Narration-Parody-Intertextuality: Rewriting the Past in Charles Palliser's The Quincunx
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.26754/ojs_misc/mj.199711293Abstract
The aim of this paper is to analyse Charles Palliser' s first novel -The Quincunx (1989)- in the light of the central role played by intertextuality in postmodernist literature in general and in contemporary British metafiction, in particular. The Quincunx has all the ingredients of the traditional realist novel. However, despite all the echoes and reverberations from a wide range of nineteenth-century works with which the reader is free to trace relations, The Quincunx does not constitute an innocent imitation but, rather, a parodic rewriting of its Victorian (mainly Dickensian) intertexts. One particular aspect of the novel-the use and patterning of nmrntive voices-has been analysed in detail as a means to illusu·ating the way in which parody can be turned into a wonderful vehicle to express the concerns of the present through the literature of the past.
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