YOU ARE NOW ENTERING THE HUMAN HEART by Janet Frame

 Session 1:  7th of October 2021 

- We dealt with those literary terms that have already become part of our literary jargon: homodiegetic narrator, heterodiegetic narrator, anagnorisis, stream of consciousness, free indirect speech, anagnorisis, and so on.  You can find a handout with their explanations in the session folder.

- Postcolonialism and feminism in Janet Frame are local and occur in the inner rifts of the individual.  The displacement occurs in the shift of pronouns. The move from the "third person" to the "first person", from the deranged "she" to the "I" of "I-s-land".  As she said in the interview, she wrote "to have her say". 

-The visionary nature of childhood.  Children are always treated as "third person" until they become "I".  Magic realism.

-The use of language in Janet Frame acquires a special importance: the eerie realm of otherness that spins out through the words. 

-Fictionalized autobiography.  Real self and fictionalized self merge so she can "have her say" in the narrative.

-"You are now Entering the Human Heart" stands on the fence of that otherness as the title promises an inquiry into the human heart, and an exhibit with a trodden floor will pave the way to the dark recesses of adulthood versus childhood.  Fear is at the core.

You can find all the material we saw here: JANET FRAME SESSION 1 7TH OCTOBER

This is the link to that nice piece on Jane Campion director of the film based on the Trilogy of Janet Frame: "An Angel at My Table" :The Art of withholding and revealing