Figural forms of knowledge: a study of the short prose of Sam Shepard

Abstract

ABSTRACT
The paratactical style and the indeterminacies are literary strategies that resist
the conventional impulse of totalizing the elements projected by the text, because
instead of selecting the aspects of reality and subordinating the images and
perceptions into a hierarchy, the use of these techniques favors the juxtaposition
of multiple perspectives and the frustration of narrative closure. Thus, the use
of parataxis and indeterminacies in the collection of short stories Great Dream
of Heaven (2002), by the American author Sam Shepard, tends to challenge the
process of meaning production through the progressive erasure of narrative
“certainties”.
KEY WORDS: Postmodern, indeterminacy, parataxis, narrative, Sam Shepard.