000170921 001__ 170921
000170921 005__ 20260430151735.0
000170921 0247_ $$2doi$$a10.1515/ang-2026-0002
000170921 0248_ $$2sideral$$a148967
000170921 037__ $$aART-2026-148967
000170921 041__ $$aeng
000170921 100__ $$0(orcid)0000-0002-3945-9666$$aIbáñez-Rosales, Ismael
000170921 245__ $$aPostmortem fiction: narrative ethics, victimhood, and the Gaze in Muriel Spark’s "The Driver’s Seat"
000170921 260__ $$c2026
000170921 5203_ $$aMuriel Spark’s The Driver’s Seat has long puzzled readers with its fusion of metafictional irony and tragic inevitability. This article proposes a new reading of the novel as a posthumous reconstruction of a real-life murder, shaped through the narrative lens of an intradiegetic reader-turned-narrator. Drawing on Spark’s own admission that the novel originated from obsessive newspaper reading about the murder of Marlene Puntschuh, the essay argues that The Driver’s Seat functions as a ‘postmodern postmortem’ – a speculative autopsy of a woman’s life, built from fragments of witness accounts, police records, and media distortions. By blurring the lines between victim and perpetrator, narrator and stalker, reader and plotter, Spark critiques both the ethics of storytelling and the voyeuristic consumption of female suffering. The novel’s use of prolepsis, forensic tone, and press-like narration implicates readers in the moral ambiguity of constructing meaning from violence. Ultimately, Spark’s fiction challenges us to confront the dangers of narrative coherence, and the discomforting power of imaginative truth.
000170921 540__ $$9info:eu-repo/semantics/closedAccess$$aAll rights reserved$$uhttp://www.europeana.eu/rights/rr-f/
000170921 655_4 $$ainfo:eu-repo/semantics/article$$vinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
000170921 700__ $$aAltemir-Giral, Ana Isabel
000170921 773__ $$g144, 1 (2026), 27-46$$pAnglia$$tAnglia$$x0340-5222
000170921 8564_ $$s461494$$uhttps://zaguan.unizar.es/record/170921/files/texto_completo.pdf$$yVersión publicada$$zinfo:eu-repo/date/embargoEnd/2027-03-25
000170921 8564_ $$s2379025$$uhttps://zaguan.unizar.es/record/170921/files/texto_completo.jpg?subformat=icon$$xicon$$yVersión publicada$$zinfo:eu-repo/date/embargoEnd/2027-03-25
000170921 909CO $$ooai:zaguan.unizar.es:170921$$particulos$$pdriver
000170921 951__ $$a2026-04-30-13:57:07
000170921 980__ $$aARTICLE