Fernando Poyatos’s metod in the studies of narrative prose

Anna Maria Tomczak

Uniwersytet w Białymstoku

Abstract

The article presents Fernando Poyatos’s literary anthropology as a method of studying narrative texts. The Canadian scholar Poyatos maintains that through a close analysis of the use of nonverbal behaviour in a work of fiction one may decode information pertaining to the cultural context and historical epoch of the presented world and thus explore the authenticating function of the studied text. Examples given in the article are taken from seven selected novels published in the years 1920–2002 by such British authors as D. H. Lawrence, Iris Murdoch, Anita Brookner, Antonia Byatt, Hanif Kureishi, Nick Hornby and Hari Kunzru. It is through the study of the characters’ body language, proxemic behaviour, clothes and food that the reader may discover cultural connotations of the text.

Keywords:

literary anthropology, narrative fiction, non-verbal communication, novel, body language, cultural context