'Carrying the fire' : Cormac McCarthy's moral philosophy
- Authors: Davies, Christopher
- Date: 2011
- Subjects: McCarthy, Cormac, 1933- -- Criticism and interpretation American fiction -- 20th century -- Moral and ethical aspects American fiction -- 20th century -- History and criticism
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:2217 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002260
- Description: In this thesis, I argue that the question of ethics, despite claims to the contrary, is a central concern in Cormac McCarthy’s fiction. My principal contention, in this regard, is that an approach that is not reliant on conventional systems of meaning is needed if one is to engage effectively with the moral value of this writer’s oeuvre. In devising such an approach, I draw heavily on the ‘immoralist’ writings of Friedrich Nietzsche. The first chapter of the study contends that good and evil, terms central to conventional morality, do not occupy easily definable positions in McCarthy’s work. In the second chapter, the emphasis falls on the way in which language and myth’s mediation of reality informs choice. The final chapter focuses on the post-apocalyptic setting of The Road, in which normative systems of value are completely absent. It argues that, despite this absence, McCarthy presents a compassionate ethic that is able to find purchase in the harsh world depicted in the novel. Finally, then, this study argues that McCarthy’s latest novel, The Road, requires a reconsideration of the critical claim that his work is nihilistic and that it negates moral value.
- Full Text:
'I want to tell the story again': re-telling in selected novels by Jeanette Winterson and Alan Warner
- Authors: Collett, Jenna Lara
- Date: 2011
- Subjects: Warner, Alan Criticism and interpretation Winterson, Jeanette, 1959- -- Criticism and interpretation English fiction -- 20th century -- History and criticism
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:2248 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002291
- Description: This thesis investigates acts of ‘re-telling’ in four selected novels by Jeanette Winterson and Alan Warner.Re-telling, as I have defined it, refers to the re-imagining and re-writing of existing narratives from mythology, fairy tale, and folktale, as well as the re-visioning of scientific discourses and historiography. I argue that this re-telling is representative of a contemporary cultural phenomenon, and is evidence of a postmodern genre that some literary theorists have termed re-visionary fiction. Despite the prevalent re-telling of canonical stories throughout literary history, there is much evidence for the emergence of a specifically contemporary trend of re-visionary literature. Part One of this thesis comprises two chapters which deal with Winterson’s Sexing the Cherry (1989) and Weight (2005) respectively. In these chapters, I argue that, although the feminist and historiographic elements of her work are significant, there exist further motivations for Winterson’s acts of re-telling in both Sexing the Cherry and Weight. In Chapter One, I analyse Winterson’s subversion and re-imagining of historiography, as well as her re-telling of fairy tale, in Sexing the Cherry. Chapter Two provides a discussion of Winterson’s re-telling of the myth of Atlas from Greek mythology, in which she draws on the discourses of science, technology, and autobiography, in Weight. Part Two focuses on Warner’s first two novels, Morvern Callar (1995) and These Demented Lands (1997). In both novels, Warner re-imagines aspects of Christian, Celtic and pagan mythology in order to debunk the validity of biblical archetypes and narratives in a contemporary working-class setting, as well as to endow his protagonist with goddess-like or mythical sensibilities. Chapter Three deals predominantly with Warner’s use of language, which I argue is central to his blending of mythological and contemporary content, while Chapter Four analyses his use of myth in these two novels. This thesis argues that while both Winterson and Warner share many of the aims associated with contemporary re-visionary fiction, their novels also exceed the boundaries of the genre in various ways. Winterson and Warner may, therefore, represent a new class of re-visionary writers, whose aim is not solely to subvert the pre-text but to draw on its generic discourses and thematic conventions in order to demonstrate the generic and discursive possibilities inherent in the act of re-telling.
- Full Text:
Identity, belonging and ecological crisis in South African speculative fiction
- Authors: Steenkamp, Elzette Lorna
- Date: 2011
- Subjects: South African fiction -- History and criticism Identity (Philosophical concept) in literature Group identity in literature Ecology in literature Science fiction, South African -- History and criticism Fantasy fiction, South African -- History and criticism Ecofiction -- History and criticism Ecocriticism
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: vital:2219 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002262
- Description: This study examines a range of South African speculative novels which situate their narratives in futuristic or ‘alternative’ milieus, exploring how these narratives not only address identity formation in a deeply divided and rapidly changing society, but also the ways in which human beings place themselves in relation to Nature and form notions of ‘ecological’ belonging. It offers close readings of these speculative narratives in order to investigate the ways in which they evince concerns which are rooted in the natural, social and political landscapes which inform them. Specific attention is paid to the texts’ treatment of the intertwined issues of identity, belonging and ecological crisis. This dissertation draws on the fields of Ecocriticism, Postcolonial Studies and Science Fiction Studies, and assumes a culturally specific approach to primary texts while investigating possible cross-cultural commonalities between Afrikaans and English speculative narratives, as well as the cross-fertilisation of global SF/speculative features. It is suggested that South African speculative fiction presents a socio-historically situated, rhizomatic approach to ecology – one that is attuned to the tension between humanistic- and ecological concerns.
- Full Text:
Ill at ease in our translated world ecocriticism, language, and the natural environment in the fiction of Michael Ondaatje, Amitav Ghosh, David Malouf and Wilma Stockenström
- Authors: Johnson, Eleanore
- Date: 2011
- Subjects: Ondaatje, Michael, 1943- The English patient Ghosh, Amitav. The hungry tide Malouf, David, 1934- An imaginary life Stockenström, Wilma. The expedition to the Baobab tree Ecocriticism Human ecology in literature Nature in literature
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:2234 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002277
- Description: This thesis explores the thematic desire to establish an ecological human bond with nature in four contemporary novels: The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje, The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh, An Imaginary Life by David Malouf, and The Expedition to The Baobab Tree by Wilma Stockenström. These authors share a concern with the influence that language has on human perception, and one of the most significant ways they attempt to connect with the natural world is through somehow escaping, or transcending, what they perceive to be the divisive tendencies of language. They all suggest that human perception is not steered entirely by a disembodied mind, which constructs reality through linguistic and cultural lenses, but is equally influenced by physical circumstances and embodied experiences. They explore the potential of corporeal reciprocity and empathy as that which enables understanding across cultural barriers, and a sense of ecologically intertwined kinship with nature. They all struggle to reconcile their awareness of the potential danger of relating to nature exclusively through language, with a desire to speak for the natural world in literature. I have examined whether they succeed in doing so, or whether they contradict their thematic suspicion of language with their literary medium. I have prioritised a close ecocritical reading of the novels and loosely situated the authors’ approach to nature and language within the broad theoretical frameworks of radical ecology, structuralism and poststructuralism. I suggest that these novels are best analysed in the context of an ecocritical mediation between poststructuralist conceptions of nature as inaccessible cultural construct, and the naïve conception of unmediated, pre-reflective interaction with the natural world. I draw especially on the phenomenological theories of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, whose insistence that perception is always both embodied and culturally mediated truly renders culture and nature irreducible, intertwined categories. By challenging historical dualisms like mind/body and culture/nature, the selected novels suggest a more fluid and discursive understanding of the perceived conflict between language and nature, whilst problematizing the perception of language as merely a cultural artefact. Moreover, they are examples of the kind of literature that has the potential to positively influence our human conception of nature, and adapt us better to our ecological context on a planet struggling for survival.
- Full Text:
My other - my self: post-Cartesian ontological possibilities in the fiction of J M Coetzee
- Authors: Mfune, Damazio Laston
- Date: 2011
- Subjects: Coetzee, J. M., 1940- -- Criticism and interpretation Self in literature Identity (Psychology) in literature Consciousness in literature Intersubjectivity in literature Ontology in literature Metaphysics in literature South African fiction (English) -- 20th century -- History and criticism
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: vital:2246 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002289
- Description: The central argument of my study is that, among other matters, in his works, J.M. Coetzee could be said to demonstrate that the known Self is an embodied being and is not autonomous. With regard to the latter contention, Coetzee intimates that any two Subjects are implicated in each other’s subjectivities in a reciprocal process that involves what Derek Attridge has called “irruptions of otherness” (2005: xii) into the Subject’s subjectivity. These irruptions, which happen during the encounter, lead to a double loss of autonomy for each Subject and this phenomenon renders the relationship between Subjects non-dichotomus or non-binaric. In other words, the Subject does not produce the contents of his or her consciousness in a sui generis and ex nihilo fashion, and his or her ontological indebtedness to the Other constitutes his or her first loss of autonomy. As for those Others that do possess consciousness, the Subject is implicated in their consciousness and this constitutes the Subject’s second loss of autonomy. These losses counter the near solipsistic Nagelian neo-Cartesianism and paves the way for imagining both intra- and inter-species “intersubjectivity”. It is my view that this double loss of autonomy accounts for the sympathetic and empathetic imagination that we encounter in Coetzee’s fiction. Following Coetzee’s intimations of intersubjectivity through irruptions of otherness, what I see as my contribution to studies on this author’s work through this study is the link I have established between the physicalist strain within the philosophy of mind (whose central thesis is that consciousness is an embodied phenomenon) and a modified Kantian “metaphysics”, especially Immanuel Kant’s conception of concepts as comprising form and content. I have deployed this conception in demonstrating the Subject’s ontological indebtedness to external sources of the content part of consciousness. And, through the Husserlian concept of intentionality, and Kant’s (1929: 27) observation that we cannot have appearances without something that appears, I have linked the Subject to the sources of his or her content and thereby also demonstrated that the Subject is not eternally separated or alienated from those sources. Instead, the Subject is not simply contiguous but coterminous and co-extensive, albeit in a mediated way, with the external sources of the content part of his or her consciousness. Thus, while accepting the thesis of the Other’s radical otherness, I modify the thesis of the Other’s radical exteriority. Ultimately, then, ontologically speaking, the Coetzeean project could be described as one of embodying and grounding the supposedly autonomous, solipsistic and freefloating/disembodied Cartesian Subject. This he does by alerting this Subject, first and foremost, to its embodiedness and, further to that, pointing out its ontological indebtedness to its Others and its implication in the Others’s consciousnesses and so prevent it from continuing with its imperialistic and ecological barbarities. However, ethically speaking, beyond the reciprocal ethics that arises from mutual ontological indebtedness and implication, it is the selflessness that characterises a cruciform logic that comes across as the epitome of Coetzeean ethics.
- Full Text:
Perversity on paper taboo, abjection and literature: Iain Banks' The wasp factory, Ian McEwan's The cement garden, and Irvine Welsh's Marabou stork nightmares
- Authors: De Coning, Alexis
- Date: 2011
- Subjects: Banks, Iain, 1954-, The wasp factory Banks, Iain, 1954-, Criticism and interpretation McEwan, Ian -- The cement garden McEwan, Ian -- Criticism and interpretation Welsh, Irvine -- Marabou stork nightmares Welsh, Irvine -- Criticism and interpretation English literature -- 20th century -- History and criticism Taboo in literature Abjection in literature Kristeva, Julia, 1941-, Criticism and interpretation
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:2205 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002247
- Description: This thesis explores the notion of perversity in literature, specifically with regard to representations of taboo and abjection in Iain Banks‟ The Wasp Factory, Ian McEwan‟s The Cement Garden, and Irvine Welsh‟s Marabou Stork Nightmares. Julia Kristeva‟s Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, as well as her notion of revolt, constitute the central theoretical framework for my analysis. However, I also draw upon the concepts of monstrosity, grotesqueness and the uncanny in order to explicate the affect of abject fiction on the reader. I posit, then, that to engage with literary works that confront one with perversity, abjection and taboo entails exposing oneself to an ambiguous or liminal space in which culturally established values are both disrupted and affirmed. The subversive and revolutionary potential of the aforementioned novels is discussed with reference to the notion of the perverted Bildungsroman since, in their respective transgressions of taboos, the narrators of these novels disrupt social order, and their narratives end on a note of indeterminacy or the absolute finality of death, rather than self-actualisation. Moreover, in exposing the binaries of sex and gender as arbitrary and fluctuating, these narrators‟ perverse sexual and gender performativities gesture towards alternative modes of being (beyond social sanction), and invoke Kristeva‟s notion of individual revolt as a „condition necessary for the life of the mind and society‟.
- Full Text:
The unstable earth landscape and language in Patrick White's Voss, Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient and David Malouf's An Imaginary Life
- Authors: Lee, Deva
- Date: 2011
- Subjects: White, Patrick, 1912-1990. Voss Ondaatje, Michael, 1943- The English patient Malouf, David, 1934- An imaginary life Language and languages in literature English fiction -- 20th century -- History and criticism
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:2238 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002281
- Description: This thesis argues that Patrick White’s Voss, Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient and David Malouf’s An Imaginary Life depict landscape in a manner that reveals the inadequacies of imperial epistemological discourses and the rationalist model of subjectivity which enables them. The study demonstrates that these novels all emphasise the instabilities inherent in imperial epistemology. White, Ondaatje and Malouf chart their protagonists’ inability to comprehend and document the landscapes they encounter, and the ways in which this failure calls into question their subjectivity and the epistemologies that underpin it. One of the principal contentions of the study, then, is that the novels under consideration deploy a postmodern aesthetic of the sublime to undermine colonial discourses. The first chapter of the thesis outlines the postcolonial and poststructural theory that informs the readings in the later chapters. Chapter Two analyses White’s representation of subjectivity, imperial discourse and the Outback in Voss. The third chapter examines Ondaatje’s depiction of the Sahara Desert in The English Patient, and focuses on his concern with the ways in which language and cartographic discourse influence the subject’s perception of the natural world. Chapter Four investigates the representation of landscape, language and subjectivity in Malouf’s An Imaginary Life. Finally, then, this study argues that literature’s unique ability to acknowledge alterity enables it to serve as an effective tool for critiquing colonial discourses.
- Full Text: