ARCHIVES
VOL. 9, ISSUE 2 (2023)
Mapping the narrative web: Exploring utterance, metamodernism and intertextuality in David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas
Authors
Heba Fatima
Abstract
The novel as a genre is widely regarded as a fictional work composed in prose, a phenomenon that varies in form and style from other literary genres. The paper looks at two aspects of David Mitchell’s experimental novel Cloud Atlas – the narrative as well as the metamodern aesthetics of the novel. David Mitchell employs diverse narrative techniques to craft a multidimensional storytelling experience. The novel intersects with the metamodernist sensibility to blur boundaries between past, present and future narratives, fostering a dialogue between disparate genre and epochs and offers a fresh insight into the dynamic approach of storytelling in contemporary literature. Cloud Atlas consists of six interlinked stories, each written in a different style, that unfold over a span of centuries. Using Bakhtin’s concept of the utterance which is regarded as the actual unit of communication and which includes the novel in itself as a type of utterance, the research explores the ways in which the narrative of Cloud Atlas functions as an utterance. The main objective of the article is to look at the complexities associated with labeling Cloud Atlas as a postmodern novel in its entirety and to explore how the novel straddles the genres of the postmodern novel and the metamodern novel.
Download
Pages:16-19
How to cite this article:
Heba Fatima "Mapping the narrative web: Exploring utterance, metamodernism and intertextuality in David Mitchell’s <i>Cloud Atlas</i>". International Journal of English Research, Vol 9, Issue 2, 2023, Pages 16-19
Download Author Certificate
Please enter the email address corresponding to this article submission to download your certificate.