Postmodern Pastiche: The Case of Mrs Osmond by John Banville

Authors

  • Aurora Piñeiro National Autonomous University of Mexico

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.37389/abei.v22i1.3852

Keywords:

John Banville, Mrs.Osmond, Pastiche, Parody, Authorial figure

Abstract

According to both Genette and Hutcheon, parody is transformational in its relationship to other texts, whereas pastiche is imitative. Other theorists such as Hoesterey and Dyer have redefined pastiche (and imitative textual practices) from the perspective of postmodern aesthetics and explored the way in which it resignifies previous artworks, as it is associated to an awareness of historicity. The aim of this article is to analyse Mrs Osmond (2017) by John Banville as an example of a postmodern pastiche that not only operates by correspondence or tribute in relation to The Portrait of a Lady (1881) by Henry James, but also as a novel where recontextualisation does create meaningful differences between the literary works involved. It is in this distance that Banville’s text unsettles traditional notions of pastiche and produces a more polyvalent effect as well as an expansion of the multiplicity already associated to his authorial figure.

Author Biography

  • Aurora Piñeiro, National Autonomous University of Mexico
    Aurora Piñeiro is Full Professor in the English Department at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), where she teaches seminars on contemporary narrative in English, including works by authors such as Banville, Tóibín, Donoghue and Keegan. Some of her published articles on Irish writers include: “Y en la página codo a codo somos mucho más que dos’: Banville y Black, multiplicidades autorales” (2019); “Un tema y tres variaciones: el caso Albert Nobbs” (2019); “The Evidential Artist: A Conversation with John Banville” (2016). She contributed, as a translator, in the EFACIS Banville Project: Literature as Translation, in 2018. At present, she coordinates the project PAPIME PE400219 “Contemporary Anglo-Irish Literature (XX and XXI centuries)” at UNAM.

References

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D’hoker, Elke. “From Isabel Archer to Mrs Osmond: John Banville Reinterprets Henry James”. John Banville and His Precursors. Pietra Palazzo, Michael Springer and Stephen Butler, eds. London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2019. Kindle Edition.

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Genette, Gérard. Palimpsests. Literature in the Second Degree. Channa Newman and Claude Doubinsky, trads. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1997.

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Hutcheon, Linda. A Poetics of Postmodernism. History, Theory, Fiction. London and New York: Routledge, 2004.

--- A Theory of Parody. The Teachings of Twentieth-Century Art Forms. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2000.

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Meizoz, Jérôme. “Ce que l’on fait dire au silence: posture, ethos, image d’auteur”. Argumentation et Analyse du Discours, 3 | 2009, 15 October 2009, accessed 5 November 2019, http://journals.openedition.org/aad/667; DOI : 10.4000/aad.667, pp 1-12.

Sheridan, Kathy. “John Banville: ‘I’m not Very Interesting’”. The Irish Times. October 22, 2016.

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Springer, Michael. “Introduction”. John Banville and His Precursors. Pietra Palazzo, Michael Springer and Stephen Butler, eds. London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2019. Kindle Edition.

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Published

2021-02-20

How to Cite

Postmodern Pastiche: The Case of Mrs Osmond by John Banville. (2021). ABEI Journal, 22(1), 121-134. https://doi.org/10.37389/abei.v22i1.3852