My new book, How to Reread a Novel (Louisiana State University Press), is now available. Here’s the publisher’s description: A novel is among the most intricate of human creations, the result of thousands of choices and decisions. In How to Reread a Novel, Matthew Clark explicates the intricacies of fiction writing through practical analysis of … Continue reading Breaking News!
Author: Matthew Clark
Matthew Clark is a classical philologist and literary critic. He received his BA and MA degrees from the University of Toronto and his PhD degree from Harvard University. He has published five books: Out of Line: Homeric Composition Beyond the Hexameter (Rowman and Littlefield, 1997); A Matter of Style: Writing and Technique (Oxford University Press, 2002); Narrative Structures and the Language of the Self (Ohio State University Press, 2010); Exploring Greek Myth (Blackwell, 2012); Debating Rhetorical Narratology: The Synthetic, Mimetic and Thematic Aspects of Narrative, with James Phelan (Ohio State University Press, 2020). His current project has the working title How to Reread a Novel: Essays in Narrative Analysis.
More on Paronomasia and its Relatives
Rhetorical terminology is a mess. Often there is more than one term to designate a particular figure, and often a single term is used to designate several different figures. In my previous post I discussed the figure paronomasia, the use of words similar in sound but different in meaning (as in Ralph Ellison’s “his dream, … Continue reading More on Paronomasia and its Relatives
Paronomasia
Recently I read a good (and very long) biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, by H. W. Brands (New York: Doubleday, 2006). I’m a big fan of President Roosevelt and of Eleanor Roosevelt and over the years I’ve read a fair amount … Continue reading Paronomasia
A Host of Hosts
Host, hospitality, hospital, hospice, hostel, hotel, hostile, hostility, ostler, and guest. The words in the subtitle of this essay are all related in both form and meaning, though the relationships may not be immediately obvious. It may not be obvious that “hotel” and “guest” are related in form, or that “hospitality” and “hostility” are related … Continue reading A Host of Hosts
All in the Family
We often say that a particular language belongs to a family of languages. French, for instance, is a member of the Romance family of languages, along with Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and some others. All the languages in the Romance family are derived from Latin. Latin itself belongs to a larger family, the Italic family, which … Continue reading All in the Family
Enough Mimesis (For Now, Anyway)
For some time I’ve been posting essays on the topic of literary mimesis—also known as representation or world building. The topic is large and, to my mind, quite fascinating, but I feel like a change, so after this essay I will switch to another topic. Mimesis, world building, often involves some description of the objects … Continue reading Enough Mimesis (For Now, Anyway)
Dr. Archie Delivers a Baby
In this post I continue my discussion of mimesis—representation, world-building—in Willa Cather’s The Song of the Lark. As I have said previously, in my system the synthetic, the mimetic, and the thematic are simultaneous, but they may be artificially separated for analytical purposes. In this post I will include a few comments on the synthetic … Continue reading Dr. Archie Delivers a Baby
More on Faith, Hope, and Charity
In my previous post I looked at the structure of a sentence written by the Elizabethan theologian Richard Hooker and quoted by Herbert Read in his book, English Prose Style. In this post I will look at the context of the sentence, both internal and external. I begin by repeating the passage for ease of … Continue reading More on Faith, Hope, and Charity
Faith, Hope, and Charity
Lately I’ve been posting on world building, the mimetic aspect of narrative, and I will continue that series later, but today I thought I would take a break and talk about style. Recently I came across an interesting passage in Herbert Read’s English Prose Style, first published in 1966. I wouldn’t place it at the … Continue reading Faith, Hope, and Charity
More on Mimesis in Willa Cather’s “The Song of the Lark”
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”
