Moral Metafiction: The Novels of Timothy Findley

(Paperback)

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Examines Findley's novels, from The Last of the Crazy People through The Telling of Lies, for the ways in which their use of metafictive devices pose specifically ethical challenges for readers. Findley's novels dramatize the process of interpretation and interrogation of dominant discourses from the point of view of those subjects either already marginalized by history or who choose to repudiate dominant texts and thus become marginalized. As revisionist texts, these novels tell history from the losers' point of view, and in the process of explicating how dominant discourse is constructed, they create the possibility of other constructions and seek to express counterdiscourses. But they also make clear that such expressions are themselves constructions: their ethical challenge lies in problematizing readers' knowledge of dominant history and in asking readers to choose their constructions carefully.

Author Bio

Donna Pennee is the author of Introducing Timothy Findley's Not Wanted on the Voyage. She lives in Guelph, Ontario.