Alasdair Gray`s 1982 Janine (1984): a postmodernist scottish novel

Alasdair Gray is now an established figure in the Scottish literary scene and has numerous claims to be considered an important voice writing in English. First Lanark: A Life in Four Books (1981) and then 1982 Janine (1984) contributed to the recognition of Gray as one of the founding fathers of the new Scottish writing and as a figure of importance in international contemporary fiction due to his innovative, experimental and postmodernist novels. As the title of this dissertation - “Alasdair Gray’s 1982 Janine (1984): A Postmodernist Scottish Novel” - suggests, it aims at analysing the author’s second novel, 1982 Janine (1984), in a thematic and formal perspective, in order to justify the choice of the terms - Postmodernist and Scottish - to classify this novel. 1982 Janine projects a world through Jock McLeish’s mind and is a powerful stream-of-consciousness narrative. Jock is an alcoholic who lives a personal crisis and, therefore, tries to escape from his depressing reality through sexual fantasies and political diatribes. During a single night in a Scottish hotel room, he drinks and dreams, and spends the whole night alone with his fantasies and fears, his memories and hopes. In Chapter 11, the most daring experimental section of the novel, Jock attempts to commit suicide by taking an overdose of tablets with alcohol but fails. Following this, he decides to review his life and make for a new beginning; the novel thus closing with an optimistic note. Also, the narrative is based on a constant interweaving of sex fantasy with political satire, that is, it is through his protagonist that Gray manages to convey the state of Scotland as well as the concerns and aspirations of the Scottish people and then, proceed to a political and social critique. This dissertation appears structured in three chapters. In Chapter I - “Alasdair Gray: A Postmodernist Scottish Writer” - I present Gray as a powerful postmodernist writer who also sees himself as a Scottish author, and more particularly as a Glaswegian, who concentrates on Scottish subject matter in his literary work. In a first section, I offer a brief survey of the Scottish literary scene from the fourteenth to the twentieth century, in order to understand Gray’s choice of setting and themes and to check his influence or indebtedness to previous Scottish authors. As 1982 Janine is also a good example of selfconscious experimental writing, in a second section, I present various seminal fictional works that introduced and developed experimentalism in British fiction, in order to evaluate the influence of modernist developments in form and technique on recent experimental writing. The third section consists of an introduction to Gray’s work for he is not only a novelist, but also an artist, a playwright, a poet, an activist and a scholar. Chapter II - “Postmodernist Features in 1982 Janine” - aims at listing and examining the postmodernist devices that the novel includes, in what content and form are concerned. On the one hand, the use of a developed type of the modernist stream of consciousness, the presence of a protagonist who feels entrapped in a specific system, the quest for freedom, the incoherence and fragmentation of time, the nonchronological order of the narrative, the blending of fantasy and “reality”, as well as the importance of the Scottish material are definitely current aspects within postmodernist literature that can be found in Gray’s novel. On the other hand, the handling of literary self-conscious devices, such as typographical experimentation, presence of metafiction and intertextuality, and inclusion of an Epilogue, are likewise among recurrent postmodernist features. As the title - “A Narratological Analysis of 1982 Janine” - evidences, Chapter III offers a description of the mechanics of the narrative and its functioning in order to better understand the narrative technique of postmodernist fiction. This study is based primarily on Gérard Genette’s theoretical framework and terminology, presented in Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method, an analytical tool that allows me to provide a more objective and scientific analysis. Hence, I follow the Genettian division of narrative discourse in Time, Mood and Voice while examining the novel. Finally, I proceed to a description of the intertextual relationships 1982 Janine establishes with other texts.

Semantic priming of familiar songs

We explored the functional organization of semantic memory for music by comparing priming across familiar songs both within modalities (Experiment 1, tune to tune; Experiment 3, category label to lyrics) and across modalities (Experiment 2, category label to tune; Experiment 4, tune to lyrics). Participants judged whether or not the target tune or lyrics were real (akin to lexical decision tasks). We found significant priming, analogous to linguistic associative-priming effects, in reaction times for related primes as compared to unrelated primes, but primarily for within-modality comparisons. Reaction times to tunes (e.g., "Silent Night") were faster following related tunes ("Deck the Hall") than following unrelated tunes ("God Bless America"). However, a category label (e.g., Christmas) did not prime tunes from within that category. Lyrics were primed by a related category label, but not by a related tune. These results support the conceptual organization of music in semantic memory, but with potentially weaker associations across modalities.

Effect of unilateral temporal-lobe excision on perception and imagery of songs

Auditory imagery for songs was studied in two groups of patients with left or right temporal-lobe excision for control of epilepsy, and a group of matched normal control subjects. Two tasks were used. In the perceptual task, subjects saw the text of a familiar song and simultaneously heard it sung. On each trial they judged if the second of two capitalized lyrics was higher or lower in pitch than the first. The imagery task was identical in all respects except that no song was presented, so that subjects had to generate an auditory image of the song. The results indicated that all subjects found the imagery task more difficult than the perceptual task, but patients with right temporal-lobe damage performed significantly worse on both tasks than either patients with left temporal-lobe lesions or normal control subjects. These results support the idea that imagery arises from activation of a neural substrate shared with perceptual mechanisms, and provides evidence for a right temporal- lobe specialization for this type of auditory imaginal processing.

Memory for the absolute pitch of familiar songs

Four experiments were conducted to examine the ability of people without "perfect pitch" to retain the absolute pitch offamiliar tunes. In Experiment 1, participants imagined given tunes, and then hummed their first notes four times either between or within sessions. The variability of these productions was very low. Experiment 2 used a recognition paradigm, with results similar to those in Experiment 1 for musicians, but with some additional variability shown for unselected subjects. In Experiment 3, subjects rated the suitability ofvarious pitches to start familiar tunes. Previously given preferred notes were rated high, as were notes three or four semitones distant from the preferred notes, but not notes one or two semitones distant. In Experiment 4, subjects mentally transformed the pitches of familiar tunes to the highest and lowest levels possible. These experiments suggest some retention of the absolute pitch of tunes despite a paucity of verbal or visual cues for the pitch.

Mental scanning in auditory imagery for songs

Four experiments examined how people operate on memory representations of familiar songs. The tasks were similar to those used in studies of visual imagery. In one task, subjects saw a one word lyric from a song and then saw a second lyric; then they had to say if the second lyric was from the same song as the first. In a second task, subjects mentally compared pitches of notes corresponding to song lyrics. In both tasks, reaction time increased as a function of the distance in beats between the two lyrics in the actual song, and in some conditions reaction time increased with the starting beat of the earlier lyric. Imagery instructions modified the main results somewhat in the first task, but not in the second, much harder task. The results suggest that song representations have temporal-like characteristics. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)

The organization of memory for familiar songs

Investigated the organizing principles in memory for familiar songs in 2 experiments. It was hypothesized that individuals do not store and remember each song in isolation. Rather, there exists a rich system of relationships among tunes that can be revealed through similarity rating studies and memory tasks. One initial assumption was the division of relations among tunes into musical (e.g., tempo, rhythm) and nonmusical similarity. In Exp I, 20 undergraduates were asked to sort 60 familiar tunes into groups according to both musical and nonmusical criteria. Clustering analyses showed clear patterns of nonmusical similarity but few instances of musical similarity. Exp II, with 16 Ss, explored the psychological validity of the nonmusical relationships revealed in Exp I. A speeded verification task showed that songs similar to each other are confused more often than are distantly related songs. A free-recall task showed greater clustering for closely related songs than for distantly related ones. The relationship between these studies and studies of semantic memory is discussed. Also, the contribution of musical training and individual knowledge to the organization of the memory system is considered. (19 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)

Perceived and Imagined Tempos of Familiar Songs

Two studies investigated the similarity of metronome settings to perceived and imagined familiar songs by subjects unselected for musical ability. In Study 1, mean tempo settings in the two tasks were about 100 beats per minute. Songs with slower perceived tempos tended to be faster in the imagery task and vice versa. In Study 2, subjects set fastest and slowest acceptable tempos for the same set of songs in the imagery mode. These settings were positively correlated with the preferred tempo for the song. Most subjects thought that there were limits on how fast or slow a song could be imagined. These results suggest that tempo is explicitly represented in auditory imagery.

“Beneath the Starry Flag”: the Flags and Songs of the 1913-14 Michigan Copper Strike as Image-making in the American Labor Movement

The 1913-14 Michigan copper strike is unlike many American labor actions of the period in that it did not include red flags or socialist anthems. Many of the most familiar photographs of the strike involve American flags, not red ones. Similarly, the songs mentioned in journalistic accounts of the strikers are American Civil War songs, not popular labor songs of the period. The few newly-written songs about the strike, published in the local newspapers, seem cautiously polite and espouse values such as patriotism, liberty and human rights. During a time when sections of the "friendly" press were concerned with labor presenting the correct image and avoiding unfavorable associations, the Copper Country strikers, and the W.F.M., seem to have been attempting to create a fresh narrative regarding what this strike was (and what it was not). This paper will consider elements of the Copper Country strike in the light of media coverage, prior to July 1913, of several American labor topics that might have influenced the way the strike was presented. Particular attention will be given to photographs, songs, and accounts from the 1912 Lawrence textile strike, as well as contemporaneous critiques of labor song lyrics. Most of this commentary will be drawn from the labor and socialist press, demonstrating that the 1913-14 Michigan copper strike occurred during a period in which the labor movement was struggling to craft and image that would display it as it wished to be seen. This paper has not yet been submitted.