Janet Frame
Subtitle: semiotics and biosemiotics in her early fiction
By: Paul Matthew St. Pierre
Publisher: Rowman & Litterfield Publishers; Fairleigh Dickinson University Press
Published: 2011
Place of publication: Madison, NJ
Language: eng
Number of pages: 220
ISBN-13: 9781611470505; 9781611470512
Subjects: Criticism and interpretation; Symbolism in literature; Semiotics and literature
Description: "In Janet Frame: Semiotics and Biosemiotics in Her Early Fiction, Paul Matthew St. Pierre exploits the linguistic discipline of semiotics and the neurobiological discipline of biosemiotics to propose an original and dynamic reading of the first four works of fiction by New Zealand writer Janet Frame (1924-2004): The Lagoon: Stories (1951), Owls Do Cry (1957), Faces in the Water (1961), and The Edge of the Alphabet (1962). Opposing the prevailing reading of Frame's early fiction as autobiographical, deriving from her medical history, he argues her books are singular evocations of her astonishing imagination. His purpose is to fix this historical record and provide an alternative model for interpreting one of the 20th century's most stylistically demanding and rewarding writers. Semiotics and biosemiotics are his means for unlocking the early fiction and her later works to a polemical analysis focusing on language, sign transmissions, writing the body, and the biosemiotic self..."--Publisher description.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction: writing the body in the body of writing of Janet Frame; title: Signs, signatories, semiotics in The lagoon; title: The spatialization of sound-image signs in Owls do cry; title: A biosemiotics of facial displays in Faces in the water; title: The biosemiotic self as body in The edge of the alphabet; title: Frame's apprenticeship to journeyman and master writer.