Glimpsing the balance between earth and sky: a meeting ground for postmodernism and Christianity in four selected novels by Jeanette Winterson and John Irving
- Authors: Edwards, Ross Stephen
- Date: 1999
- Subjects: Postmodernism -- Religious aspects Winterson, Jeanette, 1959- Irving, John, 1942- Postmodernism (Literature)
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:2186 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002228
- Description: The phrase “glimpsing the balance between earth and sky” in the thesis title is taken from Jeanette Winterson’s Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. In this novel, the central character Jeanette believes she has glimpsed the possibility that human relationships can find their mirror in the relationship with God, as she understands the divine Other. This glimpse has set her wandering, trying to find such a balance. This examination of four selected novels by Jeanette Winterson and John Irving shows that for Irving, “glimpsing the balance” means in part, giving voice to a strongly “Christian” view of humankind and human nature but in an age where the prevailing intellectual worldview is strongly sceptical of any Grand Narrative. The “voice” expressed in Irving’s work has to be situated, like Winterson’s, as one among many possibilities. Irving’s voice is itself masked as different, other/Other, freakish, in the narrative worlds he creates. Through his use of grotesque comedy as a vehicle for deeper philosophical concerns, Irving asks us: What after all in the postmodern world is the main show? This thesis argues that if Winterson and Irving are testing or re-presenting a Christian worldview in a postmodern context, than they are asking whether Christianity is capable of assimilating and rising above the worst circumstances the world, writer, and life can throw at it. In Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Winterson tells a story of “forbidden love”, posed as a direct challenge to the prevailing way of knowing in her character’s community. In Gut Symmetries, she expands this challenge by employing the insights of quantum physics to make sense of the complexities raised by a triangular love relationship. Irving offers the story of Owen in A Prayer for Owen Meany as the kind of story which might possibly make a believer out of him; in short, that he would have to be a witness to some kind of miracle, something utterly inexplicable. In A Son of the Circus Irving narrates the quest for identity undertaken by an Indian doctor who is in every way a Displaced Person – the condition, he implies, of anyone who purports to find their piece of the truth. The theoretical concerns of the postmodern project are examined through Lawrence Cahoone’s argument that postmodern writing offers criticism of: presence, origin, unity and transcendence through an analytical strategy of constitutive otherness. In each of their texts, Irving and Winterson are seen to use these four critical elements and to offer a postmodern strategy of re-presenting meaning through “constitutive otherness”. Both writers also employ a strategy of historiographic metafiction (as defined by Linda Hutcheon) as a means of constructing and re-presenting their narrated stories. Postmodern paradox is compatible with what could be called a Christian plan for living, if the latter is in turn given an appropriate 1990s interpretation. The selected novels by Winterson and Irving are offered as contemporary evidence for this view. This thesis argues that the connection between postmodernism and other worldviews, particularly Christianity, is found in both projects’ process of making meanings through encounters with an other/Other.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 1999
- Authors: Edwards, Ross Stephen
- Date: 1999
- Subjects: Postmodernism -- Religious aspects Winterson, Jeanette, 1959- Irving, John, 1942- Postmodernism (Literature)
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:2186 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002228
- Description: The phrase “glimpsing the balance between earth and sky” in the thesis title is taken from Jeanette Winterson’s Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. In this novel, the central character Jeanette believes she has glimpsed the possibility that human relationships can find their mirror in the relationship with God, as she understands the divine Other. This glimpse has set her wandering, trying to find such a balance. This examination of four selected novels by Jeanette Winterson and John Irving shows that for Irving, “glimpsing the balance” means in part, giving voice to a strongly “Christian” view of humankind and human nature but in an age where the prevailing intellectual worldview is strongly sceptical of any Grand Narrative. The “voice” expressed in Irving’s work has to be situated, like Winterson’s, as one among many possibilities. Irving’s voice is itself masked as different, other/Other, freakish, in the narrative worlds he creates. Through his use of grotesque comedy as a vehicle for deeper philosophical concerns, Irving asks us: What after all in the postmodern world is the main show? This thesis argues that if Winterson and Irving are testing or re-presenting a Christian worldview in a postmodern context, than they are asking whether Christianity is capable of assimilating and rising above the worst circumstances the world, writer, and life can throw at it. In Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Winterson tells a story of “forbidden love”, posed as a direct challenge to the prevailing way of knowing in her character’s community. In Gut Symmetries, she expands this challenge by employing the insights of quantum physics to make sense of the complexities raised by a triangular love relationship. Irving offers the story of Owen in A Prayer for Owen Meany as the kind of story which might possibly make a believer out of him; in short, that he would have to be a witness to some kind of miracle, something utterly inexplicable. In A Son of the Circus Irving narrates the quest for identity undertaken by an Indian doctor who is in every way a Displaced Person – the condition, he implies, of anyone who purports to find their piece of the truth. The theoretical concerns of the postmodern project are examined through Lawrence Cahoone’s argument that postmodern writing offers criticism of: presence, origin, unity and transcendence through an analytical strategy of constitutive otherness. In each of their texts, Irving and Winterson are seen to use these four critical elements and to offer a postmodern strategy of re-presenting meaning through “constitutive otherness”. Both writers also employ a strategy of historiographic metafiction (as defined by Linda Hutcheon) as a means of constructing and re-presenting their narrated stories. Postmodern paradox is compatible with what could be called a Christian plan for living, if the latter is in turn given an appropriate 1990s interpretation. The selected novels by Winterson and Irving are offered as contemporary evidence for this view. This thesis argues that the connection between postmodernism and other worldviews, particularly Christianity, is found in both projects’ process of making meanings through encounters with an other/Other.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 1999
In search of self explorations of identity in the work of Paul Auster
- Van der Vlies, Andrew Edward
- Authors: Van der Vlies, Andrew Edward
- Date: 1999
- Subjects: Auster, Paul, 1947- -- Criticism and interpretation , Identity (Psychology) in literature
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:2208 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002251 , Auster, Paul, 1947- -- Criticism and interpretation , Identity (Psychology) in literature
- Description: Paul Auster is regarded by some as an important novelist. He has, in a relatively short space of time, produced an intriguing body of work, which has attracted comparatively little critical attention. This study is based on the premise that Auster's art is the record of an entertaining, intelligent and utterly serious engagement with the possibilities of conceiving of the identity of an individual subject in the contemporary, late-twentieth century moment. This study, focussing on Auster's novels, but also considering selected poetry and critical prose, explores the representation of identity in his work. The short Foreword introduces Paul Auster and sketches in outline the concerns of the study. Chapter One explores the manner in which Auster's early (anti-),detective' fiction develops a concern with identity. It is suggested that Squeeze Play, Auster's pseudonymous 'hard-boiled' detective thriller, provided the author with a testing ground for his subsequent appropriation and subversion of the detective genre in The New York Trilogy. Through a close consideration of City of Glass, and an examination of elements in Ghosts, it is shown how the loss of the traditional detective's immunity, and the problematising of strategies which had previously guaranteed him access to interpretive and narrative closure, precipitates a collapse which initiates an interrogation of the nature and construction of ideas about individual identity. Chapter Two develops a suggestion that City of Glass was written in response to particular emotional concerns of the author by turning to an examination of the memoir-novel, The Invention of Solitude. This chapter examines the extent to which Auster's Jewishness is implicated in his understanding of identity, and in the techniques with which he expresses his concerns. It is argued that Auster's engagement with texts and memories important to him in order to find a voice adequate to the task which he assumes in The Invention of Solitude, reveals the ethical imperative of recognizing and accepting a relationship to alterity. The influence on Auster of certain Jewish writers, like Edmond Jabes, is considered in the course of the chapter. The third chapter addresses the issue of the description of Auster's work as postmodernist, in the light of what the study has presented as Auster's ethical engagement with alterity. Critical responses to Auster's texts are canvassed, before it is suggested that aspects of the ethical phenomenology of Emmanuel Levinas may be useful in considering these important issues in Auster's oeuvre. Chapter Four returns to a consideration of The New York Trilogy, examining its final part, The Locked Room, before discussing In the Country of Last Things and Moon Palace. All three novels are narrated by first-person narrators who, in very different situations, come (consciously and unconsciously) to negotiate their own identities in relation either to other people or to adverse circumstances. The chapter thus considers the manner in which these texts figure Auster's concern with relationships between individuals and otherness. Chapter Five seeks, as a means of concluding the study, to consider aspects of Auster's presentation of the manner in which identity is connected to perception, and to an engagement with that which is other than the self This chapter focuses on Auster's figuration of necessary responses to the otherness of the objective world and to chance as a radical alterity. Beginning with a consideration of an early essay, the chapter explores relevant aspects of Moon Palace, The Music of Chance, Leviathan and Mr Vertigo, considers elements in Auster's poetry, and demonstrates the usefulness of exploring the influence on his work of the 'objectivist' poets and aspects of Dada and Surrealist poetics. The seemingly punitive severity of the fates of some of Auster's protagonists is shown ultimately to be positive, and (potentially) redemptive, reflecting Auster's profoundly ethical conception of the responsibilities and possibilities of selfhood.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 1999
- Authors: Van der Vlies, Andrew Edward
- Date: 1999
- Subjects: Auster, Paul, 1947- -- Criticism and interpretation , Identity (Psychology) in literature
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:2208 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002251 , Auster, Paul, 1947- -- Criticism and interpretation , Identity (Psychology) in literature
- Description: Paul Auster is regarded by some as an important novelist. He has, in a relatively short space of time, produced an intriguing body of work, which has attracted comparatively little critical attention. This study is based on the premise that Auster's art is the record of an entertaining, intelligent and utterly serious engagement with the possibilities of conceiving of the identity of an individual subject in the contemporary, late-twentieth century moment. This study, focussing on Auster's novels, but also considering selected poetry and critical prose, explores the representation of identity in his work. The short Foreword introduces Paul Auster and sketches in outline the concerns of the study. Chapter One explores the manner in which Auster's early (anti-),detective' fiction develops a concern with identity. It is suggested that Squeeze Play, Auster's pseudonymous 'hard-boiled' detective thriller, provided the author with a testing ground for his subsequent appropriation and subversion of the detective genre in The New York Trilogy. Through a close consideration of City of Glass, and an examination of elements in Ghosts, it is shown how the loss of the traditional detective's immunity, and the problematising of strategies which had previously guaranteed him access to interpretive and narrative closure, precipitates a collapse which initiates an interrogation of the nature and construction of ideas about individual identity. Chapter Two develops a suggestion that City of Glass was written in response to particular emotional concerns of the author by turning to an examination of the memoir-novel, The Invention of Solitude. This chapter examines the extent to which Auster's Jewishness is implicated in his understanding of identity, and in the techniques with which he expresses his concerns. It is argued that Auster's engagement with texts and memories important to him in order to find a voice adequate to the task which he assumes in The Invention of Solitude, reveals the ethical imperative of recognizing and accepting a relationship to alterity. The influence on Auster of certain Jewish writers, like Edmond Jabes, is considered in the course of the chapter. The third chapter addresses the issue of the description of Auster's work as postmodernist, in the light of what the study has presented as Auster's ethical engagement with alterity. Critical responses to Auster's texts are canvassed, before it is suggested that aspects of the ethical phenomenology of Emmanuel Levinas may be useful in considering these important issues in Auster's oeuvre. Chapter Four returns to a consideration of The New York Trilogy, examining its final part, The Locked Room, before discussing In the Country of Last Things and Moon Palace. All three novels are narrated by first-person narrators who, in very different situations, come (consciously and unconsciously) to negotiate their own identities in relation either to other people or to adverse circumstances. The chapter thus considers the manner in which these texts figure Auster's concern with relationships between individuals and otherness. Chapter Five seeks, as a means of concluding the study, to consider aspects of Auster's presentation of the manner in which identity is connected to perception, and to an engagement with that which is other than the self This chapter focuses on Auster's figuration of necessary responses to the otherness of the objective world and to chance as a radical alterity. Beginning with a consideration of an early essay, the chapter explores relevant aspects of Moon Palace, The Music of Chance, Leviathan and Mr Vertigo, considers elements in Auster's poetry, and demonstrates the usefulness of exploring the influence on his work of the 'objectivist' poets and aspects of Dada and Surrealist poetics. The seemingly punitive severity of the fates of some of Auster's protagonists is shown ultimately to be positive, and (potentially) redemptive, reflecting Auster's profoundly ethical conception of the responsibilities and possibilities of selfhood.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 1999
The haunted bedroom: female sexual identity in Gothic literature, 1790-1820
- Authors: Rae, Angela Lynn
- Date: 1999
- Subjects: Wollstonecraft, Mary, 1759-1797 -- Criticism and interpretation , Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, 1797-1851 -- Criticism and interpretation , Gothic literature , Women and literature , Feminism and literature , Radcliffe, Ann Ward, 1764-1823 Criticism and interpretation
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:2251 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002294 , Wollstonecraft, Mary, 1759-1797 -- Criticism and interpretation , Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, 1797-1851 -- Criticism and interpretation , Gothic literature , Women and literature , Feminism and literature , Radcliffe, Ann Ward, 1764-1823 Criticism and interpretation
- Description: This thesis explores the relationship between the Female Gothic novel of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century and the social context of women at that time. In the examination of the primary works of Ann Radcliffe, Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley, this study investigates how these female writers work within the Gothic genre to explore issues related to the role of women in their society, in particular those concerned with sexual identity. It is contended that the Gothic genre provides these authors with the ideal vehicle through which to critique the patriarchal definition of the female, a definition which confines and marginalizes women, denying the female any sexual autonomy. The Introduction defines the scope of the thesis by delineating the differences between the Female Gothic and the Male Gothic. Arguing that the Female Gothic shuns the voyeuristic victimisation of women which characterizes much of the Male Gothic, it is contended that the Female Gothic is defined by its interest in, and exploration of, issues which concern the status of women in a patriarchy. It is asserted that it is this concern with female gender roles that connects the overtly radical work of Mary Wollstonecraft with the oblique critique evident in her contemporary, Ann Radcliffe’s, novels. It is these concerns too, which haunt Mary Shelley’s texts, published two decades later. Chapter One outlines the status of women in the patriarchal society of the late eighteenth century, a period marked by political and social upheaval. This period saw the increasing division of men and women into the “separate spheres” of the public and domestic worlds, and the consequent birth of the ideal of “Angel in the House” which became entrenched in the nineteenth century. The chapter examines how women writers were influenced by this social context and what effect it had on the presentation of female characters in their work, in particular in terms of their depiction of motherhood. Working from the premise that, in order to fully understand the portrayal of female sexuality in the texts, the depiction of the male must be examined, Chapter Two analyses the male characters in terms of their relationship to the heroines and/or the concept of the “feminine”. Although the male characters differ from text to text and author to author, it is argued that in their portrayal of “heroes and villains” the authors were providing a critique of the patriarchal system. While some of the texts depict male characters that challenge traditional stereotypes concerning masculinity, others outline the disastrous and sometimes fatal consequences for both men and women of the rigid gender divisions which disallow the male access to the emotional realm restricted by social prescriptions to the private, domestic world of the female. It is contended that, as such, all of the texts assert the necessity for male and female, masculine and feminine to be united on equal terms. Chapter Three interprets the heroine’s journey through sublime landscapes and mysterious buildings as a journey from childhood innocence to sexual maturity, illustrating the intrinsic link that exists between the settings of Gothic novels and female sexuality. The chapter first examines the authors’ use of the Burkean concept of the sublime and contends that the texts offer a significant revision of the concept. In contrast to Burke’s overtly masculinist definition of the sublime, the texts assert that the female can and does have access to it, and that this access can be used to overcome patriarchal oppression. Secondly, an analysis of the image of the castle and related structures reveals that they can symbolise both the patriarchy and the feminine body. Contending that the heroine’s experiences within these structures enable her to move from innocence to experience, it is asserted that the knowledge that she gains, during her journeys, of herself and of society allows her to assert her independence as a sexually adult woman.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 1999
- Authors: Rae, Angela Lynn
- Date: 1999
- Subjects: Wollstonecraft, Mary, 1759-1797 -- Criticism and interpretation , Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, 1797-1851 -- Criticism and interpretation , Gothic literature , Women and literature , Feminism and literature , Radcliffe, Ann Ward, 1764-1823 Criticism and interpretation
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:2251 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002294 , Wollstonecraft, Mary, 1759-1797 -- Criticism and interpretation , Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, 1797-1851 -- Criticism and interpretation , Gothic literature , Women and literature , Feminism and literature , Radcliffe, Ann Ward, 1764-1823 Criticism and interpretation
- Description: This thesis explores the relationship between the Female Gothic novel of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century and the social context of women at that time. In the examination of the primary works of Ann Radcliffe, Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley, this study investigates how these female writers work within the Gothic genre to explore issues related to the role of women in their society, in particular those concerned with sexual identity. It is contended that the Gothic genre provides these authors with the ideal vehicle through which to critique the patriarchal definition of the female, a definition which confines and marginalizes women, denying the female any sexual autonomy. The Introduction defines the scope of the thesis by delineating the differences between the Female Gothic and the Male Gothic. Arguing that the Female Gothic shuns the voyeuristic victimisation of women which characterizes much of the Male Gothic, it is contended that the Female Gothic is defined by its interest in, and exploration of, issues which concern the status of women in a patriarchy. It is asserted that it is this concern with female gender roles that connects the overtly radical work of Mary Wollstonecraft with the oblique critique evident in her contemporary, Ann Radcliffe’s, novels. It is these concerns too, which haunt Mary Shelley’s texts, published two decades later. Chapter One outlines the status of women in the patriarchal society of the late eighteenth century, a period marked by political and social upheaval. This period saw the increasing division of men and women into the “separate spheres” of the public and domestic worlds, and the consequent birth of the ideal of “Angel in the House” which became entrenched in the nineteenth century. The chapter examines how women writers were influenced by this social context and what effect it had on the presentation of female characters in their work, in particular in terms of their depiction of motherhood. Working from the premise that, in order to fully understand the portrayal of female sexuality in the texts, the depiction of the male must be examined, Chapter Two analyses the male characters in terms of their relationship to the heroines and/or the concept of the “feminine”. Although the male characters differ from text to text and author to author, it is argued that in their portrayal of “heroes and villains” the authors were providing a critique of the patriarchal system. While some of the texts depict male characters that challenge traditional stereotypes concerning masculinity, others outline the disastrous and sometimes fatal consequences for both men and women of the rigid gender divisions which disallow the male access to the emotional realm restricted by social prescriptions to the private, domestic world of the female. It is contended that, as such, all of the texts assert the necessity for male and female, masculine and feminine to be united on equal terms. Chapter Three interprets the heroine’s journey through sublime landscapes and mysterious buildings as a journey from childhood innocence to sexual maturity, illustrating the intrinsic link that exists between the settings of Gothic novels and female sexuality. The chapter first examines the authors’ use of the Burkean concept of the sublime and contends that the texts offer a significant revision of the concept. In contrast to Burke’s overtly masculinist definition of the sublime, the texts assert that the female can and does have access to it, and that this access can be used to overcome patriarchal oppression. Secondly, an analysis of the image of the castle and related structures reveals that they can symbolise both the patriarchy and the feminine body. Contending that the heroine’s experiences within these structures enable her to move from innocence to experience, it is asserted that the knowledge that she gains, during her journeys, of herself and of society allows her to assert her independence as a sexually adult woman.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 1999
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