Democratising the literary experience: metafiction in the novels of Agusta Wibisono

This paper is a study of the intersection of text, context and presentation in Agusta Wibisono's two novels based on the wayang shadow puppet theatre of Central Java, Balada Narasoma (The Ballad of Narasoma) (1990) and Balada Cinta Abimanyu dan Lady Sundari (The Ballad of the Love of Abimanyu and Lady Sundari) (1990). It should be observed from the outset that in the field of modern Indonesian literary studies Agusta Wibisono is a virtually unknown figure, and in Indonesia his two novels are long out of print and now extremely hard to find. The publishing house responsible for the novels' initial print run, Pustakakarya Grafikatama, is now defunct. Adding to the enigma surrounding this man, Agusta Wibisono is in fact a pseudonym for a writer and a pilot in the Indonesian airforce, Mohammad Agus Suhadi.

Is near to . . . and is . . . distant from : exegetical manoeuvres in Janet Frame’s The Carpathians

This paper argues that Janet Frame’s 1988 novel, The Carpathians, can be read as a series of manoeuvres operating at the frontiers of exegesis and fiction. The overall effect of these manoeuvres is to interrogate the conditions of an exegetical (or literary critical) engagement with Frame’s writings. In particular, The Carpathians drills down into the metaphorics of one of the key notions of literary criticism: critical distance. Critical distance is a catch phrase of exegesis, as well as of literary criticism, because it serves to appropriately position the exegete (like the literary critic) as both near to and distant from the object of study: the literary text. However, Frame’s fictional/Scientific concept of the Gravity Star deconstructs the metaphorics of distance and, by extension, critical distance itself, by suggesting a para-doxical relationship of propinquity and remoteness. The Gravity Star is ‘both relatively close and seven billion light years away.’ Thus, Frame introduces chaos into language and logic, with the dual effect of undermining exegetical activity (which depends on the  metaphorics linked to critical distance) and of creatively multiplying the meanings of The Carpathians. In this way, Frame’s novel replaces conventional exegesis with creative exegesis. My paper also looks at the games Frame plays, in this novel and in Towards Another Summer (2007), with Roland Barthes’s notion of the ‘death of the Author.’ Like critical distance, the Author is a prop for exegesis that certain manoeuvres of writing can undermine, thus allowing the literary text to reproduce itself on an interior plane.

Applying SPSE model to the comprehension of text organization by EFL learners

In order to test the effect of discourse organization on reading comprehension, two expository texts having an SPSE (situation- problem solution-evaluation) pattern were adminestered to a group of 30 undergraduate EFL students from Shahid Chamran University of Ahwaz who had been screened from among 100 students. These students had scored 60 and over from a language proficiency test having 75 items. The results of the study confirmed that the subjects had relatively more difficulty in recalling the evaluation and the solution sections, and in particular the details of 'solution', than other sections of the expository texts. It is concluded that in addition to language proficiency, other factors such as voice and cognition which contribute to the organization of text and hence to the comprehensibility of it are essential.