| This dissertation explores "you" as the pronoun of relationship, arguing that it extends an irresistible invitation to the receiver of a discourse. Although we have been trained as readers to ignore this relational imperative in discourse enclosed in quotation marks, many uses of second person in fiction have no such boundaries and therefore invite the reader to feel addressed, even when s/he can deduce the presence of another addressee. I analyze factors which promote or inhibit such identification, applying the term "narrative apostrophe," for example, to uses of the second person in which sender and receiver are not on the same ontological plane and therefore cannot talk or listen directly to one another.; In my opening chapter on Michel Buto's La Modification I document reader response to what has been called the first "second person novel." In the second chapter I survey the critical discussions of the subject and propose a comparison of various uses of the second person according to "reversibility," the extent to which the sender and receiver are actually in communication with one another and could exchange roles. Dialogue marks one end of the spectrum (total reversibility possible) and you as "one," the other (since a generalized "you" cannot be a conversation partner).; The final three chapters move along the spectrum of reversibility, from the more dialogic toward the apostrophic, exploring various factors which influence the flow of communication. My third chapter interprets the ubiquitous presence of second person phrases in Modern Greek prose as evidence of writers' attempts to bridge the gap between sender and receiver opened up by literacy. The penultimate chapter focuses on the dynamics of the apostrophic gesture, particularly as a resuscitative act, in Gunter Grass's Katz und Maus. In my final chapter on the frame story of Italo Calvino's Se una notte d'inverno un viaggiatore, I discuss genderization as a block to felicitous identification between actual reader and inscribed reader. In a brief epilogue I consider two works of contemporary American fiction which exploit second person narration to render the splitting of self caused by cocaine addiction. |
