ABSTRACT
Romanticism displays a fascination with the analogy between reality and artefacts: questions about artefacts mirror questions about reality and our knowledge of it. Romantic writers also challenged notions about authorship, influence, and originality, often by pirating fragments from other writers and leaving the different styles and points of view visible because unfused with the host text. Melville's crafty use of sources, allusions, and quotations problematises the reliability and authority of his narrative personae: they turn out to be false guides for the reader, lacking impartiality and reliability. Fragmentation is no stranger to Faulkner's novels; it is noticeable in the dislocation of syntax and plot as well as in their constant experimentation with alternative, partial narrative points of view. Lessing revealed the inability of language and of fiction to achieve any remotely authentic realism; indeed, she went further to show that even the authenticity of human experience is stylised, ideological, and inauthentic.
