Textual Violence In 'Sulla And Toni Morrison's Sula'

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Textual dynamics is the dynamic interplay between the text and responder, and how this necessarily becomes a relationship between the writer and the reader rather than just the text. It forces us to question whether or not the barrier between fiction and reality is breached. And if the work is real, can it still be considered a work of art? And if it is fake can it be considered real?
The texts, 'Orlando ' by Sally Potter and 'Sula ' by Toni Morrison are both, in a sense, biographies of fictional people, challenging traditional values and gender constructs. While Italo Calvino’s novel ‘If on a winter’s night a traveller’ and Marc Forster’s film ‘Stranger than Fiction’ examine and reimagine the relationships between author, reader and text.
‘Sula’ experiments with traditional forms blurring reality and fiction through the representation of a fictional character’s life using a fragmented biography. The fragmentation of the narrative is portrayed, similarly to ‘Orlando’, through the frequent jumping between timeframes, “1919” “1920”, disrupting the linear progression. This forces the reader to engage with and interpret the text rather than the composer. The narrative alternates between different perspectives seamlessly, “She dragged herself” “Plum on the rim….momma, she sure was somethin’” possessing a sort of stylistic ingenuity that makes ‘Sula’ a textually dynamic novel. Morrison uses the stream of consciousness “twenty two years old wear hot frightened …he didn’t even know who or what he was…” to express the flow of a characters thoughts and feelings, aspiring to give readers the impression of being inside the mind of the character which in turn establishes an intimate relationship between the text and the reader. Conversations between texts can be is woven throughout the novel, most notably the character ‘Eve’ who constantly adopts lost children and borders alluding to “the mother of all things” and Eve from the bible. These allusions to other texts relies on the reader to have read them to form an understanding and hence an intimate relationship between the author and reader. Due
In the very first line of the book, “You are about to begin reading …” the use of second person to directly address the reader and use of self-reflexitivity to prompt the reader to engage with the impending ‘novel proper’ creates an initial intimate bond between the composer and reader. However, the use of second person is quickly discarded and ‘you’ is revealed to be a fictionalized character. Reflecting Baudrillard’s ‘Simulacra and Simulation’, The multiple layers of reality also serve to deceive the reader into believing that there is an impending “novel proper”, until our perception of what is real and fictional are indiscernable. This deceptive fabrication is shown in the first incipit: the focal character is no longer “you”, but is instead “someone looking through befogged glass.” Hence, ‘If on a winter’s night a traveller’ scrutinises literature in a metatextual manner often blurring reality and fiction, transforming the modern novel and through doing so surprises and delights

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