiquent, quant à eux, leur appartenance à la tradition réaliste. Dans « Quelques mots sur le minimalisme », John Barth suggère que le retour du réalisme social à partir des années 1970 peut être vu à la fois comme une réaction à la fiction dite « postmoderne » et comme un symptôme du malaise social et économique de l’époque. En effet, Cathedral, Continental Drift et The Sportswriter décrivent, dans un souci de vraisemblance et d’exactitude, la vie quotidienne d’Américains ordinaires malmenés par la politique de Reagan. Cette étude montre que les trois auteurs s’inscrivent dans la tradition du réalisme social, mais qu’ils sont influencés par le contexte postmoderne dans lequel ils écrivent et tiennent compte des problèmes de représentation typiques de cette période. Leurs œuvres sont donc marquées par une tension entre le respect des conventions littéraires propres à la tradition réaliste et la mise en évidence de l’artificialité de l’illusion mimétique, à une époque où la réalité elle-même est vue comme une construction linguistique. / His study focuses on the works of Russell Banks, Raymond Carver and Richard Ford. They started writing during the 1960s and 1970s, at a time when the self-reflexivity and metafictional play of postmodernist writers were drawing a lot of critical attention in academic circles. However, they consider themselves to be realist writers. In “A Few Words about Minimalism,” John Barth suggested that the return to realist fiction in the mid-1970s could be both a reaction against so-called “postmodernist” fiction and a symptom of the social and economic unease of the period. Indeed, Cathedral, Continental Drift and The Sportswriter describe in accurate detail the everyday lives of ordinary American men and women during Reagan’s presidency. This study demonstrates that these authors are part of the American realist tradition, but that their strand of social realism also takes into account the postmodern context in which they write, by dealing with problems of representation that are typical of the period. Their works both use and challenge the literary conventions associated with the realist tradition, by underlining the artificiality of mimetic illusion at a time when reality itself is seen as a linguistic construct.

Esta dissertação analisa o universo discursivo das obras de Raymond Carver, focando-se especialmente no silêncio e em como ele cria mecanismos de significação nos contos do autor. O objetivo principal é analisar a presença recorrente, nos contos de Carver, de personagens que podem ser classificados, culturalmente, como losers. Para embasar este trabalho, amparo-me nas teorias da Análise do Discurso Francesa e em seus pressupostos acerca do sujeito, história e língua. A questão do silêncio é analisada tomando como base as teorias desenvolvidas por Orlandi. Espera-se concluir que os personagens de Raymond Carver, no decorrer da carreira do autor, evoluem, passando de excluídos, sem voz e sem poder de discurso — características marcantes na fase minimalista; para uma fase de maior autonomia discursiva e inclusão social — mais frequente na fase final da sua carreira. / This dissertation analyzes the discursive universe of the fictional works of Raymond Carver, focusing specially in the role of silence and on how it creates mechanisms of signification in the short stories of the author. The main goal of this dissertation is to analyze the recurrent presence, in the short stories of Raymond Carver, of characters that can be classified, culturally, as ―losers‖. To support this paper, I use the theories of French Discourse Analysis and its presuppositions about language, subject and history. The issue of silence is analyzed with the endorsement of the theories developed by Eni Orlandi. I expect to conclude that the characters of Raymond Carver, throughout the career of the author, evolve, passing from excluded subjects who have no voice and no discursive authority — characteristics that are evident in the minimalist phase of the author; to a phase where the characters have a more significant discursive autonomy and social inclusion — characteristics that are more frequent in the final phase of Carver‘s career.

Esta dissertação analisa o universo discursivo das obras de Raymond Carver, focando-se especialmente no silêncio e em como ele cria mecanismos de significação nos contos do autor. O objetivo principal é analisar a presença recorrente, nos contos de Carver, de personagens que podem ser classificados, culturalmente, como losers. Para embasar este trabalho, amparo-me nas teorias da Análise do Discurso Francesa e em seus pressupostos acerca do sujeito, história e língua. A questão do silêncio é analisada tomando como base as teorias desenvolvidas por Orlandi. Espera-se concluir que os personagens de Raymond Carver, no decorrer da carreira do autor, evoluem, passando de excluídos, sem voz e sem poder de discurso — características marcantes na fase minimalista; para uma fase de maior autonomia discursiva e inclusão social — mais frequente na fase final da sua carreira. / This dissertation analyzes the discursive universe of the fictional works of Raymond Carver, focusing specially in the role of silence and on how it creates mechanisms of signification in the short stories of the author. The main goal of this dissertation is to analyze the recurrent presence, in the short stories of Raymond Carver, of characters that can be classified, culturally, as ―losers‖. To support this paper, I use the theories of French Discourse Analysis and its presuppositions about language, subject and history. The issue of silence is analyzed with the endorsement of the theories developed by Eni Orlandi. I expect to conclude that the characters of Raymond Carver, throughout the career of the author, evolve, passing from excluded subjects who have no voice and no discursive authority — characteristics that are evident in the minimalist phase of the author; to a phase where the characters have a more significant discursive autonomy and social inclusion — characteristics that are more frequent in the final phase of Carver‘s career.

Esta dissertação analisa o universo discursivo das obras de Raymond Carver, focando-se especialmente no silêncio e em como ele cria mecanismos de significação nos contos do autor. O objetivo principal é analisar a presença recorrente, nos contos de Carver, de personagens que podem ser classificados, culturalmente, como losers. Para embasar este trabalho, amparo-me nas teorias da Análise do Discurso Francesa e em seus pressupostos acerca do sujeito, história e língua. A questão do silêncio é analisada tomando como base as teorias desenvolvidas por Orlandi. Espera-se concluir que os personagens de Raymond Carver, no decorrer da carreira do autor, evoluem, passando de excluídos, sem voz e sem poder de discurso — características marcantes na fase minimalista; para uma fase de maior autonomia discursiva e inclusão social — mais frequente na fase final da sua carreira. / This dissertation analyzes the discursive universe of the fictional works of Raymond Carver, focusing specially in the role of silence and on how it creates mechanisms of signification in the short stories of the author. The main goal of this dissertation is to analyze the recurrent presence, in the short stories of Raymond Carver, of characters that can be classified, culturally, as ―losers‖. To support this paper, I use the theories of French Discourse Analysis and its presuppositions about language, subject and history. The issue of silence is analyzed with the endorsement of the theories developed by Eni Orlandi. I expect to conclude that the characters of Raymond Carver, throughout the career of the author, evolve, passing from excluded subjects who have no voice and no discursive authority — characteristics that are evident in the minimalist phase of the author; to a phase where the characters have a more significant discursive autonomy and social inclusion — characteristics that are more frequent in the final phase of Carver‘s career.

The Viking Age rune-carvers and their readers used runes as a semiotic resource to convey and structure the messages on rune-stones. An analysis of the ways in which this resource is used together with other resources gives us a deeper insight into the relationship between writers and readers and into the written culture in which the rune-stones were produced. The present study treats runic carvings as multimodal texts in which different semiotic modes produce meaning by visual and verbal means. The roles played by runes in such texts are studied from three different perspectives. The empirical study in chapter 3 investigates how the verbal messages of the inscriptions interrelate with ornamental compositions. The most important convention found is that runic inscriptions usually start in the lower left part of the ornamental band in which they are inscribed. A second result is that there is a certain correlation between the visual and syntactic structure of runic texts. In chapter 4, Södermanlandic inscriptions employing more than one writing system are investigated. These carvings can be tied to a context of high social ambition in which at least two different, socially stratified discourses are expressed by means of the runes as a visual semiotic mode. Chapter 5 is devoted to non-lexical inscriptions, showing that such carvings are indeed runic texts despite their lack of verbal message. Different types of readers can use runic resources in different ways. Firstly, runes carry meaning independent of any verbal message, giving them significance even to illiterate readers. Secondly, literate readers can appreciate certain conventions of runic composition and, thirdly, one and the same runic text can be part of different discourses and hence be aimed at different kinds of readers. / <p>Disputationen sker på norska och svenska</p>

Zugl.: Paderborn, Univ., Diss., 2005

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:29:49Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2005-02-16Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T19:59:47Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 sobreira_rs_me_sjrp.pdf: 1038632 bytes, checksum: 30397b2542f6feaac73a9e10f4263b69 (MD5) / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) / O escritor norte-americano Raymond Carver (1938-1988) é considerado uma das principais vozes responsáveis pelo boom do conto na década de 1980 nos Estados Unidos e pelo desenvolvimento de técnicas narrativas do minimalismo literário. Suas histórias condensadas, desprovidas de ornamentação e caracterizadas por uma sintaxe despojada, paratática colaboram para a composição de um retrato límpido do cotidiano de suas personagens, que, em geral, representam os trabalhadores menos favorecidas das classes operárias. A presente dissertação estuda a maneira pela qual os textos de Carver criticam o mito do Sonho Americano e, a partir da publicação do volume Cathedral (1983), como a ficção do autor sofre uma transformação de estilo, culminando com os jogos pós-modernos da indeterminação na fase final de sua carreira. / The American writer Raymond Carver (1938-1988) is regarded as one of the major voices responsible for the short story boom in the 1980s in the United States of America as well as for the development of narrative techniques of literary Minimalism. Carver s condensed, unadorned stories, which are also characterized by a paratactic, and not complex syntax, contributes to the composition of a limpid portrayal of everyday life experienced by his characters that generally represent the poorest people of working class. The present thesis analyses the way Carver s texts criticize the myth of the American Dream and, after the publication of the volume Cathedral (1983), how his fiction undergoes a change of style, culminating with the post-modern games of indeterminacy in the last phase of his career.