An Interrogation of the “It” Narrative: Contract as Narrator

This creative dissertation is an exploration of the “IT” narrative genre, a style of literary fiction most often found within the Romantic and Victorian periods. The creative manuscript experiments with the technical considerations when deploying narrative logic of an “inhuman” or “IT” narrator; in this case the narrator is deployed by means of a novel concept: an early 19th century contract of town incorporation and land commerce. By deploying an “IT” narrator, this manuscript interrogates the possibilities and limitations as found within a non-human narrator that both exists within the story (homodiegetic) as well as outside the story (heterodiegetic), all the while merging the idea of setting as narration. This creative dissertation attempts to profer a story that possesses no main protagonist, no human interiority, and only is accessible to the actions and words of the characters within the confined geospatial space (the boundaries of Fortune and the history contained within incorporation, as defined by the contract). With the narration’s accessibility defined by its very essence, as the story can only describe events in accordance with the rules of the contract, this creative dissertation also explores techniques of narratorial privilege, unreliability of narration, dueling narrators, and how the act of narration defines, or impedes, the contemporary conception of story.