Tranter’s Plots

Abstract

Tranter's work has consistently engaged problems of deixis (grammatical orientation) and interpretation which, in turn, become problems of showing and telling, of representation and narrative. The unstable relations between the viewer and what is viewed, the writer and what is written, the printed text on the page and the eyes which travel over that surface: these issues dominate Tranter's highly repetitive, which is to say concentrated, body of work. They constitute the field of his exploration and generate the richly comic parables of postmodern love and postmodern work which have become the trademark of the brand-name 'Tranter' (in the OED 'tranter' appears as a dialect word, meaning a man who does jobs with his horse and cart; hence, to trant).