What is it about?
This paper is a discussion of Alan Sillitoe's use the Nottinghamshire vernacular in his fiction, notably the short story collection 'Loneliness of the Long-distance Runner' and the novel 'Saturday Night, Sunday Morning'. It argues that to categorise this writing as 'working-class fiction' is to miss its wider significance as asserting the right of the vernacular to be an authentic voice in literary texts. The theoretical framework used is drawn from the work of Mikhail Bakhtin and from literary stylistics.
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Why is it important?
Most previous discussion of Sillitoe's writing has tended to view it as 'working class' fiction, by and of that constituency and therefore an exercise in the exploration of identity. This article seeks to draw broader conclusions about narrative technique using the demotic voice, and to extend its applicability to contemporary fiction. It also suggest a theoretical apparatus that can be used to explore other writing of this genre.
Perspectives
This is an extension of work done in my monographs 'The Demotic Voice in Contemporary British Fiction', and as such continues an abiding interest in narrative technique and the potential of 'everyday' voices to inject energy, dynamism, authenticity and relevance to contemporary fiction.
Dr Jeremy D Scott
University of Kent
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Midlands cadences: Narrative voices in the work of Alan Sillitoe, Language and Literature International Journal of Stylistics, November 2016, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/0963947016645001.
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