Deixis in Charles Williams’s Et in Sempiternum Pereant

Abstract

This paper applies the Deictic Shift Theory (DST) — as developed within the paradigm of cognitive poetics — to the analysis of Charles Williams’s short story, Et in Sempiternum Pereant. It is argued that by employing DST it is possible to account for the reader’s interpretations, which result from her/his “getting immersed” in and “moving” mentally through the story world, regardless of its “metaphysical” quality