At the Brink of the Abyss: Incredibility and the Rhetoric of Truth-Telling in Patrick Leigh Fermor’s A Time of Gifts
This article argues that Patrick Leigh Fermor’s A Time of Gifts (1977) is characterised by a deep and unresolved tension between the deployment of truth-telling rhetoric – textual appeals to readerly credulity customarily such as acknowledgements of the limits of authorial memory and the inclusion o...
Tallennettuna:
| Julkaisussa: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/viatica, |
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| Päätekijä: | |
| Aineistotyyppi: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Kieli: | Anglais |
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Viatica
2023
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| Aiheet: | |
| Linkit: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Yhteenveto: | This article argues that Patrick Leigh Fermor’s A Time of Gifts (1977) is characterised by a deep and unresolved tension between the deployment of truth-telling rhetoric – textual appeals to readerly credulity customarily such as acknowledgements of the limits of authorial memory and the inclusion of excerpts from journals – and the literal incredibility of its detail. A further complication introduced by Leigh Fermor’s inclusion in the text of excerpts from his youthful journals – notionally unedited but in fact partially fictionalised, as revealed by an examination of the archives. Though typically regarded as nonfiction, A Time of Gifts is, the article argues, a highly ambiguous text for which neither ‘fact convention’ nor ‘aesthetic convention’ are adequate modes of reception. |
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