The Little Weird: Self and Consciousness in Contemporary, Small-press, Speculative Fiction Page: 74
View a full description of this dissertation.
Extracted Text
The following text was automatically extracted from the image on this page using optical character recognition software:
Threbansch) be without one. Like the narrator-narrated nature of the stories in "Lull,"
Threbansch is being impossibly. Later, when the narrative exposes the infinitely recursive
creator-created relationship between the Center and Threbansch (especially when the roles are
first reversed), this exposure works backward through the story, altering Threbansch from a
flight of collective fancy to a place of its own that creates the Center in its struggle to be actual.
The only recoverable fabula in the story, that of the Center, evaporates. The self-world
negotiation, Neisser's extended selves, and Bal's "acting place" find their metaphorization, their
narrative expression in the recursion between Threbansch and Center. "The Yellow Chamber,"
as with many other stories of the little weird, celebrates the impossible nature of expressing self
and consciousness through the inescapably linear nature of text. The weird here works just
fine-as I have demonstrated previously, it is a characterization of consciousness itself; however,
the normal cannot reconcile itself with the disconnect between itself (the real world as our
narratives commonly tell us) and the "experiential space" of consciousness. It is this inescapable
disconnect that the story-fabula disconnect expresses.25
Final Analysis
Recursion or atemporality in the Little Weird is yet another similarity between textual
narratives and narratives of self. "Anachrony" as Mieke Bal calls the phenomenon is not
anything new. She explains that "Differences between the arrangement in the story and the
chronology of the fabula we call chronological deviations or anachronies."26 These are the
movements forward or backward in "time" that a story makes in its process of prioritizing or
focalizing elements of its fabula. It allows a narrator, essentially, to revise its narrative as it goes,
suddenly re-informing everything that has already occurred in the narrative with an insight from74
Upcoming Pages
Here’s what’s next.
Search Inside
This dissertation can be searched. Note: Results may vary based on the legibility of text within the document.
Tools / Downloads
Get a copy of this page or view the extracted text.
Citing and Sharing
Basic information for referencing this web page. We also provide extended guidance on usage rights, references, copying or embedding.
Reference the current page of this Dissertation.
Bradley, Darin Colbert. The Little Weird: Self and Consciousness in Contemporary, Small-press, Speculative Fiction, dissertation, May 2007; Denton, Texas. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc3703/m1/78/: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; .