Fictional Space in the Modernist and Post-modernist American Novel

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Bucknell University Press, 1985 - Fiction - 240 pages
Fictional space is the imaginal expanse of field created by fictional discourse; a space which, through ultimately self-referential and self-validating, necessarily exists in ascertainable relation to the real world outside the text. After defining his theoretical framework the author applies it to American fiction of the twentieth century.
 

Contents

A Theory of Fictional Space
17
The Evacuation of Fictional Space The Retreat of the PostVictorians
59
Making Room for the Reader The Experiment with Paraspace
103
DisEasy Peace Postmodernist Reoccupation of Fictional Space
153
Notes
190
Bibliography
206
Index
232
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Page 24 - Thus, therefore, the floor of our familiar room has become a neutral territory, somewhere between the real world and fairy-land, where the Actual and the Imaginary may meet, and each imbue itself with the nature of the other.

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