Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Litera (Turkey), cilt.32, sa.2, ss.553-571, 2022 (ESCI)
This study explores narratological aspects and tools that are employed in Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone within the framework of a postcolonial narratology. Postcolonial narratology directs its attention to the representation of the peripheral and the marginalized within the scope of narratorial investigation. There will be some considerations regarding the representation of focal and voiceless characters, the function of the implied author, authorial audience as well as multiple narrators or representing voices. The deployment of multitopicality in The Moonstone brings forth the issue of marginalization predicated on colonizer/colonized relationships. Spatial poetics in the novel functions in a way in which despite the myriad of settings that constitute the story, narrative discourse privileges some places while putting the others into the peripheries. The concept of space in the narrative proves to be active, fluid and purposeful rather than being passive, static or innocent as in the status of a background setting. Alongside temporal-spatial aspects, narratological presentation of the characters also plays a fundamental role in relation to power dynamics and the issue of representation. In the same vein, it is manifest that not only the description of space and characters but also the placement of multiple narrators and authorial audience concurrently contribute to the treatment of imperial ideologies. As part of the implied author’s scheme, the narrators’ act of narration is flawed and ideologically loaded rather than consistent or neutral. All these narratological clues in the novel attest to the idea that narration is always a discursive act.