Access the full text.
Sign up today, get DeepDyve free for 14 days.
Loading next page...
/lp/west-virginia-university-press/a-matter-of-life-and-death-the-auditor-function-of-the-dramatic-9JGiwDntu8
References
References for this paper are not available at this time. We will be adding them shortly, thank you for your patience.
- Publisher
- West Virginia University Press
- Copyright
- Copyright © 2008 West Virginia University.
- ISSN
- 1530-7190
- Publisher site
- See Article on Publisher Site
Abstract
HELEN LUU otwithstanding the critical consensus to agree to disagree on the definition of the dramatic monologue, the question of the auditor's function in the genre seems more central to our understanding of the form than has hitherto been acknowledged.1 As the critical history of the auditor shows, the auditor is a defining feature of the dramatic monologue not only because how one theorizes the genre depends significantly on how one theorizes the auditorfunction, but conversely because how one theorizes the auditor-function significantly alters one's theory of the dramatic monologue. For instance, where the genre is defined as gratuitous speech serving the monologist's purpose of self-understanding or the genre's purpose of self-revelation, the auditor is deemed to be superfluous. This is as true of theories that define the genre by its effect of ironic character revelation--that is, the unintended revelation of the speaker's hidden self or true character--as it is of theories that define the genre by its challenge to that view of a hidden, essential, and authentic self. For the latter, the genre is defined not by its revelation of the speaker's self, but by its revelations about the speaking self: that it is not the unified,
Journal
Victorian Poetry – West Virginia University Press
Published: May 22, 2016