The early writing

Trodd, Anthea; Taylor, Jenny Bourne

doi:10.1017/ccol0521840384.003

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…Collins uses storytelling as a medium for transforming the desperate situation within the first level in the storyworld. This feature, according to Anthea Trodd (2006), is a shared quality in Collins's early writing: "Collins's storytelling often recreates the context of boredom within the story, boredom induced by restriction of mobility, vision, or possibilities for diversion, which slowly builds, through intense attentiveness to a limited range of objects, into fear and suspense" (p. 33). The art of storytelling in After Dark, however, is mostly presented as a recreational power that can transform a desperate family's circumstances.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Anti-Mimetic Function of Paratext in Wilkie Collins’s Framed Narrative After Dark

Nayebpour,

Varghaiyan

2023

Cankaya University Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences

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The use of mimetic and diegetic modes of storytelling has significant implications for the meaning and interpretation of Wilkie Collins’s (1824-1889) short story collection After Dark (1856). By using a framed narrative structure, Collins highlights the mimetic features of the stories in his collection. He creates a semi-factual atmosphere through dividing the story universe into two levels. On the first level, the discourse of the primary narrator and his wife emphasizes the mimetic nature of the six realistic stories recounted on the second level. Through following such a structure, the author seeks to create the illusion that the stories in the collection are biographical accounts. Verisimilitude, or lifelikeness, is therefore presented as the primary narrative property in After Dark. However, as this article mainly argues, the authorial discourse presented in Collins’s general preface to the collection—which, to use Gerard Genette’s term, is a paratext or threshold—dismantles the characters’ realistic pretentions on the two levels of the storyworld. More precisely, by calling the six narrated stories in the collection the offspring of his own imagination, Collins’s paratextual preface destroys the highlighted mimetic claims on the two levels in the storyworld.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Anti-Mimetic Function of Paratext in Wilkie Collins’s Framed Narrative After Dark

Nayebpour,

Varghaiyan

2023

Cankaya University Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences

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‘Antique Fiction’ and the forgotten legacies of ancient Rome in Wilkie Collins’sAntonina

Eastlake¹

2016

Classical Receptions Journal

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Rambles Beyond Railways: Gothicised Place and Globalised Space in Victorian Cornwall

Young

2011

Gothic Studies

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This paper examines an account of Cornwall published by WilkieCollins in 1851, focusing specifically upon Collins's claim that the region lay 'beyond' the railway. In so doing it explores the way in which mid-nineteenthcentury Gothic discourse can be understood to inform a scalar opposition between localised place -conceived of as static, isolated, anachronistic and particular -and globalised space -conceived of as kinetic, networked, modern and homogenous.

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The early writing

Cited by 3 publications

References 0 publications

The Anti-Mimetic Function of Paratext in Wilkie Collins’s Framed Narrative After Dark

The Anti-Mimetic Function of Paratext in Wilkie Collins’s Framed Narrative After Dark

‘Antique Fiction’ and the forgotten legacies of ancient Rome in Wilkie Collins’sAntonina

Rambles Beyond Railways: Gothicised Place and Globalised Space in Victorian Cornwall

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