Lately I’ve been writing posts about narrative world building, the mimetic aspect of narrative, with particular attention to descriptions of moveable objects, including clothing. I’ve been concentrating on novels by three writers: Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Willa Cather’s The Song of the Lark, and Doris Lessing’s The Good Neighbour. There’s lots more to say … Continue reading More on Mimesis in Willa Cather’s “The Song of the Lark”

In my previous post I looked at some passages from Doris Lessing’s novel The Good Neighbour to show something about her techniques of world building, mimesis. There are many passages in the novel that show how interested she is in enumerating and describing things; these enumerations and descriptions contribute to the meaning of the novel, … Continue reading Lessing, Austen, Cather

In this post I will continue my discussion of mimesis—world building—in Doris Lessing’s novel The Good Neighbour. There is an overabundance of great mimetic material in this novel; I will hit some of the high points. In my previous post I discussed the beginning of The Good Neighbour—first, the initial summary of antecedent action (in … Continue reading More on Lessing

In my previous post I compared some passages of mimesis—world building—in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Willa Cather’s The Song of the Lark. I was arguing that literary realism is not a simple category; literary language is not a transparent window through which we just look at what’s out there, even in realistic styles. … Continue reading Mimesis in Doris Lessing’s “The Good Neighbour”

Every novel presents a world to the reader. The building of a narrative world doesn’t have to happen all at once, though it’s common for at least some world building to occur at the beginning. If the world of a narrative is close to something we can, for the moment, call normal reality, then the … Continue reading Mimesis in Austen and Cather

It’s been a while since I posted anything about my current research project in narrative analysis. The approach I’m using looks at a narrative from three aspects: the synthetic, the mimetic, and the thematic. The synthetic aspect asks “How is this narrative composed?”; the mimetic aspect asks “What does it represent?”; and the thematic aspect … Continue reading Representation, Big and Small

I. In this post I want to look at the words “analgesic”, “anaesthetic”, and “anodyne”, all derived from ancient Greek and all having to do with pain or the lack of pain. I begin with the word “analgesic”, which is a general term for pain killers which don’t induce loss of consciousness; many analgesics can … Continue reading No Pain, No Gain

By Robert Fisher I'm very pleased to present a Guest Essay, contributed by Friend of the Blog Robert Fisher. This one is about Toponyms, that is, place names, and what we can learn from them. Enjoy!!! Historical linguists can glean some information about the extent of ancient languages and the migrations of the people who … Continue reading Guest Essay: Toponyms

The word “stick” is one of those short Germanic words that form the core of the English vocabulary. Relatives of the word “stick” can be found in many Germanic languages; it can be traced all the way back to Proto-Indo-European, and it shows up in Greek and Latin. The Proto-Indo-European root is “*steig-” (the asterisk … Continue reading Stick, Stigma, Astigmatism, Etiquette

In my previous post (“Cather’s Characters”, posted 16 July), I discussed fifteen character sketches in Willa Cather’s The Song of the Lark (and a couple of sketches in Jane Austen’s Emma). I noted that all the sketches in The Song of the Lark concern secondary or tertiary characters. There is no sketch of the principal … Continue reading More on Character Sketches