Author Description
Michael Ragussis re-reads the novelistic tradition by arguing the acts of naming--bestowing, revealing, or earning a name; taking away, hiding, or prohibiting a name; slandering, or protecting and serving it--lie at the center of fictional plots from the 18th century to the present. Against the background of philosophic approaches to naming, Acts of Naming reveals the ways in which systems of naming are used to appropriate characters in novels as diverse as Clarissa, Fanny Hill, Oliver Twist, Pierre, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Remembrance of Things Past, and Lolita, and identifies unnaming and renaming as the locus of power in the family's plot to control the child, and more particularly, to rape the daughter. His analysis also treats additional works by Cooper, Brontë, Hawthorne, Eliot, Twain, Conrad, and Faulkner, extending the concept of the naming plot to reimagine the traditions of the novel, comparing American and British plots, female and male plots, inheritance and seduction plots, and so on. Acts of Naming ends with a theoretical exploration of the "magical" power of naming in different eras and in different, even competing, forms of discourse.
Menrva's Summary
THE THESIS
This work investigates how the act of naming—including bestowing, hiding, or slandering names—functions as a central mechanism of power and control within the narrative structures of the novelistic tradition. Michael Ragussis, a scholar of literary history, utilizes a comparative framework to examine how naming systems are employed to manipulate characters and enforce familial authority. By drawing on philosophical approaches to language, the author argues that the control of a name is frequently linked to the exploitation of children and the subversion of familial autonomy across centuries of literature.
THE SCOPE MAP
What You Will Find
- A comparative analysis of British and American literary traditions from the 18th century to the present.
- Examination of specific plot archetypes including inheritance, seduction, and the control of the child.
- Theoretical exploration of the magical and performative power of naming in competing forms of discourse.
- Case studies of canonical works by authors such as Richardson, Dickens, Melville, Hardy, Proust, and Nabokov.
THE AUTHORITY PERSPECTIVE
Scholars and critics recognize this text as a significant contribution to the study of narrative structure and the sociology of the novel. Readers frequently note the academic density of the prose, which is intended for advanced students and researchers of literary theory.
Page Count:
278
Publication Date:
1987-01-08
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
ISBN-10:
0195040708
ISBN-13:
9780195040708
Names Personal
Literary History
Literary Criticism
Academic
Literary theory
Fiction
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