Title: Entangled voices : genre and the religious construction of the self /
Authors: Ruf, Frederick J., 1950-
Publisher: Oxford University Press,
Year: 1997
Subjects: Donne, John,; Wilson, Robert,; Coleridge, Samuel Taylor,; Levi, Primo.; Wilson, Robert, Criticism and interpretation.; Glass, Philip.; Religious literature, English History and criticism Theory, etc.; Self in literature.; Literary form; Religious literature, English History and criticism.
Abstract: In this book, Ruf tries to understand how the concepts of "voice" and "genre" function in texts. To this end, he joins literary theorists in the discussion about "narrative." Ruf rejects the idea of genre as a fixed historical form that serves as a template for readers and writers; instead, he suggests that we imagine different genres, whether narrative, lyric, or dramatic, as the expression of different voices. Each voice, he asserts, possesses different key qualities: embodiment, sociality, contextuality, and opacity in the dramatic voice; intimacy, limitation, urgency in lyric; and a "magisterial" quality of comprehensiveness and cohesiveness in narrative. These voices are models for our selves, composing an unruly and unstable multiplicity of selves. Ruf applies his theory of "voice" and "genre" to five texts: Dineson's Out of Africa, Donne's Holy Sonnets, Primo Levi's The Periodic Table, Robert Wilson's Einstein on the Beach, and Coleridge's Biographia Literaria.