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- Title
NARRATIVE, POINT OF VIEW AND FREUDIAN PSYCHIATRY IN ROALD DAHL'S "GEORGY PORGY".
- Authors
Brokerhof, Inge
- Abstract
Roald Dahl's famous short story "Georgy Porgy" portrays main character George, who is suffering from a psychiatric illness. George – who is the homodiegetic narrator of the story and who shows a foregrounded modality in the story - is not aware of his own troubled mental state. On the contrary: he has no clue of the severity of his mental issues. By the use of positive shading by the narrator, the reader is forced to infer reality by interpreting stylistic cues. Dahl employs several linguistic devices to show George's psychiatric state. A stylistic analysis of point of view – using the frameworks of Fowler and Simpson - shows that Dahl's stylistic elements reflect a psychiatric illness that can be classified as Freudian. This classification within the Freudian paradigm is characterised in the text by an experience of a childhood drama, neuroticism, sexual rigidity and female domination. Additionally, George is fixated in a sexual childhood phase, a phase called "latency period" by Freud. A microanalysis was conducted showing evidence for each of the Freudian elements, by investigating schema-oriented language, tense, value-laden expressions, temporal, spatial and social deixis. Ultimately, this short study links the employment of stylistic elements in the text with psychological theory.
- Subjects
GEORGY Porgy (Short story); DAHL, Roald, 1916-1990; MENTAL illness in literature; PSYCHOLOGICAL fiction; STYLISTIC analysis; FICTION; LITERARY criticism
- Publication
NAWA Journal of Language & Communication, 2012, Vol 6, Issue 1, p26
- ISSN
1993-3835
- Publication type
Short Story Review