Logo Oapen
  • Search
  • Join
    • Deposit
    • For Librarians
    • For Publishers
    • For Researchers
    • Funders
    • Resources
    • OAPEN
    • For Librarians
    • For Publishers
    • For Researchers
    • Funders
    • Resources
    • OAPEN
    View Item 
    •   OAPEN Home
    • View Item
    •   OAPEN Home
    • View Item
    JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

    Mysterious Minds

    The Making of Private and Collective Consciousness in Marja-Liisa Vartio's Novels

    Thumbnail
    Download PDF Viewer
    Author(s)
    Nykänen, Elise
    Language
    English
    Show full item record
    Abstract
    This study examines the narrative tools, techniques, and structures that Marja-Liisa Vartio, a classic of Finnish post-war modernism, used in presenting fictional minds in her narrative prose. The study contributes to the academic discussion on formal and thematic conventions of modernism by addressing the ways in which fictional minds work in interaction, and in relation to the enfolding fictional world. The epistemic problem of how accurately the world, the self, and the other can be known is approached by analyzing two co-operating ways of portraying fictional minds, both from external and internal perspectives. The external perspective relies on detachment and emotional restraint dominating in Vartio’s early novels Se on sitten kevät and Mies kuin mies, tyttö kuin tyttö. The internal perspective pertains to the mental processes of self-reflection, speculation, and excessive imagining that gain more importance in her later novels Kaikki naiset näkevät unia, Tunteet, and Hänen olivat linnut. In the theoretical chapter of this study, fictional minds are discussed in the context of the acclaimed “inward turn” of modernist fiction, by suggesting alternative methods for reading modernist minds as embodied, emotional, and social entities. In respect to fictional minds’ interaction, this study elaborates on the ideas of “mind-reading,” “intersubjectivity,” and the “social mind” established within post-classical cognitive narratology. Furthermore, it employs possible world poetics when addressing the complexity, incompleteness, and (in)accessibility of Vartio’s epistemic worlds, including the characters’ private worlds of knowledge, beliefs, emotions, hallucinations, and dreams. In regards to the emotional emplotment of fictional worlds, this study also benefits from affective narratology as well as the plot theory being influenced by possible world semantics, narrative dynamics, and cognitive narratology. As the five analysis chapters of this study show, fictional minds in Vartio’s fiction are not only introspective, solipsist, and streaming, but also embodied and social entities. In the readings of the primary texts, the concept of embodiedness is used to examine the situated presence of an experiencing mind within the time and space of the storyworld. Fictional minds’ (inter)actions are also demonstrated as evolving from local experientiality to long-term calculations that turn emotional incidents into episodes, and episodes into stories. In Vartio’s novels, the emotional story structure of certain conventional story patterns, such as the narratives of female development and the romance plot, the sentimental novel, and epistolary fiction, are modified and causally altered in the portrayal of the embodied interactions between the self, the other, and the world. The trajectories of female self-discovery in Vartio’s novels are analyzed through the emotional responses of characters: their experiences of randomness, their ways of counterfactualizing their traumatic past, their procrastinatory or akratic reactions or indecisiveness. The gradual move away from the percepts of the external world to the excessive imaginings and (mis)readings of other minds (triggered by the interaction of worlds and minds), challenges the contemporary and more recent accounts of modernism both in Finnish and international contexts.
    URI
    http://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/30880
    Keywords
    consciousness presentation; fictional minds; modernism; narrative theory; marja-liisa vartio
    DOI
    10.21435/sflit.10
    ISBN
    9789522229526;9789522229516;9789522228642
    OCN
    1030822633
    Publisher
    Finnish Literature Society / SKS
    Publication date and place
    Helsinki, 2017
    Grantor
    • Helsinki University Library and SKS
    Series
    Studia Fennica Litteraria, 10
    Classification
    Finland
    Biography, Literature and Literary studies
    Literary studies: fiction, novelists and prose writers
    Modern and contemporary fiction: general and literary
    Pages
    336
    Rights
    All rights reserved
    • Imported or submitted locally

    Browse

    All of OAPENSubjectsPublishersLanguagesCollections

    My Account

    LoginRegister

    Export

    Repository metadata
    Logo Oapen
    • For Librarians
    • For Publishers
    • For Researchers
    • Funders
    • Resources
    • OAPEN

    Newsletter

    • Subscribe to our newsletter
    • view our news archive

    Follow us on

    License

    • If not noted otherwise all contents are available under Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

    Credits

    • logo EU
    • This project received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 683680, 810640, 871069 and 964352.

    OAPEN is based in the Netherlands, with its registered office in the National Library in The Hague.

    Director: Niels Stern

    Address:
    OAPEN Foundation
    Prins Willem-Alexanderhof 5
    2595 BE The Hague
    Postal address:
    OAPEN Foundation
    P.O. Box 90407
    2509 LK The Hague

    Websites:
    OAPEN Home: www.oapen.org
    OAPEN Library: library.oapen.org
    DOAB: www.doabooks.org

     

     

    Export search results

    The export option will allow you to export the current search results of the entered query to a file. Differen formats are available for download. To export the items, click on the button corresponding with the preferred download format.

    A logged-in user can export up to 15000 items. If you're not logged in, you can export no more than 500 items.

    To select a subset of the search results, click "Selective Export" button and make a selection of the items you want to export. The amount of items that can be exported at once is similarly restricted as the full export.

    After making a selection, click one of the export format buttons. The amount of items that will be exported is indicated in the bubble next to export format.