Skip to main content
Log in

The (meta)narrative paratext: coda as a cunning fictional device

  • Published:
Neohelicon Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Our study draws on the array of functions assigned to the textual Coda in Ian McEwan’s novel Atonement, also turned into a successful movie. It follows two diverging narrative discourses—the Text and its Paratext—that overtly compete over the understanding of the story and over its reading transaction. In McEwan’s novel, the closing Paratext provides genre patterns and alternative reading strategies to the Text. Turning back upon the story itself and upon its process of writing, its understanding and its genre expectations in a particular cultural context, Coda is being assigned by the British novelist an overt meta-narrative task.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Bal, M. (1985). Narratology: Introduction to the theory of narrative. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. (Translated by Christine van Boheemen).

    Google Scholar 

  • Benjamin, W. (1968). The storyteller. In H. Arendt (Ed.), Iluminations. New York: Schocken Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Booth, W. C. (1961). The rhetoric of fiction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Calinescu, M. (1993). Rereading. New Haven, London: Yale University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Culler, J. (2001). Story and discourse. The pursuit of signs, semiotics, literature, deconstruction (pp. 169–188). Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dallenbach, L. (1977). Le récit spéculaire. Essai sur la mise en abyme. Paris: Seuil.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fagès, J. B. (1968). Le structuralisme en procès, Toulouse: Ed. Privat, pp 4–81.

  • Genette, G. (1980). Narrative discourse, an essay in method. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Genette, G. (1997). Palimpsests, literature in the second degree. (Stages). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gipsrud, J. (2002). Understanding media culture. London: Arnold.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kermode, F. (1967). The sense of an ending: Studies in the theory of fiction. Oxford and New York, London: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Martin, W. (1986). Recent theories of narrative. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • McEwan, I. (2007). Atonement. London: Vintage Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • O’Neill, P. (1994). Fictions of discourse. Reading narrative. Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ricoeur, P. (1985). Time and narrative (Vol. 2). Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Monica Spiridon.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Spiridon, M. The (meta)narrative paratext: coda as a cunning fictional device. Neohelicon 37, 53–62 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11059-010-0051-z

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11059-010-0051-z

Keywords

Navigation