Oral and Written Modes of Fiction Narrative and Thomas Nashe’s “The Unfortunate Traveller”

Abstract

The article focuses on a novelistic genre which is considered by some critics communicatively limited due to its written/printed form. In order to refute this point of view the author moves beyond the notions of orality and literacy towards the notion of mode borrowed from discourse analysis and transferred into narratology. The analysis of Thomas Nashe’s significant but underestimated “The Unfortunate Traveller” demonstrates how fiction narrative can model a communicative situation which presupposes simultaneous actions of writing-reading and speaking-listening. This double mode allows narration to overcome the limitations of fiction genre. The conclusions touch upon functioning of oral and written modes both in Nashe’s picaresque and within work of fiction in general. Refs 26.