Prolepsis in some Postmodern Novels

Miscelánea: A Journal of English and American Studies

Muriel Spark’s The Driver’s Seat is a radical metafictional experiment, suggesting the inexorable connections between contingency and a predetermined plot which are so common to many Sparkian novels. Following Marina MacKay’s perception that Spark’s experimental narrative operates “in the conceptual space where the more abstract preoccupations of Roman Catholic theology overlap with the metafictional and fabulist concerns of postmodernism” (2008: 506), this essay will discuss how the notion of predestination reverberates in The Driver’s Seat, not only as a remnant of Spark’s Presbyterian education but also as a postmodern re-visitation of classical tragedy in a metafictional key. Spark’s preference for predetermined plots may echo a long philosophical and theological discussion spanning many centuries about free will and predestination, particularly intense in the times of the Protestant Reformation, but it also reflects the sense of predestination as a necessary ingredient of class...

Ms. Muriel Spark is a strong voice of feminism in the realm of literature. She is a significant signature to raise the voiceless voice of women of her time and has given prominent meaning to the vacuum of female perspectives in her fictional world. Her The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is a much discussed novel where the protagonist has been given intellectual shades and her character is a direct challenge in the patriarchal set up of society. Her novella The Driver's Seat is also one of her favorite creation which provides us to examine the changing human psyche in the chaotic world of post-World War. My paper is a sincere attempt to explore the enigmatic character of the protagonist andher act of self-imposed violence that perplexes the reader. I have tried to unveil the interesting layers of untold and hidden articulation of female world and a peculiar kind of violence in this novella. In this creation of Muriel Spark, it is not important how the incident is happening rather why it is so, that makes our perusal alive and vital. In the modern age of 20 th century Ms. Muriel Spark emerged on the monitor of English-fiction as a strong voice of an intellectual female novelist. She seems not only to be proud of being a female but embraced feminism as an ideology in the sense of consciously held set of beliefs which aims at understanding this world and human existence from her own perspectives. She believed in her own actual female perception of human problems and its intricacies. In her fictional territory she let her woman characters wander through the world releasing them from a kind of confinement of patriarchal set up and prepare them for an entirely new gender role of 'she'. Muriel Spark is the name of a popular novelist of English arena who has a strong, dynamic and firm authoritative zeal and genius well expressed in her works. Muriel Spark's The Driver's Seat was published in 1970 which is known as a novella. It is also described as 'metaphysical shocker' in the literary circles. Undoubtedly, it is a narrative of psychological state of mind of a woman which shocks, thrills and leaves the reader with a profound thought to explore the enigmatic character and bizarre milieu of our postmodern world and culture. This is work of fiction where we find tone and temper of alienation and isolation also. Lise, who is the protagonist of the book has been given the mission to chase the mystery of death. It is a story of violence-self-imposed violence but it is also a tale of freedom of a woman who is independent enough to be involved in the quest of self and psyche. It is also a narrative of loss of spiritual values in the humdrum of materialistic growth and extremes.

Literary scholars and English teachers will recognize the word prolepsis as a term describing the moment in a short story or novel when the reader becomes fully cognizant of past, present, and future events all in one instant. This is a moment of heightened insight, transcending historical sedimentation. "A proleptic moment is any experience" of a text that shifts the reader/viewer/listener outside of "linear segmentation of time and creates a holistic understanding of the past, present, and future simultaneously" (Slattery, 2013, p. 305). Prolepsis is the moment when all of the events of the narrative coalesce. The proleptic experience may unfold in the opening pages of a novel like the progressive moment of currere, as in ) The Sound and the Fury. Or, perhaps the proleptic experience is a regressive currere or climax at the end of a film or narrative that is self-evident but not comprehended, as in Murder on the Orient Express. As a literary device, often called a "flash forward," the narrative is taken forward in time to show events that are expected to occur, or that have already occurred in the future, even though the main part of the narrative is further back in the past. Prolepsis as literary analysis foreshadowed the emergence of currere in curriculum theory in the 1970s. Currently, literary analysis can be useful for deepening our understanding of time and context in curriculum studies. Prolepsis is the synthetical moment of Pinar and Grumet's (1976) currere.

International Journal of Enhanced Research in Educational Development (IJERED) , 2019

Muriel Spark's Loitering with Intent projects metafiction as its key feature with regard to its complex narrative structure and it has several coatings of fiction-within-fiction and interrupts the reader's expectations of a genre by violating the generic boundaries. The present paper tries to uncover the self-reflexive and self-conscious personality of Spark as a writer which she tries to portray through metafiction. It also explores her art of narration and creation of fiction. Along with it, the paper also reflects its impact on her future novels which she wrote after Loitering with Intent.

International Journal of Advanced Research in Education, Technology and Management , 2023

This article explores the expression of postmodern ideas in the works of Muriel Spark, a prominent British novelist and playwright. Spark's literary creations embody and reflect key tenets of postmodernism through their experimentation with narrative structures, intertextuality, and metafictional elements. The article discusses several notable works of Spark where postmodern elements can be observed, including "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie," "The Driver's Seat," "Loitering with Intent," "A Far Cry from Kensington," and "The Abbess of Crewe." It examines how Spark's novels employ fragmentation, irony, parody, intertextuality, unreliable narrators, and self-reflexivity to challenge traditional notions of storytelling, truth, and reality. By embracing these postmodern techniques, Spark's works invite readers to engage with complex narratives and question the constructed nature of language and perception. The article concludes by emphasizing Spark's significant contribution to postmodern literature and her enduring influence on contemporary writers.

Novel: A Forum on Fiction, 2011

The following remarks come from the deep conviction-echoed by my fellow panelists-that modern Anglophone culture is undergoing a change, the likes of which have not been seen in over a century. We are experiencing a paradigm shift in science, politics, and literature; old worlds, scientific methods, and forms of mediation are consigned to the dustbin as new ways of living, managing, and imagining human life seem to emerge on a daily basis. In years to come, the novels that matter will, I believe, be those seen as having prepared us for an epistemic shift in how we imagine ourselves as human beings. The question we confront as scholars of the novel is thus a straightforward one: what part does the novel play in this change, or does this change spell the end of the novel by rendering obsolete the terms in which novels have resolved the conflicts of modern life? As I have argued elsewhere, the novel provides a means of mediating between individuals (presumably capable of self-government) and a human aggregate made of such individuals; the modern household (also known as the family) has served as an apparatus of and the model for a modern liberal society. As it unfolded in narrative form, this mediating structure provided the telos and resolution of a form that took up the impossible task of patching rifts between private consciousness and the material conditions of embodiment. In casting the family in the form of a magical household, the novel also provided an enticing carrot for readers who anticipate a sense of self-fulfillment through identification with some surrogate individual. In The Secular Age, Charles Taylor understands this enticement as the promise of emotional plenitude called "love" that secular cultures offer in lieu of an afterlife. Certainly aware of their place in a global print market where post colonial novels and world literature have challenged the generic standard of British realism, a number of contemporary British novels have declared the household obsolete as a way of imagining a national community and as the means of reproducing its subjects. What is the future of the novel once the household no longer shapes the future in novels? Does the obsolescence of the traditional family mean the obsolescence of the novel as well? When broken up and dispersed, the operations of the family bear comparison to those of the communitarian ideal that Jean-Luc Nancy described as "the lost community." In looking back through the work of Georges Bataille at a century of failed attempts to create alternative political communities, Nancy concluded that this loss of the "intimacy of communion" is itself "constitutive of community," though one that cannot be acknowledged until we unthink "the nature and structure of individuality" (6). In recent decades, a body of theorypursuing this general objective across cognitive science, new media, literature, and philosophy-has been coalescing around the concept of affect. The impact of this work is evident in changes already wrought on the concepts sustaining the traditional family to which the new notion of affect is decisively hostile. What would we be if not individuals, such theories force us to imagine? How do we form Novel

My particular thanks are due to all three members of my committee for their enthusiasm and support throughout these long five years. Ruth Parkin-Gounelas, my supervisor, made things much easier with her detailed and precise comments on my work; our discussions always bore fruit, as she had an amazing ability to urge me forward step by step. Words can't describe Jina Politi, without whose ideas my thesis would have been completely different; an inexhaustible source of inspiration, Jina really opened up new horizons before me. Karin Boklund-Lagopoulou, who never stopped believing in me, was a very supportive presence all these years; she always managed to detect some crucial drawbacks, which I was too immersed in my work to notice. I would also like to thank Katy Douka-Kabitoglou not only because her personal library was always available, but also because she stood by me, always ready to listen to my problems and offer her invaluable advice and experience. I am particularly grateful to Mr Anargyros Heliotis as he was the first to introduce me into Spark's fiction. The friendship of Katerina Kitsi-Mitakou was inestimable both during the first years, when she read my work, and during the last phase, because she was so warm and supportive when I most needed her. I owe my thanks to Effie Botonaki, Irene Hania and Paraskevi Papaleonida, because sharing problems and experiences is always such a relief! Finally, I can't forget Fotini Stavrou, our Librarian, and her immense help in the library.