Invisible Conflicts: Subtextual Tensions in Contemporary English Narratives

Abstract

Contemporary English fictions are full of hidden emotional, psychological, cultural, ideological conflicts and tussles. These conflicts are not visible on the surface of the text but underlie the narrative. From this perspective, the paper will attempt an analysis of the phenomenon of subtextual conflict, subtextual tension, and invisible conflict in selected contemporary English narratives. Modern English Literature traverses these issues, but takes the powerful other step i.e. they do not merely focus on these direct conflicts quietly, but rather focus on more complex fears, multiply dislocated identities, interpersonal silences, social estrangement, inflamed emotions that affect relationships between individuals and self-consciousness. Whenever a character goes through some conflict but does not display that on the outside, it is subtextual conflict. Any violent confrontation that does not get made explicit is included in this category.

The paper will study the representation, in contemporary texts, of tensions around class-gender-race-migration-technology-consumerism-family life-existential uncertainty in the backdrop of changes within the socio-cultural landscape. Conflicts and tensions which lie beneath the surface are generated through narration. Narration is how the story is conveyed to the audience. The study will provide a summary of the different manners in which the narrator achieves this function: Symbolism, Irony, Stream of Consciousness and Un.

It uses a qualitative and interpretive research method. The study will take place through the monetary text research by using analytic critical theories, I.e. psychoanalytic criticism, postmodernism, feminist and cultural studies. Moreover, the study will assess how invisible conflict can enhance narrative complexity, realism and reader engagement.  The article will also examine how much illumination will writing like the Ming shed on the complex behaviour of humans which are not always conscious and not fully accessible to the actors or the observer. Through this paper the contemporary literary aesthetics is explored where subtextual tensions become an indispensable and enriching aspect of the literary work.