Making Sense by Ralf Hertel

Making Sense by Ralf Hertel

Fiction is fascinating. All it provides us with is black letters on white pages, yet while we read we do not have the impression that we are merely perceiving abstract characters. Instead, we see the protagonists before our inner eye and hear their voices. Descriptions of sumptuous meals make our mouths water, we feel physically repelled by depictions of violence or are aroused by the erotic details of sexual conquests. We submerge ourselves in the fictional world that no longer stays on the paper but comes to life in our imagination. Reading turns into an out-of-the-body experience or, rather, an in-another-body experience, for we perceive the portrayed world not only through the protagonist's eyes but also through his ears, nose, tongue, and skin. In other words, we move through the literary text as if through a virtual reality.
How does literature achieve this trick? How does it turn mere letters into vividly experienced worlds? This study argues that techniques of sensuous writing contribute decisively to bringing the text to life in the reader's imagination. In detailed interpretations of British novels of the 1980s and 1990s by writers such as John Berger, John Banville, Salman Rushdie, Jeanette Winterson, or J. M. Coetzee, it uncovers literary strategies for turning the sensuous experience into words and for conveying it to the reader, demonstrating how we make sense in, and of, literature. Both readers interested in the contemporary novel and in the sensuousness of the reading experience will profit from this innovative study that not only analyses the interest of contemporary authors in the senses but also pin-points literary entry points for the sensuous force of reading.

”Hertel’s study is clearly written, stimulating, and enlightning throughoutIt provides intriguing applications and innovative uses of existing theories and concepts across a diverse body of recent (British) writing.” – Hans J. Rindisbacher, in: CLA (Consciousness, Literature and the Arts), Vol. 6, No. 2, 2005

Ralf Hertel is Professor of English Literature (University of Trier) and has published widely on contemporary fiction, including Making Sense: Sense Perception in the British Novel of the 1980s and 1990s and On John Berger (co-edited with David Malcolm).

Eva-Maria Windberger is a lecturer in the English Department at the University of Trier. Her PhD project investigated the poetics of empowerment in David Mitchell's novels.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9789042018648
ISBN 10	904201864X
Title	Making Sense
Author	Ralf Hertel
Series	Internationale Forschungen Zur Allgemeinen Und Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Brill
Year published	2005-01-01
Number of pages	244
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.