Skaz Rulz: (Re-)Oralisation of Contemporary British Fiction

Grzegorz Maziarczyk

Abstract


Taking as its starting point the Russian Formalist concept of skaz, this paper discusses a number of contemporary British novels in which the illusion of spontaneous speech is created. It analyses basic textual signals of the skaz the narrator’s idiosyncratic style, frequent addresses to the “you” of the addressee and a highly digressive narrative structure. The skaz mode proves to be a narrative strategy which cannot be associated with a particular literary convention its popularity should rather be related to the tendencies in contemporary culture indicative of its general re-oralisation.

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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17951/lsmll.2014.38.1.90
Date of publication: 2015-05-20 17:37:11
Date of submission: 2015-04-22 01:36:28


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