Vacillating Voices

This analysis uncovers marginalized voices in literature through a theory of generic ambiguity. Ambiguity is a defining feature of literature in the long nineteenth century—and perhaps of art in general. In this ubiquity, however, it risks losing its distinctiveness as a narrative and stylistic form. In Vacillating Voices, Frauke Berndt introduces a theory of generic ambiguity addressing the interplay of linguistic, rhetorical-narrative, and aesthetic practices that give rise to diverse forms of ambiguity in literature, and proposes a typology to classify these practices. She demonstrates the theory’s relevance to modern literature through seven insightful analyses, which reveal how the fragile, shifting voices of those marginalized by patriarchal power in bourgeois society become audible only through the workings of ambiguity.