Soundscapes, evocalization and poetics of the everyday in ‘An Epiphany Tale’ by George Mackay Brown

Abstract

The article traces the orientation of ‘An Epiphany Tale’ (published in 1983) by George Mackay Brown on establishing and maintaining the contact with the reader through the development of multiple aesthetic and aural techniques that are rooted in the tradition of modernism, but expanding and transposing it to a considerable degree. Brown adopts a quasi-philosophical way of narrating a story that anticipates the contemporary existential, phenomenological and aesthetic theoretical insights. The aim of the discussion is to present the text’s semiotic patterns and relate them to the phonetic devices that contribute to what Garrett Stewart called the principle of evocalization. This helps to determine how Brown functionalizes the evoked soundscapes (as theorized by Schafer) and connects them with philosophical and anagogic orientation in reception so as to exploit the story’s thematic focus on a series of epiphanies that reveal the underlying semiotic and aesthetic aspects of ordinary existence. The short story reveals a variety of direct and indirect techniques that create an opposition between what is suggested of reality and what is demonstrated on the level of artistic, literary communication.