A Family of Tragic Picaroons

Ethics of Storytelling ConferenceUniversity of Turku

A Family of Tragic Picaroons

sjoerd-jeroen [email protected] 4 June 2015

TYPOLOGY OF GENRES FOR LIFE STORIES

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sjoerd-jeroen [email protected] http://www.slideshare.net/SJMoenandar/

Based on Bakhtin 1986, adapted from Moenandar

& Huisman 2015

o Günter Grass, Die Blechtrommel (1959)

o Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children (1981)

o Abdelkader Benali, De langverwachte [The Long awaited] (2002)• Fit the tradition of the

picaresque• Add something to this

tradition

NARRATIVES OF TRANSITION

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“Granted: I am an inmate of a mental hospital; my keeper is watching me, he never lets me out of his sight; there's a peephole in the door, and my keeper's eye is the shade of brown that can never see through a blue-eyed type like me.“Die Blechtrommel

“I was born in the city of Bombay… once upon a time. No, that won’t do, there’s no getting away from the date. I was born in Doctor Narlikar’s Nursing Home on August 15th, 1947. And the time? The time matters, too. Well then: at night. No, it’s important to be more… On the stroke of midnight, as a matter of fact.”Midnight’s Children

“I have a special gift. So, now I’ve said it. They’re waiting for me, just before the start of the new year, but I am going to postpone my birth for a while.”De langverwachte

FIRST SENTENCES

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o Picaresque perspective• Deconstructs grand narratives• Fitting for a story about

transitiono But adds something

(Reddick, 1975):• Oskar is picaroon and victim • Outsider and a desire to

belongo Hybride genre:

picaresque/Bildungsroman

THE TIN DRUM

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o Saleem Sinaï is like Oskar (cf. Merivale, 1994)

o Talk themselves into the world through power over plot (muthos - Ricoeur, 1984)

o Addition: Omniscience• Strengthens encyclopedic

character• Metafictional comment on

muthos

MIDNIGHT’S CHILDREN

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o The Long Awaited is like Saleem Sinai and Oskar Matzerath

o Addition: removing the narrator from the storyo Long Awaited is pure muthoso Suffering relegated to main

charactero Messianist overtones become

strongero Oskar Matzerath and Saleem

Sinai dissolve in history o The Long Awaited solves history

THE LONG AWAITED

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o Narrative resistance, resisting narrative• Oscillating between picaresque outsiderness

and need for belonging• Foregrounding narrative process and its

oppressive nature through unnatural narrative

CONCLUSION

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Questions?

Works cited:• Bakhtin, Mikhail. Speech Genres and Other Late Essays (1986).• Merivale, Patricia. “Saleem Fathered by Oskar. Intertextual Strategies in

Midnight’s Children and The Tin Drum” (1994).• Moenandar, Sjoerd-Jeroen & Huisman, Krina. “Storytelling as a Tool for

Student Career Counselling” (2015).• Reddick, John. The ‘Danzig Trilogy’ of Günter Grass (1975).

• Ricoeur, Paul. Temps et récit 1 (1983).

THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION

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Education

A Family of Tragic Picaroons