Abstract

This article analyzes the dynamics of fictional dialogue in three short stories by the Finnish author Rosa Liksom. These stories are constructed almost entirely of dialogue, with minimal involvement on the part of the narrator. We adopt two different approaches to dialogue. First, we analyze dialogue from a micro level, as interaction between the characters within the storyworlds, then from a more holistic perspective, paying attention to how dialogue contributes to the rhetorical structure and ethical interpretation of the stories. We show that resorting mainly to dialogue as a narrative mode works as a way of depicting tensions between Liksom’s characters, and between them and the surrounding fictional world. This, in turn, engages the reader in an interpretative process to understand the story’s logic both within the fictional worlds and on the level of communication between the implied author and the authorial audience.

Highlights

  • In this article we discuss the construction of interactional situations in Rosa Liksom’s short stories, especially those that consciously foreground and play with dialogue as a narrative device

  • We examine the ways in which the fictional dialogue contributes to the rhetorical structure and ethics of the narrative texts at the higher level of hierarchy in the narrative transmission

  • We have examined the dynamics of fictional dialogues and their ethical interpretation in three short stories by the Finnish author Rosa Liksom

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Summary

Introduction

In this article we discuss the construction of interactional situations in Rosa Liksom’s short stories, especially those that consciously foreground and play with dialogue as a narrative device. Our analysis of the characters’ interactions emerges from the idea that dialogue itself is action that contributes to the narrative progression and internal logic of fictional texts (see Thomas 2005: 77-79) In these conversational stories, complications stemming from instabilities and tense situations between the characters unfold from the beginning, through the middle, and to the end. Narrative ethics involves multileveled communication, but the feedback loop between the author and the audience always entails certain textual phenomena that are designed to evoke and guide the reader’s cognitive, emotional, and ethical responses (Phelan 2005: 18) Our aim in this second part of the article is to outline the ways in which narrative ethics are transmitted in Liksom’s behaviorist, conversational short stories. There are gaps in the text that must be filled by the reader to infer the affective and ethical dimensions of the narrative

The interaction between the characters in the stories
Interpreting dialogue
Summary and conclusion
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