Fragmented narratives: Minding the textual gap

Abstract

This paper establishes a general view of how writers have utilised the process of writing in fragments since ancient times in expository, memoir, biography and fiction genres. A selection of fragmented narratives from classical, medieval, twentieth century and recent authors is discussed with particular focus on three forms – the aphorism, the feuilleton and hypertext – building to the idea that writers fashion a fragmented text so as to hand over a significant part of its meaning-making to the reader. In doing so, the writer manipulates the work as a mosaic of fragments and writes meaning – ie ‘directions for reading’ – into the gaps between the fragments. Relevant theoretical work by Walter Benjamin, Wolfgang Iser, J Hillis Miller, Simon Barton and others is applied to the discussion.