Buying pre-order items
Ebooks and Audiobook
You will receive an email with a download link for the ebook or audiobook on the publication date.
Payment
You will not be charged for pre-ordered books until they are available to be shipped. Pre-ordered ebooks will not be charged for until they are available for download.
Amending or cancelling your order
For orders that have not been shipped you can usually make changes to pre-orders up to 72 hours before the publishing date.
Payment for this pre-order will be taken when the item becomes available
This product is usually dispatched within 2-4 weeks following the publication date
- Delivery and returns info
-
Flat rate of $10.00 for shipping anywhere in Australia
Description
Metaperspectives in Contemporary Literary Fiction offers a literary-linguistic investigation of hypothesis and the metaperspective within contemporary Booker Prize-winning novels.
This highly innovative book introduces a new concept in the field of stylistics , but it also explores it through analyses of highly relevant concepts and areas of stylistic study.
Adam applies the concept of the metaperspective, centring on the thoughts of characters about other characters' views of them, to contemporary works of literary fiction and aligns it with existing stylistic and narratological approaches to narrative point of view.
Four recent winners of the Booker Prize – The Testaments (Margaret Atwood, 2019); Milkman (Anna Burns, 2018); A Brief History of Seven Killings (Marlon James, 2014); Lincoln in the Bardo (George Saunders, 2017) – figure as case-study novels. Each novel is tied to a specific iteration of the metaperspective, labelled respectively as the discourse-architectural metaperspective, the communal metaperspective, the racialised metaperspective, and the literalised metaperspective. These varieties of the metaperspective are linked to typical linguistic indices and thematic preoccupations within each of the novels under analysis. Discussions are further supported by consideration of other contemporary, Booker Prize-winning works.
This original study of an entirely new concept within the disciplines of stylistics and narratology has enormous potential and value for the understanding of literary texts. The practical stylistic analyses are well grounded in existing scholarship, making use of concepts like empathy, point of view and reader positioning, all of which are current and important approaches to narrative texts.
Table of Contents
List of Tables
Acknowledgements
1. Introduction
2. The Text-Possible Framework
3. The Metaperspective and Point of View
4. The Discourse-architectural Metaperspective and the Hypothetical Reader in Margaret Atwood's The Testaments
5. The Communal Metaperspective and Communal Hypothetical Focalisation in Anna Burns' Milkman
6. The Racialised Metaperspective and Mind Style in Marlon James' A Brief History of Seven Killings
7. The Literalised Metaperspective and Empathy in George Saunders' Lincoln in the Bardo
8. Conclusions and Future Prospects
Notes
References
Index
Product details
| Published | 11 Jun 2026 |
|---|---|
| Format | Hardback |
| Edition | 1st |
| Pages | 232 |
| ISBN | 9781350465824 |
| Imprint | Bloomsbury Academic |
| Illustrations | 10 bw illus |
| Dimensions | 234 x 156 mm |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
Reviews
ONLINE RESOURCES
Bloomsbury Collections
This book is available on Bloomsbury Collections where your library has access.
Related Titles
