Chapter 6
Discourse presentation and point of view in “Cheating at Canasta” by
William Trevor
This chapter examines the closing section of William Trevor’s
short story, “Cheating at Canasta”
(2007). Focussing on shifts in narrative viewpoint in the
passage, the chapter teases out the complex transitions in viewpoint
features, showing how Mallory, the story’s focaliser, engages in changing
perceptions of, and reactions to, his immediate environment. Viewpoint
transitions at the level of narrative style, it is argued, engender parallel
shifts in the character’s changing cognitive purview, including memory,
response and flashback as well as his internal assumptions and hypotheses. The
author shows how a subtle understanding of the passage (and indeed the story
as a whole) can enable an appreciation of the quality of the writing,
concluding that stylistic analyses help to show not just how we
understand literary texts but also why and how we
appreciate them.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Stylistic analysis
- 2.1Textual proportions devoted to external narration, speech
presentation and a combination of internal narration and thought
presentation.
- 2.2Speech presentation
- 2.3Viewpoint, internal text-world variation and thought
presentation
- 3.Concluding remarks
-
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Cited by (2)
Cited by 2 other publications
Tabbert, Ulrike & Mahmood K. Ibrahim
2023.
Introduction. In
Sherko Bekas,
► pp. 1 ff.
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Statham, Simon
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The year’s work in stylistics 2019.
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► pp. 454 ff.
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