University of Tennessee, Knoxville TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 5-2014 Infinite Islands: The Seatrees Colin Christian Alan Mort University of Tennessee - Knoxville, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss Part of the Literature in English, North America Commons Recommended Citation Mort, Colin Christian Alan, "Infinite Islands: The Seatrees. " PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 2014. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/2771 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a dissertation written by Colin Christian Alan Mort entitled "Infinite Islands: The Seatrees." I have examined the final electronic copy of this dissertation for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, with a major in English. Michael Knight, Major Professor We have read this dissertation and recommend its acceptance: Amy Elias, Margaret Lazarus Dean, Beauvais Lyons Accepted for the Council: Carolyn R. Hodges Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School (Original signatures are on file with official studentecor r ds.) Infinite Islands: The Seatrees A Dissertation Presented for the Doctor of Philosophy Degree The University of Tennessee, Knoxville Colin Christian Alan Mort May 2014 ii Copyright © By Colin Christian Alan Mort All rights reserved. iii DEDICATION This work is dedicated to my wife, Sarah, and my son, Brooks. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thanks to the fiction writing professors in the English department of University of Tennessee: Prof. Michael Knight, Prof. Allen Wier, Prof. Margaret Lazarus Dean. Thanks also to Dr. Amy Elias, Dr. Amy Billone, Dr. Dawn Coleman, Dr. Stan Gardner, Dr. Ben Lee. All helped me during the course of my degree, and, especially with developing an understand of the history of the novel. Leanne Hinkle also provided essential administrative support. v ABSTRACT Infinite Islands: The Seatrees investigates the subject of infinity as it relates to storytelling and the novel. The critical introduction lays out the relation between reality, fantasy, the imagination and the history of the novel as a source of inspiration for the fictional portion of the dissertation. It considers the similarities between canonical literary novels and fantasy genre novels. Through this consideration, aspects of reality and fantasy in the novel are considered in both theoretical and primary texts. In the fictional portion, an unnamed narrator retells the story of his life from beginning to end. Although he works to gain control over his life and pursue his hope of joining a secretive group, he continually becomes caught up in forces more powerful than himself, only some of which can he ever understand. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Critical Introduction ………………………………………………………………………… 1 Infinite Islands: The Seatrees ………………………………………………………………… 29 Works Cited ………………………………………………………………………………….. 360 Vita ……………………………………………………………………………………………. 362 1 CRITICAL INTRODUCTION 1. This introduction presents a critical understanding of an artistic project. The Infinite Islands: Book 1, The Seatrees is a work of fantasy fiction. I arrived at this project through reading in the history of the novel as well as writing both speculative and realistic fiction, attending workshops, and revising. This introduction recreates my thinking in the critical sphere as it relates to the creative sphere. Although related, the two spheres do not always intersect perfectly or at all: what seems to me a logical leap from one sphere into the other, might strike others as tenuous, haphazard, even random. The creative writer’s critical understanding is not systematic, but rather idiosyncratic, at least mine is. While acknowledging that idiosyncrasy, I hope here to set my creative work within the history of the form (and some theory) of the novel as I understand it, in particular the uses of fantasy. That history has informed my understanding of what is possible with the novel, and the idea of that possibility is, itself, a thematic interest of mine in The Infinite Islands. That sense of possibility, in turn, inspired three closely related questions, which I returned to repeatedly during the writing of this novel. What is possible in a narrative form in which anything is possible? How do you create a world in which anything is possible but that is seamless rather than disordered, random, or chaotic? How can that sense of infinite possibility inform the novel itself, either thematically or structurally? The nature of the novel form, with its encounter of reality and the imagination mediated through language and the ordering of time, informs the world I created in The Infinite Islands. I invented the world of the islands. They are purely fictional. Each of the islands---those depicted 2 in this novel, those to come in future novels set in the same world, those sailed past by the characters and those only referenced, alluded to, and implied---represents new and specific possible or potential worlds as well as paths the narrative could go: new worlds with new beings and new physical laws, new types of magic, new social arrangements, new economic arrangements, new characters, new challenges, new problems, new threats. A potential novel could take place on a single island for its entire length, or the main character could simply touch on one to get fresh water. He could overthrow the king of that island or become imprisoned there, become a librarian, an armorer, a mucker of stables, or a chemist’s assistant. To me, fiction is about those possibilities for new imaginative experiences. It’s about the reader turning the page without knowing what will come. I take this idea from a lifetime of reading novels. To me, each novel I open as a reader is like sliding ashore on a new island. To me, far more separates any two novels from each other than anything that makes them similar. There are genres and types, and taxonomists can track them. But compared to epic or dramatic literature, or to folk and fairy tales, the novel thrives on originality. Another way to state the terms of this analysis is to say that I will look at the history of the novel from the perspective of the possibilities inherent in the form and how those possibilities have been investigated through representations of the imagination as fantasy rather than from the perspective of the re-creation of reality. Here, the word “fantasy” refers to the elements of the genre of contested definition and dubious legitimacy. The term “speculative fiction” or SF would perhaps be more accurate, but the term “fantasy” is more closely linked to imaginative rather than logical experience and, to my thinking, applies better. Fantasy in terms of writing is the representation of the imagination; the claims of mimesis or verisimilitude are put to one side. The mirror of nature is openly shattered, often from the first sentence. As a 3 literary element, fantasy as a representation of the imagination predates the labels SF, SF&F, and speculative fiction. To look at the history of the novel from the perspective of fantasy is a through-the-looking-glass manner of going about it, but what interests me here is how fantasy remained a part of the novel and carried through its history through the major examples and epochs, only to solidify again as a genre that seems increasingly relevant in the 21st century. 2. Sources of Potential: Reality and Fantasy in Cervantes and Borges In his chapter on Cervantes in The Theory of the Novel, Lukács begins by discussing the harmony or balance of the imaginary and the real as it existed in the classical epics. Because the hero of the epic is in direct correspondence with a god who leads him through his adventures, the relationship between the objective and the subjective worlds is therefore maintained in adequate balance: the hero is rightly conscious of the superiority of the opposing outside world; yet despite this innermost modesty he can triumph in the end because this lesser strength is guided to victory by the highest power in the world; the forces of the imaginary and the real correspond with one another; the victories and defeats are not contradictory to either the actual or the ideal world order (Lukács 98). For Lukács, the absolute belief in gods or God within a society is the precondition for the epic; the abandonment of this absolute belief the precondition for the novel. The novel’s hero has no guide maintaining the balance between the ideal and the real, instead, the hero must stumble through adventures without help from that ideal soul. For example, Athena turns middle-aged Odysseus into first a decrepit old beggar and then a youthful hero in order to help him solve the exterior problem of first killing the suitors and then rekindling his marriage with Penelope. Had 4 that been a novel, the main character would have possessed only his internal resources and probably imperfect solutions to the problem. Facing insurmountable odds, the hero of a novel must summon extraordinary personal solutions or face failure. Lukács’s definition of the differences between epic and the novel helps me understand how the imagination plays a role in the newer form. The imaginary is the ideal world when it is transferred or translated into the world of reality, the world of imperfection, the world that no longer completely accepts that idealism, that code, that system of gods. Sometimes that imaginary world yearns for a distant past (a past version of the ideal); sometimes it is grotesque and horrifying, a deliberate violation of idealism; sometimes it is playful in its fantasy; sometimes analytical and reflective of the real world.