Abstract
Lawrence Norfolk’s novel, Lemprière's Dictionary, embodies many of elements of postmodernist fiction outlined by Linda Hutcheon and Brian McHale. The novel fits many of the criteria of historiographic metafiction, incorporates multiple possible worlds by which postmodernist fiction foregrounds ontological concerns, and emphasizes fictionality by drawing attention to the process of installing order. The novel highlights competing epistemological orientations through repeated narrative and structural references to shapes and patterns. The interpretability of texts and the multiple and competing realities prevent the establishment of a single, coherent epistemological system. The characters strive to make sense of the patterns that they perceive, trying to establish a system that will make the world comprehensible. Although each character attempts to work within a coherent epistemological system, the multiple yet coexisting worlds of the novel, each participating in a competing epistemological system, frustrate that effort, and interpretability descends into epistemological instability.
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