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The Modern Myth of Adolescence: Coming-Of-Age As Deviation from Maturation

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The Modern Myth of Adolescence: Coming-Of-Age As Deviation from Maturation THE MODERN MYTH OF ADOLESCENCE: COMING-OF-AGE AS DEVIATION FROM MATURATION DAMON LINDLER LAZZARA A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Program in Humanities York University Toronto, Ontario July 2012 © Damon Lindler Lazzara, 2012 Library and Archives Bibliotheque et Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du 1+1 Branch Patrimoine de I'edition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A0N4 Ottawa ON K1A 0N4 Canada Canada Your file Votre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-92811-0 Our file Notre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-92811-0 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non­ L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library and permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par I'lnternet, preter, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans le loan, distrbute and sell theses monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, sur worldwide, for commercial or non­ support microforme, papier, electronique et/ou commercial purposes, in microform, autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve la propriete du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in this et des droits moraux qui protege cette these. Ni thesis. Neither the thesis nor la these ni des extraits substantiels de celle-ci substantial extracts from it may be ne doivent etre imprimes ou autrement printed or otherwise reproduced reproduits sans son autorisation. without the author's permission. In compliance with the Canadian Conformement a la loi canadienne sur la Privacy Act some supporting forms protection de la vie privee, quelques may have been removed from this formulaires secondaires ont ete enleves de thesis. cette these. While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires aient inclus dans in the document page count, their la pagination, il n'y aura aucun contenu removal does not represent any loss manquant. of content from the thesis. Canada Abstract This dissertation traces the development of a conceptual trend within adolescence in the West in an interdisciplinary context, and determines how and why coming-of-age in this trend transformed from a temporary liminal stage in ancient myth into a fixed liminal state—or “liminal trap”—in modem culture and literature. The dissertation uses a comparative backdrop of Anglophone poetry written from 1850 to 1950 for historical and cultural context, as well as selected examples of works participating in the Bildungsroman, or coming-of-age novelistic genre, as examples of the transformation of adolescent myth. The dissertation examines adolescence on the meta-cultural level through the primary theoretical vehicles of Gregory Castle’s Reading the Modernist Bildungsroman (2006), which uses Theodor Adorno’s negative dialectics to explain the immanent critique of adolescence found in the modernist Bildungsroman, and Stephen Burt’s The Forms o f Youth (2007), which argues that modem poetry in English, of all literary expressions, best represents the experience of adolescence. This study closely reads selected poetry of W.H. Auden, Gwendolyn Brooks, Hilda Doolittle (H.D.), Thomas Hardy, A.E. Housman, D.H. Lawrence, Irving Layton, Dorothy Livesay, Claude McKay, Stevie Smith, Wallace Stevens, Alfred Tennyson, Walt Whitman, and William Carlos Williams. It also analyses selected novels participating in the Bildungsroman genre by James Baldwin, Dionne Brand, Douglas Coupland, Gustave Flaubert, E.M. Forster, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Mark Haddon, James Joyce, Franz Kafka, Alice Munro, J.D. Salinger, and Virginia Woolf. Acknowledgements I would like to thank all the teachers, mentors, colleagues, and students who have inspired and supported me throughout my education and during the process of writing this dissertation, most especially my supervisor, Prof. Priscila Uppal, as well as Profs. Gisela Argyle and Matthew Clark of my supervisory committee. Of course, 1 must recognise my parents, Richard and Celeste Lazzara, and my husband, Gustavo Blanco, for believing in me even when I did not, and for quietly supporting me without complaint until the battle was won. I extend my eternal thanks to my Great Uncle George Andrew Lindler, who taught me how to be a gentleman and a scholar; to my Grandmother and Grandfather Lindler, who, even after their passing, provided me with the means to realise my Canadian dream; to my Nana and Nano Lazzara, whose generosity continues even today, despite their absence; and to my Great Uncle Sam Lazzara, for whom I hope I have made the family proud. Let this dissertation be proof to every young person with physical, mental, and intellectual differences that it can be done, it should be done, and it must be done. Table of Contents Introduction: The Intersection of Adolescence, Modern Poetry, and Myth 1 Chapter I: The Cultural, Mythic, and Scientific Record of Adolescence 19 Chapter II: The Literary Transition from Coming-of-Age to Halting Development 87 Chapter III: Resistance to the Liminal Trap, Actual and Potential 167 Conclusion: At the Crossroads—To What End Myth? 223 Works Cited 232 IV Introduction: The Intersection of Adolescence, Modem Poetry, and Myth Since the emergence of the Bildungsroman genre during the late-eighteenth century, youth and adolescence, and texts about youth and adolescence, have become established forms in modem Western culture. The idea of adolescence has permeated popular and scholarly culture, including art, music, literature, and the sciences. It has also done so in a curious manner in that the idea of adolescence is omnipresent and celebrated, yet little is discussed of its origins and development. Even less consensus has been reached as to a precise definition of adolescence that could span the disciplines and provide a common vocabulary for its discussion. Despite the gradual permeation of the idea of adolescence through modern Western culture, it has nonetheless escaped substantial critical attention as to its conceptual development. In this dissertation I will argue that there is a trend in the Western literary arts that has, over the past four centuries, recapitulated and adapted ancient mythic forms of coming-of-age to construct one of the w'ays of thinking about adolescence as it is known today. Although not all literary texts lead to this conclusion, there are enough in the canon of coming-of-age literature that do to justify investigation. The modem Western literary genres that contribute most directly to the re-mythification of coming-of-age are the Bildungsroman and modern poetry, the former codifying the modern myth, and the latter speaking as a radical voice of change and experimentation. In the trend I identify, the modern myth of adolescence differs considerably from the classical Western mythic forms from which it draws its inspiration. Rather than furthering the transition from childhood to adulthood, the modern myth in this literary trend attempts to create and maintain an adolescent state that is trapped in the liminality of becoming mature, but never leads to maturity—a phenomenon to which I refer as the “liminal trap.’' Because 1 of the difficulties involved in defining adolescence, I will provide an overview of the discourse of adolescence in various disciplines as it contributes to the modem myth. Additionally, I will be intentionally broad and inclusive in my use of the term adolescence, strongly associating it with the pubertal phase of biological development, but also, in deference to the extended liminality I explore in the liminal trap, expanding it to include the process of coming to awareness and independence of thought and action at any age. 1 envision my dissertation as a response to and continuation of Gregory Castle's Reading the Modernist Bildungsroman (2006) and Stephen Burt’s The Forms o f Youth (2007). Castle’s work addresses the modernist Bildungsroman as a genre operating by the negative dialectics described by Theodor Adorno. While 1 am not chiefly concerned with Adorno’s negative dialectics as an overarching philosophical approach, what Castle does with Adorno is critical to my connecting the modem and ancient. Succinctly, Adorno’s Negative Dialectics (1966) dashes the attempts by Western philosophers, from Aristotle to Hegel, to assemble a philosophy of self-sustaining positive propositions and verifications: The formulation “negative dialectics” transgresses against tradition. Already in Plato dialectics intended to establish something positive through the thought-means of the negation; the figure of a negation of the negation named this precisely. The book would like to emancipate dialectics from these types of affirmative essence, without relinquishing anything in terms of determinacy. The development of its paradoxical title is one of its intentions. (1) With Adorno’s negative dialectical system, Castle posits that the failure of adolescence, apprenticeship, and coming-of-age are not the death of these exercises or the genre with which they are coupled. The failure of the genre to impart formulaic narrative outcomes is instead the starting point for modes of perpetual seeking akin to 2 the cyclical time of myth (Armstrong 15-16). Castle's use of the word “failure" is best thought
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