Keeping the Novel “Novel”: Reading Embodied, Borderless and Untranslatable Experimental Fiction

Abstract

How can theories of narrative account for experimental texts that are “irreducibly diverse”? This thesis is a case study presenting a dual-focused analysis of three contemporary experimental novels. In the first chapter Nicola Barker’s H(A)PPY is explored through the lenses of paratextual theory and rhetorical poetics. The analysis traces how Barker decentres her narrative and breaks conventional forms of narration, pushing her reader beyond typical textual borders to reflect on the limitations of narrative. The second chapter grapples with translation and the notion of comparatizing archives of knowledge to explore Xiaolu Guo’s innovations in UFO in Her Eyes. Placing these critical ideas in conversation with rhetorical poetics reveals Guo’s elusive narrative structure, which deliberately defies stable interpretation. Guo creates an untranslatable narrative for her reader, in which meaning is always beyond the grasp of her audience. In the third chapter Jess Stoner’s I Have Blinded Myself Writing This is analysed to show how the critical concept of embodied reading, as it applies to narratives of illness, challenges established approaches to narrative. Rhetorical poetics, as a method of interpretation, proves to be open to the empathetic and bodily engagement prompted by Stoner’s work, which opens the door to an exploration of Stoner’s evocative work in connection with the field of medical humanities.

Taken together these three case studies engage rhetorical poetics with cultural thematics to present uniquely adjusted analyses of contemporary experimental novels. These wide-ranging critical concepts and methods reveal rhetorical poetics as an adaptable guide for narrative studies of the irreducibly diverse field of experimental literature. It is hoped that this demonstration will prompt others to continue the work of adjusting and extending critical frameworks to keep the novel novel.