Original scientific paper
REMAPPING THE BOUNDARIES: THE NOVELISTIC LANDSCAPE OF LESLIE MARMON SILKO’S STORYTELLER
Sanja Runtić
; Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Osijek
Abstract
The paper examines the generic hybridity in Leslie Marmon Silko’s Storyteller
(1981) as a tool for synchronizing the private and the public history,
emphasizing a synecdochic relationship between the individual and the
communal, as well as the necessity of the Western readers’ conceptual
reorientation for appreciating that relationship. Through its shift towards
oral discourse, Silko’s novel stretches the horizon of the Western genre,
challenging its narrative, authorial and receptional conventions, as well
as its epistemology of space and time. Infusing a sense of collectivity into
the traditional Western concept of personal narrative, Silko draws upon
Laguna sacred history, delineating the importance of storytelling in shaping
and preserving the communal identity. Transgressing the border between
the fictional and the real, the secular and the mythic, Storyteller
also conveys the power of storytelling to transcend material boundaries of
the real and shape them at the same time. The analysis pays special attention
to permutations, as a stylistic device that converges postmodern
techniques with oral storytelling in order to exhibit the variability of the
oral discourse and translate it into written form.
Keywords
Leslie Marmon Silko; Storyteller; hybridity; border-crossing; redefining the novelistic genre
Hrčak ID:
230476
URI
Publication date:
3.12.2007.
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