Brooke-Rosean Lipogrammic Hybrids: Puns and Portmanteau Words
Brooke-Rosean Lipogrammic Hybrids: Puns and Portmanteau Words

Summary/Abstract: Consequent experimental novelist, Christine Brooke-Rose not only resorts to the reduction of the narrator as a function of the narrative, but she also plays on the ability of language to reconfigure the fictional universe. The Brooke-Rosean narrative thus orients readers’ attention from the comfortable semantic reading process focusing on the plot to the puzzling play of language and discourses. A natural outcome is a hybrid narrative and a multitude of typical lexical hallmarks of the author: puns and portmanteau words. The author’s interest in language can be traced down to three sources: firstly, her identity split as a bilingual and then the linguistic adoption as an exile; secondly, her wartime experience as an officer, and thirdly, her translation of Robbe-Grillet’s novel In the Labyrinth. All these and each triggered Christine Brooke-Rose’s interest in the ontological ability of language. The author followed this as her lifelong pursuit and made it the primary germinating force of all her novels, thus staying an original and consequent experimenter at all times.

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