Narrative Apostrophe: Reading, Rhetoric, Resistance in Michel Butor's 'La Modification' and Julio Cortazar's "Graffiti." (Second-Person Narrative)
1994; University of Arkansas Press; Volume: 28; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2374-6629
Autores Tópico(s)Narrative Theory and Analysis
ResumoI propose the phrase describe anomalous communicative circuits in second-person narrative fiction(2) at the levels of the story and of the reception of the story. I borrow and extend the term most directly from classical philologist Elizabeth Block, who uses it describe (exclusively) the Homeric and Vergilian narrators' addresses characters in the epics and the epic audiences (Block 8, 11, 13). Block and I in turn draw on the figure of used by rhetoricians describe the act of an orator turning away (Gk. apo 'away' and strophein 'to turn') from his normal audience, the judges, address another: whether his adversary, a specific member of the jury, someone absent or dead, or even an abstract concept or inanimate object.(3)The ancients attributed apostrophe special powers the though they did explain satisfactorily why this should be so. Quintilian, for example, comments cryptically that the apostrophic gesture mire movet (is wonderfully stirring) (3:396, 397); he hints obscurely that apostrophize a person (or thing) is more compelling than state a fact about that person (or thing) (2:42, 43). In his treatise on the sublime, Longinus argues similarly that change of person (i.e., the pronominal shift of apostrophe) causes a vivid effect (200, 201). Illustrating his point with an example from Herodotus, Longinus suggests that apostrophe turns hearing about something into seeing and experiencing it (200, 201). On the basis of its effectiveness, both Quintilian and Longinus advocate use of apostrophe, offering numerous examples prove that apostrophe can the judges and in a speaker' s favor (cf. Quintilian 2:41-45 and Longinus 200-05) though again they do clearly explain why this would be so.In the Western rhetorical and lyric traditions apostrophe has continued be linked heightened emotion.(4) It is perhaps for this very reason, that it has also been considered liable abuse and open parody (Perrine).(5) What distinguishes it most markedly from other figures, which, like rhetoric as a whole, also aim to carry away the audience (Barilli x), however, is that apostrophe tropes not on the meaning of a word but on the circuit or situation of communication itself' (Culler 135).I suggest that we can now explain the structure of apostrophe--and its efficacy--in terms unavailable ancient rhetoricians by describing that communicative circuit on which the figure tropes. Communication theory has long accustomed us think of any interchange as consisting of three main components: addresser, message, addressee, where addresser and addressee normally and regularly switch roles. However, though marked by vocative forms, apostrophe is dialogue, for even if the addressee is part of the orator's and thus can the apostrophe, conventionally the addressee does reply. Rather, apostrophe is short-circuited communication; messages do flow in both directions. In other words, even when the addressee is a sentient being who can hear the message, under no circumstances does she in turn become a speaker. Perhaps even more significantly--and bizarrely--the apostrophe bears two addresses. Overtly, a speaker sends a message someone or something as if that being or thing could respond but will not. Covertly, an apostrophe is meant provoke response through its reception in a second(ary) communicative circuit, received by the readers of a poem in the case of lyric or the in the case of oratory. That is say, the convention of apostrophe is differentiate between explicit addressee and receiver-audience, between the referent of the you and the listener. To put it yet another way, apostrophes are messages uttered with two addressees simultaneously in mind.How does such a complicated, unnatural address structure move audiences? I suggest one can begin answer this question through the ideas of Martin Buber and Emile Benveniste. …
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