- Title
- Selfhood, identity and madness in the works of Milan Kundera and Peter Carey
- Creator
- Graven, Ashley Holm
- Date Issued
- 2016
- Date
- 2016
- Type
- Thesis
- Type
- Masters
- Type
- MA
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/10962/3904
- Identifier
- vital:20554
- Description
- Despite all the critical attention Milan Kundera’s and Peter Carey’s fiction has received, relatively little has been said about the way in which these authors problematise selfhood. In this study, I argue that these two writers share a preoccupation with the strictures placed on the individual by his/her location in language and discourse. I show that they deconstruct subjectivity with a view to intimating the possibility of momentarily transcending discursive control, and thereby inhabiting authentic selfhood. In addition, I demonstrate that both authors draw attention to the nature of language through their thematisation of madness, and I then trace the implications of this nexus between language and madness for the reader, who of course is a subject in language. My contention in this regard is that Carey and Kundera seek to instil in the reader a self-reflexive awareness of the ways in which his/her location in language shapes his/her perception of others. In turn, this awareness charges the reader with the responsibility of questioning his/her judgements, and thereby enables him/her to negotiate a measure of authenticity from his/her position in language.
- Format
- 124 leaves
- Format
- Publisher
- Rhodes University
- Publisher
- Faculty of Humanities, English
- Language
- English
- Rights
- Graven, Ashley Holm
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