Citation

Black ELIZABETH. Appl. Linguist. 1989; 10(3): 281-293.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1989, Oxford University Press)

DOI

10.1093/applin/10.3.281

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Muriel Spark is interested in the nature of narrative, and addresses the problem, directly or indirectly, in many of her fictions. In her short story 'Miss Pinkerton's Apocalypse' (1958) major elements of narrative organization are deployed to demonstrate, in a very brief text, the nature of literary discourse. This paper analyses the voice of the narrator, the relationship between 'story' and text, and the dialogue, to show how each of these levels explores the essentially fictive nature of narrative. The economy with which Spark makes very complex points, and the elegant convergence of patterning on several levels, makes this short story very useful pedagogically. A final section proposes a methodology for the teaching of narrative and suggests literary texts which illustrate some of the more important theoretical issues discussed in the paper.