Author-Function and Modes of Writing in Narration: Reading Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and Julian Barnes’ The Noise of Time

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Graduate Student of English Language and Literature, University of Kurdistan, Sanandaj, Iran

2 Assistant Professor of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Language and Literature, University of Kurdistan, Sanandaj, Iran

10.34785/J014.2019.615

Abstract

The present study attempts to demonstrate how different texts with various author attitudes depict the oppressed subjects of Stalin’s time.  For this purpose, Roland Barthes’ notion of ‘Modes of Writing’ and Michel Foucault’s concept of ‘author’ are employed in reading Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1963) and Julian Barnes’ The Noise of Time (2016). The two novels mainly address the politically subjected characters in the Stalinist regime with different standpoints of author figure. Originating the authors’ modes of writing in the mentioned texts, on one hand, and the analysis of author-function, on the other, shall satisfy the comparative tendencies in this research and show how these theoretical frameworks can help a critical understanding of the texts. The subjects described in these novels, although similar in their situations and characteristics and subjected to the same institution of power, are narrated from different author roles and provide a somewhat similar subjectivity. The author figure as a subject of ideology and the text as a created object of an author can be thoroughly analyzed within the proposed theoretical framework; therefore, the main objective of this paper is to explore the depicted subjectivities of similar subjects from different standpoints of distinguishable author figures.

Keywords

References

Allen, G. Roland Barthes, Routledge: London & New York, 2003.
Barnes, J. The Noise of Time, Vintage: London, 2016.
Barthes, R. Writing Degree Zero, Trans. Annette Lavers and Colin Smith, Beacon Press: Boston, 1970.
Barthes, R.  “The Death of the Author” in Image, Music, Text, Trans. and Ed. Stephen Heath), Fotana Press: London, 1977, pp. 142-148.
Foucault, M. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of Prison. Trans. Alan Sheridan, Random House: New York, 1995.
Foucault, M. “What Is an Author?” in Language, Counter-Memory, Practice, Trans. Donald f. Bouchard and Sherry Simon, Cornell University Press: New York, 1977, pp. 113-138.
Jones, A. “A Review of The Noise of Time by Julian Barnes.” Philament Online Journal of Literature, Arts, and Culture, No. 22, 2016, pp. 129-132.
Kobets, Svitlana. “The Subtext of Christian Asceticism in Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.” The Slavic and East European Journal, Vol. 42, Issue. 4. 1998, pp. 661-676.
Michael H. M. Ng. “Is Julian Barnes Reliable in Narrating the Noise of Time?” English Language and Literature Studies, Vol. 9, No. 1, 2019, pp. 114-119. DOI:10.5539/ells.v9n1p114
Nayebpour, K. “Representation of Trauma as a Political Apparatus in Julian Barnes’s The Noise of Time.” IUP Journal of English Studies, Vol. 12, No. 4, 2017, pp. 7-24.
Sartre, J. “What is Literature?” and Other Essays, Trans. Bernard Frechtman, Harvard University Press: Massachusetts, 1988.
Solzhenitsyn, A. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Trans. Gillon Aitken, Sphere Books: London, 1974.
Tucan, D. and Tucan, G. “Denial of Humanity and Forms of Enslavement in the Russian Gulag: Early Narratives of Gulag Survivors (1919-1940).” Ars Aeterna, Vol. 6, No. 1, 2014. DOI: 10.2478/aaͲ2014Ͳ0002
 
Critical Literary Studies
Volume 1, Issue 2 - Serial Number 2
September 2019
Pages 141-158

Files

History

  • Receive Date: 15 July 2019
  • Revise Date: 01 August 2019
  • Accept Date: 23 August 2019

Share

How to cite

Statistics