The Pragmatics of Revision

This book presents the first full-length study of the stylistically experimental and influential novelist George Moore's (1852-1933) repeated acts of rewriting. Moore extensively and repeatedly revised and re-issued many of his major works, sometimes years or even decades after they were initially published. This monograph provides new insights into how this process shaped and determined his work, and by extension into the creative significance of literary rewriting more generally. It also offers the first sustained application of linguistic pragmatics, the study of meaning in interaction, to the work of a single author, opening up questions about how analytical paradigms developed in pragmatics can explain how rewriting can affect the interactive relationship between a literary text and its readers. The book will be of interest to students and researchers in the areas of pragmatics, stylistics, literary history, English literature and Irish literature.

Represents a significant contribution to literary and linguistic scholarship on George Moore Offers a pragmatically-informed study of literary revision and its role in the creative process Provides fresh perspectives on pragmatic literary stylistics and its relationship to critical theory

Autorentext

Siobhan Chapman is Professor of English at the University of Liverpool, UK.

Inhalt

Chapter 1: Introduction.- Chapter 2: Literary Rewriting.- Chapter 3: Implicature.- Chapter 4: Writers, Texts, Readers and Implicatures.- Chapter 5: George Moore.- Chapter 6: A Drama in Muslin (1886) and Muslin (1915).- Chapter 7: Esther Waters (1894, 1899 and 1926).- Chapter 8: The Lake (1905 and 1921).- Chapter 9: 'Albert Nobbs' (1918 and 1927).- Chapter 10: Conclusions.