Quotations, Design and Discorded notes. Literary polyphony in the prose of Eira Stenberg

The dissertation aims at exploring the prose of Eira Stenberg (b. 1943) in which literary polyphony is related to the questions of subjectivity, storytelling and conceptions of reality. At the focus of the research are the novels written by Stenberg in the 1980-1990s: Paratiisin vangit (Prisoners of paradise, 1984), Häikäisy (Glare, 1987), Kuun puutarhat (Garden’s of the moon, 1990) and Gulliverin tytär (Gulliver’s daughter, 1993), published in a period when postmodern became the central topic in the Finnish literary culture. At that time, the conception of the subject became a problem, even insomuch that the death of a subject was discussed. Voice was part of the discussion concerning the subject: on the one hand, as an emansipatory metaphor of the rising feminist movement, and on the other hand, as a bugbear in poststructuralist antihumanism, understood as origin of the subject and as an expression of the personality.

Since voice always implicates a conception of subjectivity, I explore characters, narrators and the process of narrative, but also the importance of the writer in designing the text and orientating towards the listener. In the analysis of the texts, I deploy rhetorical and deconstructive approaches, as well as feminist theories on subjectivity. Also the Bakhtinian conception of polyphony is essential in this work.

I threat the voice not as an expression of personality or as a sign of authorial ownership, but as dialogic interplay that brings out different values and worldviews. I challenge both the idea of the 1980s literature as a period estranged from the world and all-encompassing talk about the death of the subject at that time. Based on Stenberg’s novels, it could be said that literary voices arise as a tone of voices in concrete and unique historical contexts. This refers to the necessity of understanding the voice as historical, often understood in literary theory as ahistorical and universal. Not only specific literature, but also specific contexts define meanings of the voice.