ENG 1120 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Metafiction, Elegy
3 Jun 2018
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March 19, 2018
Obsequious (adjective)
From Latin obsequium, to follow, to comply with
Meaning: Obedient or attentive to an excessive or servile degree
Synonyms: servile, ingratiating
Panacea (noun)
From Greek panakeia, pan (all) + akos (remedy)
Meaning: a solution or remedy for all illnesses
Synonyms: cure-all, elixir, magic bullet
Penchant (noun)
From French penchant, leaning, inclining
Meaning a tendency or inclination to do something, a preference for something
Synonyms: preference, partiality
The stories have an elegiac tone. An elegy is a work of literature that mourns or laments a loss,
especially the death of a loved one. A Bird in the House is told retrospectively by the older
Vanessa remembering her childhood. Many of the characters she writes about are now dead, and
the stories are about remembering them and reconciling with their memories.
The title itself emphasizes the elegiac focus of the stories as ‘a bird in the house’ is a thought,
according to folklore, to predict a death in the family.
P.54: ““He must have been a lonely man, although it never struck me that way at the time.
Sometimes a thing only hits you a long time afterwards,” the narrator’s father taking about his
father.
The stories are examples of moderate meta-fiction. Meta-fiction is fiction that is self-consciously
about fiction or fiction that foregrounds the act of writing or the fact that stories are stories.
In A Bird in the House, the young Vanessa wants to be a writer, and occasionally refers to the
stories she is writing, sometimes humorously to create a contrast between the romantic and
melodramatic stories that she prefers to the humdrum life she is living; sometimes real life and
fiction co-mingle.
P.29: asked about the story she is writing, Vanessa tells her aunt that she is naming it “Pillars of
the Nation”: “It’s about pioneers.” “You mean-people like grandfather?” “My Gosh,” I said,
startled, “Was he a pioneer?”
Vanessa’s stories usually have only a peripheral relationship to anything real in her life.
P.24: “I was planning in my head a story in which an infant was baptized by Total immersion
and swept away by the river which happed to be flooding.”
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Document Summary
From latin obsequium, to follow, to comply with. Meaning: obedient or attentive to an excessive or servile degree. From greek panakeia, pan (all) + akos (remedy) Meaning: a solution or remedy for all illnesses. Meaning a tendency or inclination to do something, a preference for something. An elegy is a work of literature that mourns or laments a loss, especially the death of a loved one. A bird in the house is told retrospectively by the older. Many of the characters she writes about are now dead, and the stories are about remembering them and reconciling with their memories. The title itself emphasizes the elegiac focus of the stories as a bird in the house" is a thought, according to folklore, to predict a death in the family. P. 54: he must have been a lonely man, although it never struck me that way at the time.
