Cover not available
Article published In:
English Text Construction
Vol. 13:1 (2020) ► pp.22–45

Dr(e)amatic encounters

The role of embedded narratives in J. M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians

| University of Isfahan
| University of Isfahan
| University of Isfahan

This article traces the textual elaboration and expansion of dreams as embedded narratives in J. M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians (1980). Drawing on Marie-Laure Ryan’s modal system, the objective is to lay bare Coetzee’s staging of the possibility of encountering the other in the world of dreams as the only domain that is not controlled by territorializing forces of the imperial state. Ryan’s modal system is used to differentiate the fantasy universe (F-universe) of the protagonist’s dreams as the only possible venue for such an encounter with the other. We suggest that such unauthorized (I-Thou) encounters – which closely accompany (and interact with) the events in the textual actual world (TAW) – widen the doubtful magistrate’s horizon of vision and facilitate his liberation by disconnecting him from the imperial state.

Keywords: J. M. Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians , possible worlds theory, Marie-Laure Ryan’s modal system, embedded narratives, F-universe
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.TAW and embedded narratives
  • 3.The magistrate as the imperial subject within TAW
  • 4.The deterritorialized realm of dreams: The dr(e)amatic encounter
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 24 July 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/etc.00033.sae
References (28)
Attridge, Derek
2004 J. M. Coetzee and the Ethics of Reading: Literature in the Event. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Attwell, Derek
2008 Coetzee’s estrangements. NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction 41(2/3): 229–243. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bell, Alice
2010 The Possible Worlds of Hypertext Fiction. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Boletsi, Maria
2013 Barbarism and its Discontents. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Brombert, Victor
2009 J. M. Coetzee and the scandal of death. The Yale Review 97(3): 81–97. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Canepari-Labib, Michela
2005 Old myths – Modern Empires: Power, Language and Identity in J. M. Coetzee’s Work. Pieterlen and Bern: Peter Lang. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Castillo, Debra A.
1986 The composition of the self in Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians . Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 27 (2): 78–90.Google Scholar
Clingman, Stephen
2009 The Grammar of Identity: Transnational Fiction and the Nature of the Boundary. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Coetzee, John Maxwell
1980 Waiting for the Barbarians. London: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Dirlik, Arif
1991 Like a song gone silent: the political ecology of barbarism and civilization in Waiting for the Barbarians and the legend of the thousand bulls . Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 1 (3): 321–352. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Durrant, Sam
2004 Postcolonial Narrative and the Work Of Mourning: J. M. Coetzee, Wilson Harris, and Toni Morrison. New York: State University of New York.Google Scholar
Eckstein, Barbara
1989 The body, the word, and the state: J. M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians . Novel: A Forum on Fiction 22 (2): 175–198. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gallagher, Susan VanZanten, and J. M. Coetzee
1988 Torture and the novel: J. M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians . Contemporary Literature 29 (2): 277–285. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Johnson, Mark
1987 The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Imagination, Reason, and Meaning. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Marais, Mike
2011 Waiting for the Barbarians. In A companion to the Works of J. M. Coetzee, Ted Mehigan (ed.). Rochester: Camden House, 65–75.Google Scholar
Masłoń, Sławomir
2007 Père-Versions of the Truth: The Novels of J. M. Coetzee. Silesia: Silesia University Press.Google Scholar
Moses, Michael Valdez
1993 The mark of empire-writing, history, and torture in Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians . The Kenyon Review 15(1): 115–127.Google Scholar
Nashef, Hania A. M.
2010 Becomings in J. M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians and Jose Saramago’s Blindness . Comparative Literature Studies 47(1): 21–41.Google Scholar
Penner, Dick
1986 Sight, blindness and double-thought in J. M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians . World Literature Written in English 26(1): 34–45. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ryan, Marie-Laure
1980 Fiction, non-factuals and the principle of minimal departure. Poetics 9(4): 403–422. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1985 The modal structure of narrative universes. Poetics Today 6(4): 717–755. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1986 Embedded narratives and the structure of plans. Text 6(1):107–142. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1991a Possible Worlds, Artificial Intelligence, and Narrative Theory. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
1991b Possible worlds and accessibility relations: A semantic typology of fiction. Poetics Today 12(3): 553–576. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1992 Possible worlds in recent literary theory. Style 26(4): 528–553.Google Scholar
Samolsky, Russell
2011 Apocalyptic futures: marked bodies and the violence of the text in Kafka, Conrad, and Coetzee. New York: Fordham University Press.Google Scholar
Wright, Laura
2006 Writing “out of All Camps”: J. M. Coetzee’s Narratives of Displacement. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Wenzel, Jennifer
1996 Keys to the labyrinth: writing, torture, and Coetzee’s barbarian girl. Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature. 15(1): 61–71. DOI logoGoogle Scholar