The following guidelines are a considerable amplification of those published in Atlantis 22.2 (2000). They are partly based on the MLA Style Sheet (New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 1970) and on Walter S. Achtert and Joseph Gibaldi, MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, 11th printing (1988; New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 1993). They also draw on past editing experience, on the latest trends in international journals and, hopefully, on common sense.

All guidelines given below in §2, §3, §4 and §5 are essential for a well-presented, formally coherent contribution; for the benefit of authors, however, indispensable conditions are highlighted in red. Please take a look at the freely adapted sample contribution to be found in §7. If in doubt, contact the General Editor at adowning@filol.ucm.es.

Acceptance. Contributions submitted to Atlantis should meet the following criteria:

• Suitability for the aim and scope of Atlantis.
• Originality and interest in relation to subject matter, method, data or findings.
• Relevance to current research in the field.
• Revision of previously published work on the topic.
• Logical rigour in argumentation and in the analysis of data.
• Adequate use of concepts and research methodology.
• Discussion of theoretical implications and/or practical applications.
• Command of recent bibliography.
• Linguistic appropriateness, textual organisation and satisfactory presentation.
• Readability and conciseness of expression.

Concurrence. Authors are expected to know and heed basic ground rules that preclude simultaneous submission, duplicate publication or any other kind of self-plagiarism. Prospective contributors to Atlantis commit themselves to the following when they submit a manuscript:

• That no concurrent consideration of the same, or almost identical, work by any other journal and/or publisher is taking place.
• That the potential contribution has not appeared previously nor is about to appear within two years, in any form whatsoever, in another journal, electronic format or as a chapter/section of a book.

If, after two years, a contribution first published in Atlantis is to be reprinted elsewhere, permission is not required but the author should credit Atlantis for the contribution’s first appearance. If in doubt about any of the above, the author should consult the Editor.

Length. Recommended length for articles: 6,000-8,000 words; for book reviews: 2,500-3,000 words. Interviews should also range between 6,000 and 8,000 words, but please notice that rambling questions and answers must be avoided. Please make sure that the interview is informative, attractive and of interest to the scientific community.

Submission. Your contribution should reach the Editor in THREE double-spaced, clear computer printouts with wide margins. Additionally, please send the General Editor an electronic version (MS Word for Windows) as an e-mail attachment. The current Editor of Atlantis works in a PC environment, so submissions in PC format are greatly preferred.

Personal data. The author must submit the following information on a separate sheet. Personal details should be absent from the manuscript itself.

• Title of the manuscript
• Author’s name
• Institutional affiliation
• Home address
• Telephone numbers (both home and office)
• Fax number and e-mail address (if applicable)
• Word processor and version used to format the document
• Total number of words, including works cited and notes

Abstract. The first page of each article must include a 100-200 word summary written in English. The abstract should be indented and positioned immediately before the body of the text, after the title. It should consist of one paragraph and should contain no bibliographical reference in parenthetical form. Just after the abstract append a list of six to ten key words in English so that your contribution can be accurately classified by international reference indexes.

Languages used. Manuscripts must be submitted in English. Authors must consistently follow either a British or an American spelling usage. In a separate file a translation of your Abstract, or a similar summary, together with the keywords are required in Spanish. These will be provided by the Editors for those contributors who do not handle Spanish.

Reviews. These will only be considered for publication if the book under review has appeared within three years of the date of submission.

Titles of contributions. For articles type the title at the top of the page on which the text begins. Do not italicize your title or capitalize it in full. Italicize only a published work in the title or a cited word in a linguistic study. Capitalize only the first letter of the first word and of all significant words (nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs) as well as proper nouns which appear in titles. Do not use a period after titles. The title should not carry a reference to a footnote, unless by the Editor; in articles or other contributions put necessary acknowledgements or explanations in a footnote to the first or last sentence of the first paragraph, not to the title.

Use of numbers. Numbers from one to nine should be written as words. If you are using only a few numbers you may also use words for any number which requires two words or less (e.g. thirty-five or six hundred), except in technical or statistical discussions involving their frequent use or in notes, where many space-saving devices are legitimate. Numbers beginning sentences (including dates) are always spelled out. In connecting consecutive numbers (e.g. in page references), give the second number in full for numbers up to 99; for larger numbers give only two figures of the second if it is within the same hundred, e.g. 21-28, 345-46, 1608-74, 12345-47.

Dates. You may use either standard dating (April 13, 1990) or new style dating (13 April 1990) but you must be consistent. No comma is used between month and year when no date is given (May 1990). In Spanish stick to this formula: 13 de abril de 1990. Centuries should be spelled out in lowercase letters in English (fourteenth century), but capital Roman numerals should be used in Spanish (siglo XIV).

Tables, drawings and graphic items. Please be kind to your Editor and avoid the proliferation of tables, drawings and graphic items which may result in an excessive number of pages. This could affect the eligibility of your work for publication.
Always state the graphic file format of the illustrations (tree analyses, pictures, etc.) and the program that generated them. MS Word-related picture editors are recommended. The maximum size for any diagram, drawing, table, etc. must be 10 (width) x 15 (height) cms. Remember that the size of the Atlantis page is considerably smaller than the A4 sheets of your printout. Please note that authors may be required to submit professional camera-ready copies of problematic graphic items.
All tables and figures should be numbered consecutively and referred to by their numbers within the text (e.g. as we see in example/table/figure 1…).

Use of publishers’ names. Publishing company names are appropriately abbreviated in the list of works cited. To abbreviate a publisher’s name, you should remove articles, business abbreviations (Co., Inc.) and descriptive words (Press, Publishers). For example, Macmillan Publishing Company, Inc. becomes simply Macmillan; Scott, Foresman and Co. becomes Scott; Editorial Gredos becomes Gredos. Any university press will be abbreviated according to one of these two patterns: U of Miami P, or Toronto UP.

Quotations. All quotations should correspond exactly with the originals in wording, spelling, capitalization and internal punctuation (for terminal punctuation see below in §3.8). Exceptions (e.g. the italicizing of words for emphasis, or the modernizing of spelling) should be explicitly indicated or explained. If the source contains a spelling error, you must duplicate it and then insert the word sic—sparingly—in square brackets (never round parenthesis). If you add your own words to a quotation, you must either enclose them in square brackets (“He [Stephen Spender] is one of the finest poets Britain has ever produced"), or you must stop the quotation, insert your material and then resume the quotation (“Stephen Spender", born in London in 1909, “is one of the finest poems Britain has ever produced").

Ellipsis within quotations. If you delete anything from a quotation, use three . . . spaced periods, being careful to leave a space before the first period and after the last one. Do not enclose the spaced periods in brackets. To indicate ellipsis after the conclusion of a complete sentence, use three spaced periods following the sentence period. . . . (i.e. four periods with no space before the first). All punctuation except this sentence period should be ignored when it falls within an ellipsis. Avoid using spaced periods to open or to close quotations that are obviously complete syntactic fragments. Use introductory clauses to avoid opening paragraphs with ellipsis periods (e.g. Gabler observes that “while James Joyce", etc.).

Run-on and indented quotations. Unless unusual emphasis is required, verse quotations of a single or part of a line should be run on, in quotation marks, as part of your text. Quotations of up to two lines should also be run on in quotation marks, but with the lines separated with a slash (/). Unless special emphasis is required, prose quotations up to about 75 words should be run on. Longer quotations should be separated from the context, indented and never enclosed in quotation marks. If a single paragraph, or part of one, is quoted in indented form, do not indent the first line again; but if two or more paragraphs are quoted in indented form consecutively, indent the first line of each. Use a colon to introduce these indented quotations, but not when a quotation is an integral element of your sentence. Since indented quotations separated from the context are not enclosed in quotation marks, internal punctuation is not affected. It is strongly recommended not to use too many quotations in your essay, particularly long indented quotations. Remember that the purpose of quotations is to support your own critical or descriptive discourse, not to replace it.
In accordance with current editorial practice, put all periods or commas immediately after quotation marks unless a parenthetical reference intervenes: He refused “to accept in practice something he did not approve of in principle". He refused “to accept in practice something he did not approve of in principle", but He refused “to accept in practice something he did not approve of in principle" (Mason 1998: 75). Please note these points as conscientiously as you can, because their correction by the Editor is an extremely irksome task.

Double and single quotation marks. Double quotation marks (“ ") are used to enclose quoted speech or writing only. For quotations within run-on quotations use single quotation marks. If there are quotes within an indented quotation, the double quotation marks are used. Single quotation marks (‘ ’) are used in the following ways: a) to enclose titles of articles, essays, short stories, short poems, songs, chapters and sections of books, lectures and unpublished works other than dissertations (see 3.10); b) to enclose quotations within quotations; c) (usually called ‘scare quotes’) to indicate that the word or phrase is being used deliberately in an unusual or arguably incorrect sense, as well as for not yet wholly standard terms; d) for English or Spanish translations of words or phrases from a different language (agua ‘water’)

Italics. Use Italics: a) for the titles of published books, plays, book-length poems, pamphlets, periodical publications, operas, films and classical works (except books of the Bible, which are neither enclosed in quotation marks nor italicized). If an italicized title contains another italicized title, the latter reverts to roman type (e.g. La estética modernista como práctica de la resistencia en A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man). The above conventions do not apply to names of series or societies or editions; leave them in Roman type, without quotation marks. Unpublished doctoral theses are also italicised, followed by the specification of their unpublished condition; b) to highlight a word, phrase or sentence in the text. All other forms of emphasis (such as boldface or underlining) should be avoided; c) for unfamiliar words or phrases from another language, unusual technical terms upon their first appearance and letters, words, phrases and sentences cited as examples within the text (not in indented form); d) for linguistic forms (words, phrases, letters) cited as examples or as subjects of discussion, whether English, Spanish or foreign (agua ‘water’).

Textual divisions and headings. The inclusion of section headings should be kept to a minimum and used only to facilitate reading, especially in relatively short articles like those published by Atlantis. Section headings must begin from the left margin, with no period at the end. Headings may be numbered. The use of Arabic numerals is recommended. Centred Roman numerals may be used when there is no heading title. If absolutely necessary, further division within a section should follow the same format used for section headings. They must be preceded by Arabic numerals separated by full stop (e.g. 1.1). Do not capitalize headings in full.

Paragraphs. For the sake of both appearance and emphasis, avoid writing many very short paragraphs. Remember that brief paragraphs on the typed page will look even briefer in print, hampering, at the same time, the coherent development of ideas. Paragraphs of less than 200 words should not be used, except when a particular effect is sought by the author.

Punctuation. In general, make your usage as consistent as possible. Although the finer points of punctuation are often a matter of personal preference, the main purpose is clarity, and here it is wiser to follow established convention. Do not use commas (,) before “and" and “or" in a series of three or more. Never use a comma and a dash together. A comma can never precede a parenthesis; it must always follow it (such as this), if required by the context. A dash (—) is not the same as a hyphen (-). The former is used to introduce an explanation (you must arrive on time—not two hours late), and the latter joins words in a compound such as 'twenty-four'. Do not confuse them. Question marks (?) and exclamation marks (!) should not normally be used in scholarly writing. Periods (.) close notes and bibliographical citations as well as complete sentences in text and notes. The period is placed within the parenthesis when the parenthetical element is independent: “. . . the language is both subliterary and transpersonal (in contrast, allegory, for example, is transpersonal but not subliterary)". but “. . . the language is both subliterary and transpersonal. (On the other hand, allegory, for example, is transpersonal but not subliterary.)" Square brackets ([]) are used for an unavoidable parenthesis within a parenthesis, to enclose interpolations or comments in a quotation or incomplete data and to enclose phonetic transcription. (Slash marks [/] are used to enclose phonemic transcription.)

Capitalization. In English, capitalize the first letter of the first word and of all the principal words—including nouns, adjectives, adverbs and verbs in hyphenated compounds, but not articles, prepositions and conjunctions—in English titles of publications (the title of your own contribution or other titles included in the works cited list) and in subjects of lectures or papers; but in mentioning magazines, journals or newspapers (e.g. the Gentleman’s Magazine), do not treat an initial definite article as a part of the title except when the name is cited separately as a source, e.g. in a bibliography. Capitalize references to standard parts of a specific work, e.g. MacCabe’s Preface and Index. In Spanish, do not capitalize the days of the week or months, nouns or adjectives derived from proper nouns (e.g. cervantino, madrileño), or titles of people or places. In titles of books, stories, poems, etc., capitalize only the first word and the names of persona and places (Historia verdadera de la conquista de Nueva España, but not Ensayos de Lingüística General). In series, journal and newspaper titles, the predominant usage is to capitalize all major words (e.g. Revista de Filología Española). Never capitalize entire words (i.e., every letter) in text or notes either in English or in Spanish; if absolutely necessary, use small capitals (i.e. versalitas). In general, try to capitalize as little as possible in both languages.

Indents and tables. Do not use tabs or spacebar keystrokes to indent all the lines of a paragraph or to construct tables: employ the utilities included in your word processing package. Use tabs, however, to indent the initial line of paragraphs. Likewise, indenting is used for listed examples illustrating a point. In addition, these should be preceded by bracketed numbering and referred to by their number in the text.

Fonts. Only Times- or Courier-based fonts should be used. Authors using special characters (Old and Middle English, Phonetics, Greek and other languages), must inform the Editor. In all probability, you will be asked to send a copy of the font-file.

Other useful tips. An author’s last name precedes his or her first name or initials only in the works cited list or when it is arranged in alphabetical order. Otherwise the normal order is Wayne C. Booth, Noam Chomsky, or T. S. Eliot. Never capitalize surnames in full, not even in the works cited list. Never italicize quoted material (e.g. Kenner says that “Stephen treats his job as a squalid secret"), unless some of the quoted words are italicized in the original source, or you want to place emphasis on a word or phrase, which should be explicitly stated. Be consistent in spacing words and abbreviations.

Content. Since the reference system used by Atlantis renders most notes unnecessary, these should be avoided and limited to authorial commentary that cannot be easily accommodated in the body of the text. Furthermore, essay-like notes that pursue separate arguments are positively discouraged. Notes must not be used to give bibliographical references that can appear in parenthetical form within the text. The only parenthetical documentation that appears in a note is that which belongs to a quotation in the footnote itself.

Position within the body of the text. Raised (superscript) note numbers should be placed after the last word of the sentence the author wishes to comment upon, and after all punctuation (including parentheses and quotation marks) except a dash, thus: ".¹ ,¹ ",¹ ;¹ )¹ but not ¹. "¹.¹,"¹, ¹; ¹). Notes should never break the flow of the sentence. Ideally, they should always be placed after a period. Note numbers as well as other references should be verified carefully before the manuscript is submitted.

Types of documentation. Two different types of documentation will be used: brief parenthetical in-text citations and a works cited list. Each source must be documented both ways (a quick check is to compare your parenthetical citations with your works cited list entries to be sure each has an exact match).

In-text parenthetical references. References to articles and reviews must be made within the text and placed within parentheses. The parantheses should contain the author’s surname followed by a space before the date of publication which should, in turn, be followed by a colon and a space before the page number(s): e.g. (Frye 1957a: 191-25). If the sentence includes the author’s name or if it includes the date of publication, that information should not be repeated in the parentheses. Depending upon the amount of information you decide to include in your text about your source, the information you are required to give in your citations will change. When several authors appear in parenthetical documentation, those references should be arranged chronologically and separated with a semicolon: (Fry 1957a; Gilbert and Gubar 1985; Espinal 1991). Try not to use parentheses within parentheses, and, if this is unavoidable employ square brackets (see §3.14). Never use Latin reference tags (op. cit., ibidem, etc.).
Parenthetical citations should be placed (1) immediately after each quotation; (2) at the end of a sentence or group of sentences which are all paraphrased from the same page of the same source; or (3) at the end of your paragraph even if you continue to paraphrase from the same page of the same source in the next paragraph. A parenthetical citation can never cover more than one paragraph of your text. Put this parenthetical citation after the quotation marks but before the comma or period when the quotation is part of your text. However, if the quotation ends with a question mark or an exclamation mark, there must be double punctuation: “. . . but who would understand this equation?" (Rose 1989: 34). When the quotation is set off from the text in indented form, the parenthetical citation follows all punctuation (see examples in §7).
The Bible has a special citation form. To cite the Bible, give the number (if necessary) and the title of the book, then the chapter followed by a period but no space and the verse number(s): (1 Tim. 7.9) or (Mark 5.8-15). Remember not to italicize the title of the books of the Bible.
Dates of publication within parenthetical references in your text should always correspond to the edition handled in the preparation of your paper. Original dates, if applicable, should only appear in the list of references, in brackets after the cited edition (see examples in section 5.3).

Arrangement of the works cited list. Occasionally a source will not provide you with all the information you need to construct a complete works cited entry. In such a situation, you may insert the abbreviation n. p. for no publisher where the publisher’s name would appear in your entry. The abbreviation N. p. may be used when you are using a text which has no place of publication listed. Use the abbreviation exactly as if it were the actual information in your entry. You may also use the abbreviation n. d. for no date when you are unable to locate any publication date. If there is a conjectural date, you may use it followed by a question mark with all enclosed in square brackets [1629?]. Never use the abbreviations when real information is available. If you are writing in Spanish, replace those English conjunctions and abbreviations that are not part of the cited source with Spanish equivalents.
In accordance with the author-date reference system described in §5.2, the three basic formats below must be observed:

• For books:

  (1) author’s surname, full first name (avoid initials when possible); (2) year of publication, colon; (3) title of work in italics, and subtitle preceded by a colon and a space, period; (4) if needed, editor’s name and full first name, followed by the abbreviation “Ed.”, period, plus translator’s name preceded by “Trans.”, period; (5) place of publication, colon; (6) publisher, period, new paragraph. Examples:

  Broadbent, John, ed. 1974: Poets of the Seventeenth Century. 2 vols. New York: New American Library.

  Danby, John F. 1961: Shakespeare’s Doctrine of Nature: A Study of King Lear. London: Faber.

  Danson, Lawrence, ed. 1981: On King Lear. Princeton: Princeton UP.

  Fairbanks, Carol 1986: Prairie Women: Images in American and Canadian Fiction. New Haven: Yale UP.

  Fanego, Teresa, María José López Couso and Javier Pérez Guerra, eds. 2002: English Historical Syntax and Morphology. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

  Frye, Northrop 1957a: Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays. Princeton: Princeton UP.

  ————— 1957b: Sound and Poetry. New York: Columbia UP.

  ————— 1983: The Myth of Deliverance: Reflexions on Shakespeare’s Problem Comedies. Toronto: U of Toronto P.

  Gibaldi, Joseph 1995: MLA Handbook for Writers of Reasearch Papers. New York: The Modern Language Association of America. Gilbert, Sandra M. and Susan Gubar, eds. 1985: The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women: The Tradition in English. New York: Norton.

  Joyce, James 1993 (1914): Dublineses. Ed. Fernando Galván. Trans. Eduardo Chamorro. Madrid: Cátedra.

  Knight, G. Wilson 1979: Hamlet and Other Shakespearean Essays. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.

  Walker, Alice 1985 (1982): The Color Purple. New York: Pocket.

  
  
• For articles or chapters in books, or papers in conference proceedings:

  (1) author’s surname, first name (avoid initials when possible); (2) year of publication, colon; (3) title of article or chapter within single inverted commas (‘ ‘), not in italics (if it is the name of a standard part like Introduction, do not use inverted commas or italics), period; (4) editor’s first name and surname, comma, followed by "ed."; (5) title of book in italics, period; (6) place of publication, colon; (7) publisher, period; (8) numbers of first and last page linked by a hyphen, period, new paragraph. Examples:

  Carnero González, José 1982: ‘Calipso y Penélope en Ulysses’. Francisco García Tortosa, ed. James Joyce: A New Language: Actas/Proceedings del Simposio Internacional en el Centenario de James Joyce. Sevilla: Depto. de Literatura Inglesa de la Univ. de Sevilla. 167-74.

  Hidalgo, Pilar 1998: ‘La novela victoriana, 1840-1880’. José Antonio Álvarez Amorós, ed. Ch. 3 of Historia crítica de la novela inglesa. Colección Almar-Anglística. Salamanca: Ediciones Colegio de España. 107-46.

  Martín Gutiérrez, Félix 1987: ‘Juegos retóricos, reglas morales: contexto y sentido de la influencia de Plauto y Terencio en la comedia preshakespeareana’. Rafael Portillo, ed. Estudios literarios ingleses: Shakespeare y el teatro de su época. Madrid: Cátedra. 19-43.

  Olsen, Tillie 1977: ‘Tell Me a Riddle’. Irving Howe, ed. Jewish-American Stories. New York: Mentor-NAL. 82-117.

  Pujante, Ángel Luis 2002: Introducción. William Shakespeare: Hamlet. Ed. and trans. Ángel Luis Pujante. App. Clara Calvo. Colección Austral. 2nd ed. Madrid: Espasa Calpe. 11-41.

  
  
• For articles in a journal:

  (1) author’s surname, first name (avoid initials when possible); (2) year of publication, colon; (3) title of article within single inverted commas (‘ ‘), not in italics, period; (4) title of journal in italics; (5) number of volume in Arabic numerals, colon (if you want to indicate a particular issue within a volume, do so 26.1); (6) numbers of first and last page of article linked by a hyphen, period, new paragraph. Examples:

  Draper, John W. 1938: ‘The Theory of the Comic in Eighteenth-Century England’. Journal of English and Germanic Philology 37: 207-23.

  Kendall, Gillian Murray 1989: ‘"Lend Me Thy Hand": Metaphor and Mayhem in Titus Andronicus’.Shakespeare Quarterly 40: 299-316.

  Pope, Marcel Cornis 1990: ‘Poststructuralist Narratology and Critical Writing: A “Figure in the Carpet" Textshop’. Journal of Narrative Technique 20.2: 245-65.

Examples of further variations on the three basic formats

• An edited anthology (use this form when you cite comments made by the editor, not the work of the author):

  Roush, Bobby, ed. 1977: Hansen’s College Reader. New York: Columbia UP, 1977.

• A book written by a corporate author:

  American Cancer Society 1987: The Dangers of Ultra-Violet Rays. Washington: American Cancer Society, 1987.

• An edition:

  Lazinsky, Sergei 1986: The Land without a Sun. Ed. Pemal Hassin. 4th ed. London: Macmillan.

• A volume within a multivolume set:

  Rassele, Claus 1959-72: The Eternal Fire. Vol. 3 of The Complete Prose of Claus Rassele. Ed. Randal Wiles. 9 vols. Chicago: U of Chicago P.

• An article published within an anthology or Festschrift:

  Kozloff, Sarah Ruth 1987: ‘Narrative Theory and Television’. Robert C. Allen, ed. Channels of Discourse: Television and Contemporary Criticism. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P. 42-73.

• An introduction, foreword, preface, or afterword, i.e. a standard part of a book without a title of its own:

  Berger, Samuel 1983: Introduction. International Terrorism. By Morris Provis. Champaign: U of Illinois P. xiv-xxii.

• A journal article with one author; continuous pagination:

  Alcaraz Varó, Enrique 1983: ‘De la lingüística oracional a la supraoracional’. Estudios de Lingüística 1: 7-24.

• A journal article with two authors; separate issue pagination:

  Claw, Charles J. and Richard Wingley 1981: ‘The Myth of Troy’. Arts and Architecture 13.2: 17-34.

• A journal article with three authors:

  Prince, Shawn, James T. Mack and Roderick Soames 1973: ‘Batik as a Form of Cultural Expression’. Journal of African Studies 47: 119-28.

• A magazine article in a weekly or biweekly:

  Banks, Sandra 1986: ‘The Devil’s on Our Radio’. People 7 May: 72.

• A magazine article from a monthly or bimonthly:

  Trainer, George L. 1988: ‘Learning to Say No to Your Child’. Parents March: 45.

• A newspaper article in a daily with two authors, numbered sections:

  Clark, Trisha and James Kirsch 1987: ‘Racism and Apathy Join Hands at NIU’. Chicago Tribune 21 Sept., city ed., section 3: 2.

• A newspaper article in a daily with one author; lettered sections:

  Morse, Kathy 1986: ‘The High Cost of Surgery for Your Pet’. Rockford Register Star 7 Oct.: B11.

• A newspaper article in a daily with one author, no section divisions, continuous pagination:

  Kelley, Donald 1988: ‘Climbing the Trees of the Southland’. Chicago Sun Times 4 Jan., late ed.: 33.

• A review in a journal:

  Conde- Silvestre, Juan Camilo 2002: Rev. of A History of English: A Sociolinguistic Approach, by Barbara A. Fennell. Atlantis 24.1: 259-68.

• A review article with an author but no title in a monthly magazine:

  Sherly, James 1982: Rev. of The Effects of Capitalism on Black Americans, by Matthew Maples. Economist July: 60-63.

• A review article with complete information in a daily newspaper:

  Lerner, Richard 1987: ‘The Blackness Ahead’. Rev. of ‘Stocks in the 1980's’, by Howard Barker. Wall Street Journal 19 Nov.: 28.

• An unpublished thesis or dissertation:

  Arús, Jorge 2003: Towards a Computational Specification of Transitivity in Spanish: A Contrastive Study with English. Unpublished Ph.D. thesis. Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain.

• A publication on-line:

  Leong, Ping Alvin: ‘Delimiting the Theme of the English Clause – An Inference-Boundary Account’ <http://www.ling.helsinki.fi/sky/julkaisut/SKY2004/LeongPing.pdf> (Accessed 22 December, 2006)

Please try to follow the guidelines contained in this document. Your cooperation will be greatly appreciated by the Editor, and your work will look better when it leaves the printing press.

For questions on which these guidelines are silent, authors can refer to the latest MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, or to the norms outlined by the Real Academia Española in the case of contributions written in Spanish.

When in doubt check with your Editor at adowning@filol.ucm.es. We will always be glad to help. The postal address of Atlantis is: Atlantis, Departamento de Filología Inglesa I, Facultad de Filología, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Ciudad Universitaria, 28040 Madrid (Spain). Please use e-mail communication whenever possible.

Possible World Semantics, Frame Text, Insert Text, and Unreliable Narration: The Case of ‘The Turn of the Screw’

Thirty years have elapsed since Wayne C. Booth first formulated his influential theory of unreliable narration in The Rhetoric of Fiction. In the present state of narrative theory it seems advisable to interpret Booth’s intuition in the light of text linguistics and possible world semantics. Therefore, our purpose here is to form a general theory of unreliable narration founded on the world structure of the narrative text and on the key notions of frame text and insert text, as well as to offer a brief illustration of this theory with reference to ‘The Turn of the Screw’. This novella lends itself superbly to such illustration, since its allegedly ambiguous nature is partly a consequence of the unreliability of the governess-narrator owing to her lack of authentication authority.

It is well known that the theory of unreliable narration was formulated by Wayne C. Booth in his book The Rhetoric of Fiction (1961), and since then it has been received and circulated in similar terms by a great number of critics and theorists. The basic criterion which allows the identification of this number in type of narration in the actual textual space is the degree of confidence superscript. attributable to the words of the narrator and his version of the story. Chatman, for instance, puts the matter this way: [Sic] What makes a narratur [sic] unreliable is that his values diverge mistake strikingly from that of the implied author’s. That is, the rest of the narrative—“the norm of the work"—conflicts with the narrator’s presentation, and we become suspicious of his . . . competence to tell the “true version". (Chatman 1983: 149)

         In “unreliable narration" the narrator’s account is at odds with the implied reader’s surmises about the story’s real intentions. The story undermines the discourse. We conclude, by reading out between the lines, that the events and existents could not have been “like that", and so we hold the narrator suspect. Unreliable narration is thus an ironic form. . . . (Chatman 1983: 233)

         The narrator may provoke distrust for several different reasons, such as the limitation of his knowledge due to his youth, immaturity or mental deficiency (Benjy in The Sound and the Fury), his personal involvement in the story with the inevitable absence of objectivity brought about by such an involvement, and his incoherent value-scheme, which can result in psychological or moral flaws, innocence or an excessive good faith. For some of these reasons, the information obtained by reading between the lines of the text contradicts the narrator’s assertions, thus exciting the readers’ mistrust throughout the narrative work (Rimmon-Kenan 1983: 100-01).

         As one can see, this traditional notion of unreliable narration, which we have adopted on previous occasions (Álvarez Amorós 1986: 167-69 and 172-73),does not describe the referential and constructional procedures of a text endowed with this type of narration either formally or from the perspective of a text-linguistics theory of the narrative fact. In particular, we consider especially disturbing the indiscriminate a priori allocation of human features to the narrative agent, a perceptible fact in the fragments by Chatman quoted above (“his values", “sincerity", “competence", “narrator’s account") and in our own paraphrase of Rimmon-Kenan’s sources for narrative unreliability. This circumstance precludes the consideration of the narrative agent as an immanent device of microstructural generation which only a posteriori, and in the event of finding embodiment in a character, can acquire such human features. Nevertheless, modern literary theory has highly developed tools, such as text linguistics and possible world semantics, which allow the interpretation of Booth’s intuition, and all the qualifications appended to it later, within the framework of an overall model of the narrative text.

         The object of these pages is, therefore, to form a theory of unreliable narration based on the world structure of the narrative text and on its relations to the ideas of frame text and insert text, as well as to offer a brief illustration of such a theory with reference to ‘The Turn of the Screw’ (1898). This novella by Henry James has been widely celebrated for its unresolved ambiguity, an outstanding feature which it shares with other narratives published by the same author at the turn of the twentieth century, and which has attracted continual monographic attention from Jamesian criticism (Norrman 1977; Rimmon 1977; Krook 1973; Samuels 1971; Cixous 1970;Blackall 1965). The ambiguous nature of ‘The Turn of the Screw’ has crystallized into two mutually exclusive interpretive trends, which have attained universal diffusion among James’s readers. They have established themselves as standard critical opinions to such an extent that, given their conspicuous incompatibility, practically all commentaries on this work both turn on them and are manifested through an endless succession of acts of dissent or agreement. We are obviously referring to the mode of existence of the human apparitions which, according to the governess-narrator, take place at Bly or in its surroundings. Many trustworthy critics maintain that the apparitions are real, thus giving credit to the governess’s version with all the moral overtones that this fact entails; other equally reputed critics believe, however, that the ghosts only exist in the imagination of the girl, who suffers from a severe mental disorder. Her hallucinations can be explained, in accordance with the received Freudian hypothesis, as a result of the repression of the erotic fantasies aroused in her by the handsome owner of Bly. In this respect, it is usually claimed that the ambiguity in ‘The Turn of the Screw’, i.e. the impossibility of opting on solid and definitive textual grounds for one of the two interpretive trends already mentioned, lies in the narrator’s lack of authentication authority, which turns her into an unreliable figure. In my final references to ‘The Turn of the Screw’, I will survey the views critics have held on the ambiguity in this narrative work, and we will examine the role played by unreliable narration in the setting upof its radical ambivalence.

         The explanation of the world structure of the narrative text is founded on the possible world theory, a development of the text-linguistics literary theory from positions of philosophical semantics. Every natural language text, and, therefore, every narrative text, expresses a complex of worlds (Petöfi1975: 17), which is the textual referent. As far as the organization of this textual referent is concerned, our theory of unreliable narration will draw on the TeSWeST extended II (Text-Struktur Welt-Struktur Theorie, text structure world-structure theory), a semiotic pragmatically-oriented text linguistics model developed by Tomás Albaladejo Mayordomo from János S. Petöfi’s standard TeSWeST, with the intermediate stage of the TeSWeST extended I. In the non-formal section of the TeSWeST extended II one can find a third-degree component of textual extension which includes two fundamental categories, the category of world-model and the category of referential set structure, as well as two subcomponents, the fourth-degree subcomponent of world-model constitution and the fourth-degree subcomponent of referential constitution. In the process of text production, i.e. in the so-called direction of textual synthesis, the first of these two subcomponents allows and explains the construction of the category of world-model by the category of common text-producer, while the second subcomponent allows and explains the construction of the category of referential set structure by the category of common text-producer (Albaladejo Mayordomo 1983: 24). Along the lines proposed by this text-linguistics model, it seems impossible to account for the organization of the textual referent, or referential set structure, without having recourse to the category of world-model and to the subcomponent of world-model constitution. The reason for this is that the text-producer has necessarily to find the semantic elements he wants to communicate in one of these three domains of his intellectual or vital experience: in the domain of what is true and can be verified empirically, in the domain of what is fictional but verisimilar, or in the domain of what is fictional and nonverisimilar.

         This means that there are three types of world-model, whose functions are to rule the constitution of the referential set structure of a text at the discretion of its producer, even though he may be limited by a set of constrictions of a pragmatic nature (Albaladejo Mayordomo 1986: 58-65; Petöfi1978). Type I is the model of what actually happens in our real world, and, in accordance with its rules, the referential set structure of a text such as the minutes of the meeting of a Faculty Board can be constituted. Type II is the model of what happens within the verisimilar fictional domain. Its rules are not the same as those which hold in our real world, but they are congruent with them, so that this world-model is responsible for the constitution of the referential set structure of realistic novels. Finally type III is the model of those events which are fictional but not verisimilar; the rules of this model are not only different from those which apply in our real world, but also violate them, as is the case in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight or in Gulliver’s Travels. The great difficulty involved in constituting referential set structures entirely ruled by one and only one of the three types of world model so far mentioned gives rise to the existence of mixed referential set structures: for instance, those ruled by a verisimilar fictional world-model,but with semantic elements taken from our real world; those ruled by a nonverisimilar fictional world-model, but with verisimilar semantic elements and so forth. In such cases, it is imperative to apply the law of semantic maxima formulated by Albaladejo Mayordomo (1986: 61-65) in order to determine the type of world-model which has ultimately ruled the constitution of the referential set structure of a particular text. If a text denotes a referential set structure constituted by three classes of semantic elements that belong, respectively, to our real world, to a verisimilar fictional world and to a non-verisimilar fictional world, then the overall constitution of the referential set structure must have been ruled by a type III worldmodel. Evidence for the verification of this law can be found in the empirical fact that if the narrator relates several non-verisimilar fictional events within an otherwise realistic story, the final effect of the narration on the reader is no longer realistic.

         Though the remarks so far made on the textual referent apply to every natural language text, we are aware that the theoretical and critical reflexion on the narrative text, and particularly on the narrative text endowed with artistic intention, can benefit greatly from the notion that the textual referent, or referential set structure, is arranged as a complex of possible worlds. In our view, the referential set structure is made up by the global text-world and constituted, as we already know, in accordance with a certain type of world-model. The concept of world gives us the key to its organization within the field of the narrative referent according to the following criterion: “Una estructura de conjunto referencial", says AlbaladejoMayordomo, “tendrá tantos submundos como individuos formen parte de ella" (1986: 70). In this way, a narration with three characters will present the global text-world that makes up its referential set structure divided into three sections, i.e. into three subworlds. We must not forget that when the narrative stance is embodied in a character, and the “first-person" or homodiegetic narration (Genette 1980: 243-52) emerges as a result, the narrator, in so far as it is an individual within the referential set structure, has its own subworld on a par with the other characters.

Works Cited

Albaladejo Mayordomo, Tomás 1983: ‘Componente pragmático, componente de representación y modelo lingüístico-textual’. Lingua e Stile 18: 3-46.

———— 1986: Teoría de los mundos posibles y macroestructura narrativa: análisis de las novelas cortas de Clarín. Alicante: Secretariado de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Alicante.

Álvarez Amorós, José Antonio 1986: En torno al discurso narrativo de Dubliners. Alicante: Secretariado de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Alicante.

Blackall, Jean Frantz 1965: Jamesian Ambiguity and The Sacred Fount. Ithaca: Cornell UP.

Booth, Wayne C. 1961: The Rhetoric of Fiction. Chicago and London: U of Chicago P.

Chatman, Seymour 1983: Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. Ithaca and London: Cornell UP.

Cixous, Hélène 1970: ‘Henry James: l’écriture comme placement ou de l’ambiguïté de l’intérêt’. Poétique 1: 35-50.

Genette, Gérard 1980: Narrative Discourse. Oxford: Blackwell.

James, Henry 1966 (1898): The Turn of the Screw. Ed. Robert Kimbrough. New York and London: Norton.

Krook, Dorothea 1973: ‘The Madness of Art: Further Reflections on the Ambiguity of Henry James’. Hebrew University in Literature and the Arts 1: 25-38.

Norrman, Ralf 1977: Techniques of Ambiguity in the Fiction of Henry James with Special Reference to ‘In the Cage’ and ‘The Turn of the Screw’. Åbo: Åbo Akademi.

Petöfi, János S. 1975: Vers une théorie partielle du texte. Papiere zurTextlinguistik 9. Hamburg: Buske.

———— 1978: ‘La representación del texto y el léxico como red semántica’. János S. Petöfi and Antonio García Berrio, eds. Lingüística del texto y crítica literaria. Madrid: Alberto Corazón-Comunicación. 215-42.

Rimmon, Shlomith 1977: The Concept of Ambiguity: The Example of James. Chicago: U of Chicago P.

Rimmon-Kenan, Shlomith 1983: Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics. London: Methuen.

Samuels, Charles Thomas 1971: The Ambiguity of Henry James. Urbana: U of Illinois P.