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    Representation and Performance: Dancer (2003)

    Citation

    Flannery, Eoin (2011) "Colum McCann and the Aesthetics of Redemption," Irish Academic Press
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    Flannery, Eoin (2011). Representation and Performance Dancer (2003) . Colum McCann and the Aesthetics of Redemption. (795.9Kb)
    Date
    2011
    Author
    Flannery, Eoin
    Peer Reviewed
    Yes
    Metadata
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    Flannery, Eoin (2011) "Colum McCann and the Aesthetics of Redemption," Irish Academic Press
    Other Titles
    Colum McCann And The Aesthetics Of Redemption
    Abstract
    Introducing the work of John Banville, Derek Hand invokes the protracted genealogy of the novel in locating the formal and thematic loci of Banville’s fictions. Hand alludes to Harold Bloom’s recent thoughts on the significance of Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote as an aesthetic symptom of European cultural modernity. Specifically, Hand is keen to highlight the internal paradox that is at the core of the novelistic tradition: ‘On the one hand, it aspires towards certainty, unity, knowledge, and completeness, while on the other, obvious epistemological anxieties and ontological uncertainties are deeply bound up with it.’Latterly, much postmodernist, or self-reflexive, literaryfiction has tended towards the latter pole, reflecting philosophical and theoretical scepticism about the natures of modern society and the so-called modern ‘subject’. The desire to cohere within the limits of a generic form are perpetually confounded by internal anxiety that meaning is always elsewhere, that there is always something absent. Thus, when one approaches the novel, one encounters a deeply anxious and/or defiantly playful form – one that is increasingly conscious of its provisionality. Hand continues: ‘The novel hopes to succeed in its efforts to tell readers everything. However, in the end, it can offer nothing but shards and moments of possible insight.’ Yet such comments should not blind us to the utopian and hopeful dynamics of the novel form: the lack of conclusiveness, which is its necessary condition, does not render the novel devoid of political and cultural agency. ‘Moments of possible insight’ may be provisional but the impulse towards such fleeting epiphanies transfuses the novel with its future-oriented potentialities. From a formal perspective, as Hand maintains, the novel is entirely cognizant of the limits of its unity and the partiality of its representations.
    Keywords
    Dancer, Representation, Performance, Colum McCann
    Language (ISO 639-3)
    eng
    Publisher
    Irish Academic Press
    URI
    http://hdl.handle.net/10395/2159
    ISSN
    978 0 7165 3049 7
    Collections
    • English Language and Literature (Peer-reviewed publications)

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