Resumen de Writers at the gallery: painting and Postmodernist English short-story telling
José Tomás Monterrey Rodríguez
This paper aims at exploring the effects produced by postmodernist English fiction writers when their narrations deal with, or are based on, well-known paintings, which are reproduced in the book. Authors discussed include Ackroyd, Barnes, Byatt and Carter. By using paintings as icons for creative literature, writers do not only problematise the very notion of narrative fiction, but also blur the boundaries between story telling, autobiography and the art essay. My discussion will also remark some of the effects elicited by this technique, such as the erasure of fictionality, and the rhetorical blending of literary elements associated with the Romantic spirit [overt experimentation, discussion of challenging views, confessional or autobiographical statements, etc] with a Neoclassical stance [the neutral narrative voice, balanced rhetorical design, intellectual inquiry, etc]. The analysis will also underline the gender difference in both perception and writing.
To conclude, I would like to suggest a growing interest of writers for making use of the physical, epistemological reality of pictorial art as a semiotic site for cultural reassessment.
