Does It Really Mean That? Interpreting the Literary Ambiguous

However disconnected the essays in the volume might appear to be at first glance, the unifying factor is the very notion of ambiguity—which is one of the essential features of the postmodern age: how it can be defined as opposed to what it means or is, where it can be found, to what purposes it can be put, including questions of whether it is a positive or negative factor. But this, of course, is not a new phenomenon. Writers have always depended on equivocation, multiplicity of meaning, uncertainty of meaning—deliberate mystification one might say. Language itself is the base of ambiguity not only in literature but in everyday public discourse. Thus the papers in the volume should appeal not only to scholars working in the fields of modern or postmodern literature, but those who see the importance of ambiguity in the earlier texts, and perhaps their influences in later writing. Finally the essays included here not only provide specific analyses and proposed solutions for specific works or authors they also open the reader to other appearances of ambiguity, often not simply in literature or critical theory, but in the kinds of social issues the literary works deals with.

About the Author :
Before her work in Europe, Kathleen Dubs taught and held administrative positions at a number of American universities and liberal arts colleges. She is currently on the faculty of Arts and Letters at Catholic University in Ružomberok, Slovakia, and the Institute of English Studies at Pázmány Péter Catholic University, Hungary. Her most recent publications include "Benjamin Franklin: The Face of American Satire," "Devising Meaning in Genesis B," "Fate, Providence, and Chance: Boethian Philosophy in The Lord of the Rings," the entry "Fortune and Fate" in The J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: Scholarship and Critical Assessment, and "Sleeping in Beowulf."Janka Kaščáková received her PhD from Comenius University, Bratislava, Slovakia, and teaches English Literature in the Department of English Language and Literature at Catholic University in Ružomberok, Slovakia. The main focus of her research is modernism and the modernist short story, with a specialization in Katherine Mansfield. She also conducts research in fantasy literature, especially the works of J. R. R. Tolkien. Her publications include "Katherine Mansfieldová: The Reception of Katherine Mansfield in the Countries of Former Czechoslovakia" and "'My Flowerless Ones': Representations of Unmarried Women in the Short Stories of Katherine Mansfield." Several other publications are forthcoming.