Ver, decir, narrar : la superficie grafica en el curioso incidente del perro en la noche

Abstract

Typographical experimentation and the disruption of the page layout in fiction is not a new phenomenon. However, it only became an object of research with postmodern criticism, which focused on self-reflexivity (McHale) and performativity (Kutnik) to claim that such fiction cancelled any referentiality but to its own word and graphic games. In 2005, White convincingly contradicted such assumptions, fostering a critical awareness of the graphic surface of the page while affirming that graphic devices could also perform mimetic functions. More recently, groundbreaking research based on semiotic notions (Hallet, Gibbons, Maziarczyk) has proposed the category multimodal novel as narrative developed in multiple modes. With the purpose of contributing to the new and under-researched area of multimodality in fiction, this work examines the exploitation of the graphic surface in Haddon's 2003 novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, and the relationships it establishes with other generic styles and discourses. A categorization and analysis of the semiotic resources in the story is proposed to account for their significance in the readers' process of making sense of the narrative as they exploit the potential of fiction to merge the verbal and the non-verbal in the construction of meaning. Of a highly multimodai nature, the novel is also explored as a meaningful pastiche form which parodies (Hutcheon) the detective fiction genre in the refunctionalization of its tropes.