| This thesis examines how silent mediums of expression in The Silent Woman, The English Patient and In the Skin of Lion widen the breadth of knowledge accessible to readers through storytelling. This study scrutinizes Michael Ondaatje's and Janet Malcolm's self-conscious employment of silent forms of communication in the production of narrative. The texts rely on silent characters and narrators who use nonverbal means of communication to construct stories and histories within the narrative. Furthermore, the texts self-reflexively comment on how readers comprehend silences of and in the text in order to instruct readers on reception strategies for silent narrative devices. Ondaatje and Malcolm point to fallibilities of verbal language that obscure stories and histories. Silent forms of expression transcend fallibilities of verbal language and narrate stories and histories outside of language, thereby shifting the boundaries of the histories and stories that can be told through writing. |
