Mudelli narratoloġiċi fir-rumanz Malti modern

Abstract

This thesis is predominantly concerned with establishing a more systematic basis for the appreciation of Maltese literary fiction by applying criteria of narratological criticism developed within the last four decades to analysis of the following major novels: Frans Sammut's Il-Gaġġa and Samuraj, and Oliver Friġġieri's Il-Gidba and Fil-Parlament ma jikbrux fjuri. By shifting attention from critical concerns that are of less significance to an in-debt study of a literary text, this thesis focuses mainly on the narrator - the central figure in Lanser's modification of Jakobson's model of verbal communication - without sacrificing however the text's authorial presence. This thesis has therefore a twofold purpose: to unravel the authorial manipulation of narrative models of literary fiction and, in the process, to offer fresh interpretations of the aforementioned four novels. The first chapter seeks to redress the authorial presence which has recently been excluded from various schools of thought, including that of narratological criticism, by utilising approaches within the same methodology that vindicate the authorial position. Consequently, by applying Lanser's model of the 'inserted text', the author is firmly re-established as a key element in the narrative model through the relationship he/she inevitably creates in any literary text with the narrator concerned.