Dreamscape and death : an analysis of three contemporary novels and a film

Truter, Victoria Zea

Title: Dreamscape and death : an analysis of three contemporary novels and a film
Creator: Truter, Victoria Zea
Subject: Malouf, David, 1934- -- Criticism and interpretation
Subject: Warner, Alan -- Criticism and interpretation
Subject: McCarthy, Cormac, 1933- -- Criticism and interpretation
Subject: Linklater, Richard, 1960- -- Criticism and interpretation
Subject: Australian fiction -- History and criticism
Subject: American fiction -- History and criticism
Subject: English fiction -- History and criticism
Subject: Motion pictures, American -- History and criticism
Subject: Malouf, David, 1934- An imaginary life
Subject: Warner, Alan -- These demented lands
Subject: McCarthy, Cormac, 1933- -- Road
Subject: Linklater, Richard, 1960- -- Waking Life
Subject: Death in literature
Date Issued: 2014
Date: 2014
Type: Thesis
Type: Masters
Type: MA
Identifier: vital:2308
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1012976
Description: With its focus on the relationship between dreamscape and death, this study examines the possibility of indirectly experiencing – through writing and dreaming – that which cannot be directly experienced, namely death. In considering this possibility, the thesis engages at length with Maurice Blanchot's argument that death, being irrevocably absent and therefore unknowable, is not open to presentation or representation. After explicating certain of this thinker's theories on the ambiguous nature of literary and oneiric representation, and on the forfeiture of subjective agency that occurs in the moments of writing and dreaming, the study turns to an examination of the manner in which such issues are dealt with in selected dreamscapes. With reference to David Malouf's An Imaginary Life, Alan Warner's These Demented Lands, Cormac McCarthy's The Road, and Richard Linklater's Waking Life, the thesis explores the literary and cinematic representation of human attempts to define, resist, or control death through dreaming and writing about it. Ultimately, the study concludes that such attempts are necessarily inconclusive, and that it is only ever possible to represent death as a (mis)representation.
Format: 119 leaves
Format: pdf
Publisher: Rhodes University
Publisher: Faculty of Humanities, English
Language: English
Rights: Truter, Victoria Zea

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