DOCSLIB.ORG

UC Santa Cruz Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
UC Santa Cruz Electronic Theses and Dissertations UC Santa Cruz UC Santa Cruz Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Beyond Completion: Towards a Genealogy of Unfinishable Novels Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7v27f68g Author Wallen, James Ramsey Publication Date 2014 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SANTA CRUZ BEYOND COMPLETION: TOWARDS A GENEALOGY OF UNFINISHABLE NOVELS A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in LITERATURE by James Ramsey Wallen March 2014 The Dissertation of James Ramsey Wallen is approved: ________________________________ Professor Wlad Godzich, chair _________________________________ Professor Carla Freccero _________________________________ Professor Jody Greene _____________________________ Tyrus Miller Vice Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies Copyright © by James Ramsey Wallen 2014 Beyond Completion: Towards a Genealogy of Unfinishable Novels By James Ramsey Wallen Introduction: “On Unfinished Works and Unfinishable Novels” (2-32) I. From a Poetics of the Unfinished Work… II. Towards a Prosaics of Unfinishable Novels III. The Plan of the Book Part I: The Modern Novel (33-36) Chapter One: “Pantagruelism and the Perils of Prose” (37-129) 1.1 The Perils of Prose 1.2 “Out of all compass” 1.3 The Pantagruelist Text 1.4 A Brief Digression on Tristram Shandy 1.5 Hermes Trismegistus, God of Prose 1.6 The Tonneau Diogénic 1.7 The Ship and the Bottle 1.8 Continuation (The Quest for Closure) Chapter Two: “The Birth of the Novel from the Death of Don Quixote” (130-210) 2.1 El Quijote’s Roles in the History of the Novel 2.2 The Unity of El Quijote? 2.3 Roman and Novel 2.4 The Chivalric Mode of Incompletion 2.5 The Picaresque Mode of Incompletion 2.6 The Battle for El Quijote: Segundo Tomo vs. Segunda Parte 2.7 Cervantes and the Invention of Proprietary Originality 2.8 The End of Don Quixote Part II: The Modernist Novel (211-213) Chapter Three: “Everything In Its Right Place” (214-250) 3.1 The Encyclopedic Mode(s) of Incompletion 3.2 The Self-De(con)struction of an Encyclopedic Ethos 3.3 Imagining the Sottisier: Bouvard et Pécuchet as Unfinishable Novel iii Chapter Four: “The Immoralist’s Dilemma” (251-310) 4.1 Kafka as Novelist… Is This Modern? 4.2 Der Prozeß of the Decadent Mode 4.3 The True Way of Das Schloß 4.4 Kafka & Co.: A Case Study in the Traffic (Verkehr) of Unfinishedness 4.5 Concluding Fragment: The Immoralist’s Dilemma Chapter Five: “Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften In The Golden Age of Unfinishable Novels” (311-360) 5.1 The Golden Age of Unfinishable Novels 5.2 Progress, Realism, and the Novel 5.3 The Ongoing History of a Peculiarly Modern Text 5.4 MoE’s Critical Reception: A Case Study in Anticipatory Plagiarism 5.5 The Encyclopedic Mode(s) of Incompletion (Redux) Part III: The Postmodern Novel (361-364) Chapter Six: “Unworking Totality” (365-431) 6.1 What Is Meant By Postmodernism? 6.2 Unworking Totality 6.3 The Buch Breaks: Reading MoE’s Changing Relationship To Its Own End 6.4 The Essayistic Mode of Incompletion 6.5 Essaying the Possibilities of Thought: Ethics, Aesthetics, the Novel, Sex 6.6 Writing Fiction in the Margins of Philosophy Chapter Seven: “Beyond Completion” (432-474) 7.1 Beyond Completion: From Unfinishability to Unfinalizability 7.2 History in the Information Age (The Paranoid Mode of Incompletion) 7.3 The Parabola and the Pendulum 7.4 Postscript: Beyond Completion Complete Bibliography (475-504) iv ABSTRACT James Ramsey Wallen “Beyond Completion: Towards a Genealogy of Unfinishable Novels” This dissertation examines strange literary phenomena I call “unfinishable novels,” or novels whose very structure and/or worldview would seem to prohibit the possibility of their own “successful” conclusion. Famous examples include Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, Franz Kafka’s The Trial, and Robert Musil’s The Man Without Qualities. Focusing on a canonical and historically diverse selection of Euro- American texts and authors ranging from François Rabelais to Thomas Pynchon, my project not only contributes to the critical literature on my primary texts by examining and contextualizing their “unfinishability” but also suggests a new historiography of the novel by focusing less on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—the zenith of the novel’s cultural and political importance, but also a period dominated by linear plotlines—and more on periods (early modern and twentieth century) in which the status of endings was far more uncertain, thus tracing something like a “backstage history” of the genre. To develop a theoretical-historical framework in which to read these texts— both on their own terms and in the context of the history of the novel—my dissertation puts into practice a “prosaics of unfinishability,” a critical methodology that privileges prose and the novel and attempts to be less weighed down by what I call “the poetic prejudice,” i.e. the assumption that all literary texts worthy of the name should form organically unified totalities. This prejudice has historically dominated the discourse v surrounding unfinished works, which, when they are acknowledged at all, are traditionally described in term’s of an author’s “failure” to achieve perfection. The dissertation is divided into three sections, preceded by an Introduction (“On Unfinished Works and Unfinishable Novels”) that uses Fernando Pessoa’s unfinishable Book of Disquiet to articulate a theory of unfinishable novels, which I define as “novels that can only be finished as unfinished works.” The introduction clarifies the distinction between unfinished works and unfinishable novels, offering a critique of the traditional poetics of the unfinished work and its corollary rhetoric of failure before describing my own “prosaic” methodology and outlining my project. vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to begin by thanking my wonderful committee: Jody Greene, paragon of pedagogical excellence and purveyor of straight talk and tough questions; Carla Freccero, who initiated me into graduate studies and who embodies everything I love about UC Santa Cruz; and (above all) Wlad Godzich, the most intelligent human being I have ever met, without whose advice, wisdom, and phenomenal learning this project would never have been possible. Thank you all for your patience. Thanks also to my sisters Kate Wallen and Pam Condor, and to Julian Field, for conversation, competition and support. Amongst my friends and colleagues as a graduate student, thanks to Octavio Carrasco, Laura Cocas, Prema Prabhakar, Terry Solomon-Tilly, and Sophie Rollins, for stimulating conversation and occasional editorial help. Special thanks go to Tim Willcutts, for editorial help and for enduring without complaint the squalor that this project has generated; to Eireene Nealand, whose writings and conversation have been a staple of my intellectual diet for the last nine years, and without whom I never would have made it; to Shawna Vesco, whose presence has immeasurably enriched my final years at UCSC, and whose input and editorial assistance have been invaluable in bringing this project to completion; and finally to Daniel Pratt, my fellow BakhtiNietzschean, who has been with me every step of the way, and on whose couch I was sleeping when (after over a year of wandering the wilderness) I finally managed to transform a vague, impossible idea into a plausible prospectus. vii This dissertation is dedicated to my Mother, in whose lap I learned to love to read, and to my Father, in whose passenger seat I learned to love to argue. viii Ineptitude consists in wanting to conclude. We tell each other: but our base is not fixed; which of the two will be right? I see a past in ruins and a future in embryo; the one is too old, the other too young. Everything is in a state of confusion. But this means wanting only noon or midnight; it means not understanding twilight… Yes, stupidity consists in wanting to conclude. We are a thread and we want to know the pattern. That goes back to those eternal discussions about the decadence of art. Now one spends one’s time telling oneself: we are completely finished, we are at the very end, etc., etc. What mind of any strength—beginning with Homer—has ever come to a conclusion? L’ineptie consiste à vouloir conclure. Nous nous disons: mais notre base n’est pas fixe; qui aura raison de deux? Je vois un passé en ruines et un avenir en germe, l’un trop vieux, l’autre trop jeune, tout est brouillé. Mais c’est ne pas comprendre le crépuscule, c’est ne vouloir que midi ou minuit… Oui, la bêtise consiste à vouloir conclure. Nous sommes un fil et nous voulons savoir la trame. Cela revient à ces éternelles discussions sur la décadence de l’art. Maintenant on passe son temps à se dire: nous sommes complètement finis, nous voilà arrivés au dernier terme, etc., etc. Quel est l’espirit un peu fort qui ait conclu, à commencer par Homère? —Gustave Flaubert, Letter to Louis Bouilhet (September 4, 1850) I leave Sisyphus at the base of the mountain! One always finds one’s burden again. But Sisyphus teaches us the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy. Je laisse Sisyphe au bas de, la montagne! On retrouve toujours son fardeau. Mais Sisyphe enseigne la fidélité supérieure qui nie les dieux et soulève les rochers. Lui aussi juge que tout est bien.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Don Quijote Von Miguel De Cer­ Vantes Seit Nunmehr Vier Jahrhunderten Generationen Von Lesern Immer Wieder Neu in Seinen Bann
    DON_Schutzumschlag_Grafik_rechts.FH11 Wed May 30 13:04:18 2007 Seite 1 C M Y CM MY CY CMY K Wie kein zweiter Roman zieht der Don Quijote von Miguel de Cer­ vantes seit nunmehr vier Jahrhunderten Generationen von Lesern immer wieder neu in seinen Bann. Abgefasst im Spanien des frühen 17. Jahrhunderts, das zu jener Zeit die Geschicke Europas wesentlich mitbestimmte, wurde der Roman bald zum Inbegriff der spanischen Literatur und Kultur. Von Madrid aus hat er auf den Rest Europas ausgestrahlt und Denker, Dichter, Künstler, Komponisten und später Tilmann Altenberg auch Filmemacher zur Auseinandersetzung mit ihm angeregt. Klaus Meyer-Minnemann (Hg.) Die acht Beiträge des Bandes erkunden zentrale Aspekte des cervantinischen Romans und gehen seiner Rezeption und Verar- beitung in Literatur, Kunst, Film und Musik im europäischen Kontext nach. Europäische Dimensionen des Inhalt: · Klaus Meyer-Minnemann: Zur Entstehung, Konzeption und Wir- Film und Musik Kunst, in Literatur, Don Quijote in Literatur, Kunst, kung des Don Quijote in der europäischen Literatur · Hans-Jörg Neuschäfer: Boccaccio, Cervantes und der utopische Possibilismus Film und Musik · Katharina Niemeyer: Der Furz des Sancho Panza oder Don Quijote als komischer Roman Don Quijote · Dieter Ingenschay: Don Quijote in der spanischen und deutschen Literaturwissenschaft · Johannes Hartau: Don Quijote als Thema der bildenden Kunst · Tilmann Altenberg: Don Quijote im Film · Bárbara P. Esquival-Heinemann: Don Quijote in der deutschsprachi- gen Oper · Begoña Lolo: Musikalische Räume des Don
    [Show full text]
  • Cervantes and the Spanish Baroque Aesthetics in the Novels of Graham Greene
    TESIS DOCTORAL Título Cervantes and the spanish baroque aesthetics in the novels of Graham Greene Autor/es Ismael Ibáñez Rosales Director/es Carlos Villar Flor Facultad Facultad de Letras y de la Educación Titulación Departamento Filologías Modernas Curso Académico Cervantes and the spanish baroque aesthetics in the novels of Graham Greene, tesis doctoral de Ismael Ibáñez Rosales, dirigida por Carlos Villar Flor (publicada por la Universidad de La Rioja), se difunde bajo una Licencia Creative Commons Reconocimiento-NoComercial-SinObraDerivada 3.0 Unported. Permisos que vayan más allá de lo cubierto por esta licencia pueden solicitarse a los titulares del copyright. © El autor © Universidad de La Rioja, Servicio de Publicaciones, 2016 publicaciones.unirioja.es E-mail: [email protected] CERVANTES AND THE SPANISH BAROQUE AESTHETICS IN THE NOVELS OF GRAHAM GREENE By Ismael Ibáñez Rosales Supervised by Carlos Villar Flor Ph.D A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy At University of La Rioja, Spain. 2015 Ibáñez-Rosales 2 Ibáñez-Rosales CONTENTS Abbreviations ………………………………………………………………………….......5 INTRODUCTION ...…………………………………………………………...….7 METHODOLOGY AND STRUCTURE………………………………….……..12 STATE OF THE ART ..……….………………………………………………...31 PART I: SPAIN, CATHOLICISM AND THE ORIGIN OF THE MODERN (CATHOLIC) NOVEL………………………………………38 I.1 A CATHOLIC NOVEL?......................................................................39 I.2 ENGLISH CATHOLICISM………………………………………….58 I.3 THE ORIGIN OF THE MODERN
    [Show full text]
  • Guías Diarias Para El Quijote Parte I, Cap
    Guías diarias para el Quijote Parte I, cap. 3 RESUMEN: Don Quixote begs the innkeeper, whom he mistakes for the warden of the castle, to make him a knight the next day. Don Quixote says Parte I, cap. 1 that he will watch over his armor until the morning in the chapel, which, RESUMEN: Don Quixote is a fan of “books of chivalry” and spends most he learns, is being restored. A muleteer comes to water his mules and of his time and money on these books. These tales of knight-errantry drive tosses aside the armor and is attacked by Don Quixote. A second muleteer him crazy trying to fathom them and he resolves to resuscitate this does the same thing with the same result. Made nervous by all this, the forgotten ancient order in his modern day in order to help the needy. He innkeeper makes Don Quixote a knight before the morning arrives. cleans his ancestor’s armor, names himself Don Quixote, names his horse, and finds a lady to be in love with. PREGUNTAS: 1. ¿Qué le pide don Quijote al ventero? PREGUNTAS: 2. ¿Por qué quiere hacer esto el ventero? 1. ¿De dónde es don Quijote? 3. ¿Qué aventuras ha tenido el ventero? 2. ¿Era rico don Quijote? 4. ¿Por qué busca don Quijote la capilla? 3. ¿Quiénes vivían con don Quijote? 5. ¿Qué consejos prácticos le da el ventero a don Quijote? 4. ¿Por qué quería tomar la pluma don Quijote? 6. ¿Qué quería hacer el primer arriero al acercarse a don Quijote por la 5.
    [Show full text]
  • Estudio De Los Cánones De Estetica Femenina En El
    FROM HIPERBOLIC BEAUTY TO THE GROTESQUE WOMAN: A STUDY OF FEMININE BEAUTY IN DON QUIXOTE, BY MIGUEL DE CERVANTES AND IN LOS LOCOS Y LOS CUERDOS, BY MARCO DENEVI by María Mizzi-Terol (Under the direction of Dr. Luis Correa-Díaz) ABSTRACT In 1965 René Girard in his book Deceit, Desire and the Novel develops a theory of desire as leit-motiv in every work of fiction. The French critic claims that, in the most complex works of fiction, there is a line that joins the desiring subject and the object, which is called the mediator. Girard regards Don Quixote as a typical example of this triangular desire, in which Don Quixote is the subject, Dulcinea is the object, and the chivalric knight Amadís de Gaula is the mediator. In my research I will use this model to relate the role that feminine beauty plays in Don Quixote’s madness. As long as the presence of beautiful women is secured, the triangular desire is successfuclly maintained. But as Cervantes enters into the Baroque vision of the world, the caricaturesque takes its place and beautiful women disappear. At this point, the triangular desire begins to fail. Finally, Marco Denevi, in his play Los locos y los cuerdos, recreates the character of Don Quixote in the 20th. Century. In this play the idealist vocation of the character is replaced by scepticism. The play culminates with the complte destruction of the triangular desire, which involves the end of the validity of Don Quixote’s idealism. INDEX WORDS: Belleza Femenina, Mujer Grotesca, Deseo. DE LA BELLEZA HIPERBÓLICA A LA MUJER GROTESCA:
    [Show full text]
  • The American Epic; a Divided Stream Donald E. Hubele a Dissertation
    The American Epic; A Divided Stream Donald E. Hubele A dissertation presented to the Graduate Faculty of Middle Tennessee State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Arts May, 1995 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. UHI Number; 9536079 ÜMI Microform 9536079 Copyright 1995, by DMI Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. UMI 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, HI 48103 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. The American Epic : A Divided Stream APPROVED : Graduate Committee: Major Professor /? // Reader CJ^— ' O-yoq c=^ ou-cru* ______ _ Head o f ^ n e Départirait of English Dean of the Graduate School Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Abstract The American Epic: A Divided Stream Donald E. Hubele Classical epic models remind the reader of the sadness, futility, and sterility of living in the past; chapter one of this study illustrates, however, that from Cotton Mather to Walt Whitman, American history is celebrated in epic as an anthropomorphism of the mind of God. Further, classi­ cal poets who knew the glories of Troy also knew that its fate is inexorable to all in the future; from Whitman to Steinbeck, however, there are American epics such as The Octopus and The Grapes of Wrath that fly in the face of that knowledge. Chapter two argues that Moby Dick provides an alter­ native epic polemic to that which follows in the wake of Whitman.
    [Show full text]
  • Cervantine Correspondence of Thomas Percy and John Bowle
    Thomas Percy & John Bowle Cervantine Correspondence Edited by Daniel Eisenberg Exeter Hispanic Texts, XL University of Exeter, 1987 Followed at the conclusion by an annotated Index of People and Books. ISBN 0–85989–288–3 [p. v] INTRODUCTION This volume contains the surviving letters exchanged by two eighteenth-century scholars, John Bowle and Thomas Percy. Ex- cept for three of Bowle’s letters held by the British Library in Additional MS 32329 (Nos 44, 46, and 48 of the present volume), all of them are part of the Bowle-Evans collection in the library of the University of Cape Town. The Bowle-Evans collection, described by R. F. M. Immelman,1 was purchased by the University of Cape Town in 1957 from a descendant of Bowle. It includes a catalog of his substantial library, a portion of it (though not the Spanish section, long dispersed), and two volumes of his correspondence, source of the present edition. More specifically, the letters of Percy are contained in the Epistola- rium Bowleanum, into which Bowle pasted letters received. From the contents of the letters we can conclude that the collection of those received from Percy is nearly complete. Bowle’s letters to Percy are found in Bowle’s Green Book, which begins in 1772, five years after the first letter from Percy; Bowle’s earlier letters are apparently lost. From the extensive revi- sion of such letters as that of 27 October, 1777, in which inserted paragraphs are indicated, it can be seen that the Green Book contains drafts of his letters, from which he then made fair copies to send.
    [Show full text]
  • Reading Cruft: a Cognitive Approach to the Mega-Novel
    City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 6-2014 Reading Cruft: A Cognitive Approach to the Mega-Novel David J. Letzler Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/247 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] READING CRUFT A COGNITIVE APPROACH TO THE MEGA-NOVEL by DAVID LETZLER A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York 2014 © 2014 DAVID JOSEPH LETZLER All rights reserved ii This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in English in satisfaction of the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Gerhard Joseph _______________________ ___________________________________________ Date Chair of Examining Committee Mario DiGangi _______________________ ___________________________________________ Date Executive Officer Gerhard Joseph Nico Israel Mario DiGangi Supervisory Committee THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK iii Abstract READING CRUFT: A COGNITIVE APPROACH TO THE MEGA-NOVEL by David Letzler Adviser: Gerhard Joseph Reading Cruft offers a new critical model for examining a genre vital to modern literature, the mega-novel. Building on theoretical work in both cognitive narratology and cognitive poetics, it argues that the mega-novel is primarily characterized by its inclusion of a substantial amount of pointless text (“cruft”), which it uses to challenge its readers’ abilities to modulate their attention and rapidly shift their modes of text processing.
    [Show full text]
  • "Ocean Chivalry": Issues of Alterity in Don Quixote
    Colby Quarterly Volume 32 Issue 4 December Article 4 December 1996 "Ocean Chivalry": Issues of Alterity in Don Quixote Diana De Armas Wilson Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.colby.edu/cq Recommended Citation Colby Quarterly, Volume 32, no.4, December 1996, p. 221-235 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Commons @ Colby. It has been accepted for inclusion in Colby Quarterly by an authorized editor of Digital Commons @ Colby. Wilson: "Ocean Chivalry": Issues of Alterity in Don Quixote "Ocean Chivalry": Issues ofAlterity in Don Quixote By DIANA DE ARMAS WILSON LTHOUGH DON QUIXOTE stridently identifies himself with the fictional fig­ A ures of his favorite books-chivalric heroes such as Lancelot or Amadis or Renaldo de Montalban-he has of late been assimilated, in studies of spiral­ ing scholarly confidence, to the historical figures of the conquistadores. One critic claims that it is easy for the twentieth-century reader to see Don Quixote as "a comic incarnation" of "the conquistador mentality of Golden Age Spain" (Skinner 54). Another calls Cervantes's hero an "aspiring" and even "divinely inspired" conqueror, a figure who embodies "what is great and what is insane about Spanish imperialism" (Higuera 1-2). Such New World axes of identity for Don Quixote are an intrepid development from older constructions, which often used assertion as a mode of argument or, as what follows will show, in­ voked some literally preposterous connections. The aim of this essay is to ex­ plore the state of the union between Don Quixote and the "quixotic" conquista­ dores-all of whom are "other identified" with the heroic figures in the libros de caballerfas [books of chivalry].1 After sampling the representational prac­ tices that hover over this triple interalterity, I shall suggest that Don Quixote not so much "incarnates" or even "aspires to" the conquistador mentality as that he "minlics" it.
    [Show full text]
  • Tmi: the Data-Driven Literature of the American Renaissance
    University of Miami Scholarly Repository Open Access Dissertations Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2017-05-23 TMI: The aD ta-Driven Literature of the American Renaissance Brad Rittenhouse University of Miami, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarlyrepository.miami.edu/oa_dissertations Recommended Citation Rittenhouse, Brad, "TMI: The aD ta-Driven Literature of the American Renaissance" (2017). Open Access Dissertations. 1879. https://scholarlyrepository.miami.edu/oa_dissertations/1879 This Embargoed is brought to you for free and open access by the Electronic Theses and Dissertations at Scholarly Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Open Access Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Scholarly Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI TMI: THE DATA-DRIVEN LITERATURE OF THE AMERICAN RENAISSANCE By Bradley Christopher Rittenhouse A DISSERTATION Submitted to the Faculty of the University of Miami in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Coral Gables, Florida May 2017 ©2017 Bradley Christopher Rittenhouse All Rights Reserved UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy TMI: THE DATA-DRIVEN LITERATURE OF THE AMERICAN RENAISSANCE Bradley Christopher Rittenhouse Approved: ________________ _________________ John Paul Russo, Ph.D. Joseph Alkana, Ph.D. Professor of English and Classics Associate Professor of English ________________ _________________ Tim Watson, Ph.D. Lindsay Thomas, Ph.D. Associate Professor of English Assistant Professor of English ________________ ________________ Eric Hayot, Ph.D. Guillermo Prado, Ph.D. Professor of English Dean of the Graduate School Penn State University RITTENHOUSE, BRADLEY CHRISTOPHER (Ph.D., English) TMI: The Data-Driven Literature of the American (May 2017) Renaissance Abstract of a dissertation at the University of Miami.
    [Show full text]
  • THE INGENIOUS HIDALGO DON QUIXOTE DE LA MANCHA, Written by Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra
    THE INGENIOUS HIDALGO DON QUIXOTE DE LA MANCHA, Written by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. DEDICATED TO THE DUKE OF BÉJAR, Marquis of Gibraleón, Count of Benalcázar and Bañares, Viscount of the Puebla de Alcocer, Lord of the villages of Capilla, Curiel and Burguillos. AD 1605 WITH COPYRIGHT IN MADRID By Juan de la Cuesta Sold in the establishment of Francisco de Robles, book dealer to the king our lord. Prologue dle reAder, you can believe me when I say that I’d like this book, as a I child of my intellect, to be the most beautiful, the most gallant and the most ingenious one that could ever be imagined. But I haven’t been able to violate the laws of nature, which state that each one begets his like. So what could a sterile and ill-cultivated talent such as mine engender, if not the story of a dry, shrivelled-up, unpredictable child, who was filled with thoughts never before imagined by anyone else – such a book as one might dream up while in jail, where all discomfort is to be found, and where all lugubrious sounds dwell? Tranquillity, a pleasant place, the amenity of the countryside, the serenity of the heavens, the murmuring of fountains, the stillness of the soul, make even the most sterile muses appear fertile, and allow them to bear fruit that fills the world with wonder and content. It happens that if a father has an ugly and clumsy child, love puts blinders on his eyes so that he’ll see his defects as cleverness and charm, and he describes them to his friends as if they were subtleties and witticisms.
    [Show full text]
  • Violence and Genre in Cervantes a Dissertation Submitted In
    UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Sacred, Epic and Picaresque: Violence and Genre in Cervantes A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Hispanic Languages and Literatures by Alvaro Molina 2012 © Copyright by Alvaro Molina 2012 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Sacred, Epic and Picaresque: Violence and Genre in Cervantes by Alvaro Molina Doctor of Philosophy in Hispanic Languages and Literatures University of California, Los Angeles, 2012 Professor Teofilo F. Ruiz, Co-chair Professor Efrain Kristal, Co-chair This dissertation analyzes selected texts from Cervantes and his classical and early modern sources, focusing on his treatment of violence. It aims to respond to Nabokov’s famous indictment that Don Quixote was ‘the cruelest’ book ever written. Building on a critical framework that includes the work of René Girard, Steven Pinker and Frederick de Armas among others, my study looks at violence specifically from the perspective of genre – primarily the chivalric, the epic and the picaresque – emphasizing how the author’s thinking about violence was inevitably colored by pre-existing fictional paradigms. Instead of approaching violence by bringing ethics and philosophy to bear upon literature, such as the debate over the role of humor in the early modern period, I am more interested in examining how various literary categories inflect and nuance the author’s treatment of sacred, chivalric, epic or picaresque violence. To this end I examine 1) the particularly quixotic conjunction of chivalry and hagiography manifest in the episode of the saints in Don Quixote Part II, 2) Cervantes’ frequent, conflicted and evolving use of Virgilian formulas for the purpose of epic characterization, and 3) the tendency of the picaresque genre to feature prominent facial and bodily scars on its protagonists, a marker for social stigma that the author adapted quite cleverly in his Prologue to the Novelas ejemplares.
    [Show full text]
  • Modernism and the Encyclopedia by James Blackwell Phelan
    The Literature of Information Overload: Modernism and the Encyclopedia By James Blackwell Phelan Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Vanderbilt University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in English August 10, 2018 Nashville, Tennessee Approved: Mark Wollaeger, Ph.D. Scott Juengel, Ph.D. Rachel Teukolsky, Ph.D. Paul K. Saint-Amour, Ph.D. For Mike il migliore fratello. ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The debts of gratitude I have amassed on the way to completing this dissertation are immense, extravagant, unrepayable. I can only keep thanking and thanking everyone whose generosity has contributed to my incredible good fortune. (The word generosity may recur here. What quality matters more in this profession?) I am sure to leave out someone important, and if that’s you, please excuse my forgetfulness and know that I appreciate all you have done for me. From the time I assembled it, my dissertation committee has been surpassingly great to work with. I can be pretty smug about that, nodding along sympathetically to the hair-raising tales of committee discord and dysfunction that are shared wherever grad students are drinking at a conference. If it’s a modernism conference, I may not need to say more than “I work with Mark Wollaeger” to collect a round of looks that read: You lucky bastard. Mark lives up to his reputation. As the mentor, interlocutor, and editor at the center of my graduate career, he has made me a scholar and writer I would never have become without his generosity and the care he has shown my work.
    [Show full text]