Nash’s Virus-infected Narrative: The Hermeneutic and Metaphoric Narrative Drives in The Unfortunate Traveller

Abstract

The present paper aims to explore the narrative of The Unfortunate Traveller by Thomas Nash apart from the normative assessments of most critics by and large based on grand plot criteria. Thus, the chief concern of this study is not as much about the issues of coherence and thematicism than temporal dynamics of the text; that which controls the desire to further read the text. What is more, this narrative is to be analyzed within the framework of grave plot whose pivotal focus is on the space in contrast to the conventional concerns of linearity and chronology of the narrative dominated by a logical structure and thematic purpose. To this end, drawing upon Peter Brooks’s narratological theory, this novel would be set within a triadic framework including the plotting, the desire of the text, and the issue of transference. Consequently, such analysis would help to shed light on and get at the heart of the narrative structure with relation to the hermeneutic forces that determine the observance of the text and its lack of structural logicality on the one hand and the relation between narrator-reader with regards to the futility of narrative therapy on the other.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n3s2p453