| Description |
Critics frequently dismiss the early short fiction of Ojuna Barnes, claiming that in these works she is too intrusive as an author. Their complaint is rooted in the modernist movement, when authors began to efface themselves, presenting events as description without commentary. The trend started as experimentation but ended as dogma, and today the use of authoritative rhetoric, as termed by Wayne C. Booth, is considered poor writing. However, I assert that authoritative rhetoric can never be wholly eliminated from a work and that modernist fiction simply contains less overt authoritative rhetoric than earlier fiction. Overt authoritative rhetoric is certainly valid when it is used to achieve a desired effect. Ojuna Barnes uses overt authoritative rhetoric in her early short stories to admit fictionality and locate her stories outside of regular fiction, allowing for alternative interpretation. She also uses authoritative rhetoric in conjunction with other elements of fiction to shape meaning. ii |
