The English patient and the story of storytelling.

Abstract

The English Patient is an exploration of the relationship between language and "reality." In The English Patient the search for mimetic structure, a narrative structure based on a preexisting "reality," becomes associated with the metaphorical act of "reading" signs to derive meaning. As the original, solid "reality" begins to disappear, the act of "reading" is replaced by the process of"translation." Whereas metaphorical "reading" presupposes a non-linguistic "reality," "translation" occurs at the encounter of two linguistic systems. The transition from "reading" to "translation" can be described by Julia Kristeva's terms "symbol" and "sign." The symbol shows a pre-symbolic reality into a symbolic relationship with language; it requires a binary structure of surface signs and their meaning. The sign, however, allows for the production of meaning by two signifiers (since every signified is also a signifier). In such a linguistic environment meaning is indeed "produced" because it is the result of the artificial process of constructing narratives. When the conventions of this construction are mastered, the narrative can, according to Jean Baudrillard, "simulate" reality, since reality can only be known by its surface signs. In The English Patient the characteristics of signification change as it undergoes the complex transformation from the "symbolic" model which involves the "reading" of signs, to the "sign" model which is based on the interaction among narrative systems through the process of "translation," and which allows for the "simulation" of reality.