Signs of life: intertextuality in the fiction of Annemarie Jagose

Abstract

People are accustomed to reading fiction, even postmodern fiction, primarily for plot, character and theme. This thesis looks beyond such initial reading practices to examine the fiction of Annamarie Jagose most centrally for its interrogation of literary representations of gender and sexuality. I examine the use of postmodern writing strategies in Jagose's novels In Translation and Lulu and the short story Dead Letter. Through these devices foregrounding language itself, the disruption of narratives, destabilised characterisation and - above all - the use of pastiche, parody and intertextual borrowing, Annamarie Jagose has created fictional worlds whose aim goes well beyond that of other New Zealand 'queer' writing.