Introduction to History, Memory, and the Making of Character in Roth's
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Philip Roth's Confessional Narrators: the Growth of Consciousness
Loyola University Chicago Loyola eCommons Dissertations Theses and Dissertations 1979 Philip Roth's Confessional Narrators: The Growth of Consciousness. Alexander George Loyola University Chicago Follow this and additional works at: https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation George, Alexander, "Philip Roth's Confessional Narrators: The Growth of Consciousness." (1979). Dissertations. 1823. https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss/1823 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses and Dissertations at Loyola eCommons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Loyola eCommons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. Copyright © 1979 Alexander George PHILIP ROTH'S CONFESSIONAL NARRATORS: THE GROWTH OF' CONSCIOUSNESS by Alexander George A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Loyola University of Chicago in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy May 1979 ACKNOWLEDGE~£NTS It is a singular pleasure to acknowledge the many debts of gratitude incurred in the writing of this dissertation. My warmest thanks go to my Director, Dr. Thomas Gorman, not only for his wise counsel and practical guidance, but espec~ally for his steadfast encouragement. I am also deeply indebted to Dr. Paul Messbarger for his careful reading and helpful criticism of each chapter as it was written. Thanks also must go to Father Gene Phillips, S.J., for the benefit of his time and consideration. I am also deeply grateful for the all-important moral support given me by my family and friends, especially Dr. -
A Conversation with Philip Roth Philip Roth
Ontario Review Volume 1 Fall 1974 Article 3 August 2014 A Conversation with Philip Roth Philip Roth Joyce Carol Oates Follow this and additional works at: http://repository.usfca.edu/ontarioreview Part of the Nonfiction Commons Recommended Citation Roth, Philip and Oates, Joyce Carol (2014) "A Conversation with Philip Roth," Ontario Review: Vol. 1, Article 3. Available at: http://repository.usfca.edu/ontarioreview/vol1/iss1/3 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Published by USF Scholarship: a digital repository @ Gleeson Library | Geschke Center, 2014 A Conversation with Philip Roth JOYCE CAROL OATES JCO: Your first book, Goodbye, Columbus, won the most distinguished American literary honor—the National Book Award—in 1960; you were twenty-seven years old at that time. A few years later, your third novel, Portnoy's Complaint, achieved a critical and popular success—and noto riety—that must have altered your personal life, and your awareness of yourself as a writer with a great deal of public "influence." Do you believe that your sense of having experienced life, its ironies and depths, has been at all intensified by your public reputation? Have you come to know more because of your fame? Or has the experience of enduring the bizarre pro jections of others been at times more than you can reasonably handle? ROTH: My public reputation—as distinguished from the reputation of my work—is something I try to have as little to do with as I can. I know it's out there, of course—a concoction spawned by Portnoy's Complaint and compounded largely out of the fantasies that book gave rise to in readers because of its "confessional" strategy, and also because of its financial suc cess. -
Sex and Sexuality in Philip Roth's Kepesh
University of Southampton Research Repository ePrints Soton Copyright © and Moral Rights for this thesis are retained by the author and/or other copyright owners. A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the copyright holder/s. The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given e.g. AUTHOR (year of submission) "Full thesis title", University of Southampton, name of the University School or Department, PhD Thesis, pagination http://eprints.soton.ac.uk UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON FACULTY OF HUMANITIES Beyond Imagining: Sex and Sexuality in Philip Roth’s Kepesh Novels by Mike Witcombe Thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy March 2015 UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON ABSTRACT FACULTY OF HUMANITIES Modern Languages Thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy BEYOND IMAGINING: SEX AND SEXUALITY IN PHILIP ROTH’S KEPESH NOVELS Mike Witcombe This thesis examines three novels written by the Jewish-American author Philip Roth, collectively known as the Kepesh novels: The Breast (1972), The Professor of Desire (1977) and The Dying Animal (2001). Based on a desire to re-evaluate the critical position of these works within Roth’s oeuvre, this thesis offers an analysis of each novel based upon a critical methodology supplied by an examination of the role of fetishism in psychoanalytic theory. -
Illness and Its Treatment in Philip Roth's Fiction
Illness and Its Treatment in Philip Roth’s Fiction D. Mesher, San José State University Despite some early successes, Philip Roth only became America’s most important contemporary novelist in the latter half of his career; and, in those later works, illness and its treatment became significant elements, along with Roth’s familiar literary, Jewish, American, and gender and sexual themes. About the same time as this transformation began, Susan Sontag, Roth’s close contemporary—she was born in January, 1933, in New York City, he was born two months later in Newark, New Jersey—published her essay Illness as Metaphor (1978). The timing may have been pure coincidence, but Sontag’s argument about the destructiveness of looking for meaning in disease, and of creating metaphors and interpretations to confirm that meaning seems to have found a home in Roth’s later fiction, something that is all the more remarkable because of Roth’s (and Sontag’s) acutely analytical style.1 Looking for meaning in illness, after all, even more so than concern about mortality generally, has always been a focus of the arts, especially literature. In the Mesopotamian epic of Gilgamesh, for example, the title hero seems to accept that, “as for us men, our days our numbered” after he is told by Enlil, father of the gods, that “everlasting life is not your destiny”; and Gilgamesh is willing to risk that mortal life in battle against enemies such as Humbaba.2 But, when Gilgamesh’s near-double, Enkidu, is killed by disease rather than combat, Gilgamesh is driven to defy the destiny given him by Enlil and to discover the secret of immortality—not to avoid death per se, but to avoid what we might call a “natural” death, and what Gilgamesh thinks Mentalities/Mentalités Volume 26, Number 1, 2014 ISSN- 0111-8854 @2014 Mentalities/Mentalités All material in the Journal is subject to copyright; copyright is held by the journal except where otherwise indicated. -
Bibliography for the Study of Phillip Roth's Works
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture ISSN 1481-4374 Purdue University Press ©Purdue University Volume 16 (2014) Issue 2 Article 14 Bibliography for the Study of Phillip Roth's Works Gustavo Sánchez-Canales Autónoma University Madrid Victoria Aarons Trinity University Follow this and additional works at: https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb Part of the American Studies Commons, Comparative Literature Commons, Education Commons, European Languages and Societies Commons, Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons, Other Arts and Humanities Commons, Other Film and Media Studies Commons, Reading and Language Commons, Rhetoric and Composition Commons, Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons, Television Commons, and the Theatre and Performance Studies Commons Dedicated to the dissemination of scholarly and professional information, Purdue University Press selects, develops, and distributes quality resources in several key subject areas for which its parent university is famous, including business, technology, health, veterinary medicine, and other selected disciplines in the humanities and sciences. CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, the peer-reviewed, full-text, and open-access learned journal in the humanities and social sciences, publishes new scholarship following tenets of the discipline of comparative literature and the field of cultural studies designated as "comparative cultural studies." Publications in the journal are indexed in the Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature (Chadwyck-Healey), the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (Thomson Reuters ISI), the Humanities Index (Wilson), Humanities International Complete (EBSCO), the International Bibliography of the Modern Language Association of America, and Scopus (Elsevier). The journal is affiliated with the Purdue University Press monograph series of Books in Comparative Cultural Studies. Contact: <[email protected]> Recommended Citation Sánchez-Canales, Gustavo; and Aarons, Victoria. -
Do You Just Love Philip Roth? Brett Ashley Kaplan
Do You Just Love Philip Roth? Brett Ashley Kaplan o, do you just love Philip Roth?” I sera mon dernier livre.”) predated the by Rankin and Kellogg and considered “ didn’t quite know what to say, a little spectacular Roth@80 conference. Of course, one of the crown jewels of Newark civic Ssurprised by the question, coming as the planning of the conference predated architecture in 1901. The day ended with it did out of the near darkness from a New- his surprise retirement (and just as a side a reception, a series of talks by writers and Yorkese-speaking stranger at a movie theater. note many people at the conference fully friends of Roth and then Roth himself, Granted, the film was Philip Roth: Unmasked expect Roth to write another novel). So followed by a birthday toast and cake. All of and the venue was Film Forum (the venerable there was much reference made to this new these took place at another crown jewel of and wonderful theatre on Houston in NYC turn in his long career. The first day of the Newark’s former glory, the Newark Museum, that has been around almost as long as me), conference, on March 18, 2013 at the Robert which opened in 1909, and is enhanced by so I perhaps should not have been all that Treat Hotel in Roth’s hometown of Newark, a capacious and elegant courtyard. At the surprised. I answered something like “Well, it’s followed a traditional academic format with library a carefully curated exhibit about complicated, love isn’t quite the right word.” simultaneous sessions of panels consisting Roth ringed the second floor. -
Discursive Formation of Identity in Philip Roth's the Human Stain
GAUN JSS Discursive Formation of Identity in Philip Roth’s The Human Stain1 Philip Roth’un The Human Stain Adlı Romanında Kimliğin Söylemsel Ġnşası Mehmet Önder GÖNCÜOĞLU* Öz Philip Roth‘un The Human Stain (2000) adlı romanında sözde ırkçılık iddialarıyla işinden ayrılmak zorunda kalan New-England‘lı bir profesör olan Coleman Silk‘in hikâyesi anlatılır. İddia asılsız olsa da Silk hakkında daha şaşırtıcı başka bir mesele ortaya çıkar. Buna göre ne Yahudi ne de beyaz ırka mensup biri olan Silk aslında beyaz tenli bir siyahidir ve bu gerçeği tüm yetişkinlik hayatı boyunca bir sır olarak saklamıştır. Romanın adında bulunan leke kelimesi ten rengimizle ilgili ironik bir çağrışımı aklımıza getirirken, öznel yaşanmışlıkların işareti olarak da düşünülebilir. Bu çalışma, leke kavramından hareketle kimlik meselesinin hem sosyal hem de öznel tecrübeler ile söylem düzleminde nasıl inşa edildiğini tartışmaktadır. Anahtar Kelimeler: Leke, Kimlik, Sosyal Baskı, Sınıf Ayrımı, Ön-yargı, Irk, Philip Roth Abstract Philip Roth‘s The Human Stain2 (2000) simply tells the story of a New England classics professor, Coleman Silk, who is forced to quit his job for alleged racism. The charge is a lie, but the truth about Silk is more shocking because it turns out that for his entire adult life, Silk has been covering up the fact that he is neither Jewish nor white although he is actually a very light-skinned man. The stain given in the title of this novel stands for both a mark on the skin and the mark of our experienced based stories, and which, consequently construct our identities. This paper, therefore, analyzes how the idea of ‗stain‘ is ironically inscribed both socially and individually into our identities. -
The Competition for Jewish-American Identity in the Novels of Philip Roth
Colby College Digital Commons @ Colby Honors Theses Student Research 2006 League of their own: the competition for Jewish-American identity in the novels of Philip Roth Rebeccah Amendola Colby College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.colby.edu/honorstheses Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Colby College theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed or downloaded from this site for the purposes of research and scholarship. Reproduction or distribution for commercial purposes is prohibited without written permission of the author. Recommended Citation Amendola, Rebeccah, "League of their own: the competition for Jewish-American identity in the novels of Philip Roth" (2006). Honors Theses. Paper 463. https://digitalcommons.colby.edu/honorstheses/463 This Honors Thesis (Open Access) is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Research at Digital Commons @ Colby. It has been accepted for inclusion in Honors Theses by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ Colby. Student Research Honors Theses Colby College Year League of their own: the competition for Jewish-American identity in the novels of Philip Roth Rebeccah Amendola Colby College theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed or downloaded from this site for the purposes of research and scholarship. Reproduction or distribution for commercial purposes is prohibited without written permission of the author. This paper is posted at DigitalCommons@Colby. http://digitalcommons.colby.edu/honorstheses/18 A League of Their Own: The Competition for Jewish-American Identity In the Novels of Philip Roth Rebeccah Fullerton Amendola Honors Thesis 2005-2006 Elisa Narin van Court A League of Their Own: The Competition for Jewish-American Identity In the Novels of Philip Roth Rebeccah Fullerton Amendola Honors Thesis 2005-2006 Elisa Narin van Court 2 Acknowledgements There are many people to whom I am indebted for their service in the writing of my thesis. -
Philip Roth's Experimental Ethics
Journal of Literature and Science Volume 11, No. 2 (2018) ISSN 1754-646XJournal of Literature and Science 11 (2018) Powell, “Roth’s Experimental Ethics”: 62-78 Josh Powell, “Philip Roth’s Experimental Ethics”: 62-78 Philip Roth’s Experimental Ethics Josh Powell In his 1963 essay “Writing About Jews” (later collected in Reading Myself and Others) Philip Roth suggests that fiction has the capacity to enact an “expansion of moral consciousness”, and this is of “considerable value to a man and society” (151). When confronted with the fictionalized lives of others, he explains, one is inclined to judge actions in ways that are often unavailable in everyday life: One of the greatnesses of the art [of fiction] is that it allows both the writer and the reader to respond to experience in ways that are not always available in day-to-day conduct; or, if they are available, they are not possible, or manageable, or legal, or advisable, or even necessary to the business of living. We may not even know we have such a range of feelings until we have come into contact with the work of fiction (Reading Myself and Others 151). Here, he gives the example of the experience of an adulterous man. “Some people”, Roth suggests, may experience this man “as a cheat and nothing else” but the man “usually experiences himself as something more” (151). Fiction, Roth continues, can bring about an understanding of this “something more”, prompting individuals to move beyond a day-to-day morality in which it is enough to say that “we disapprove of the act and are disappointed in the man” (151). -
The Great American Novel and My Life As a Man: an Assessment of Philip Roth's Achievement
The Great American Novel and My Life as a Man: An Assessment of Philip Roth's Achievement DAVID MONAGHAN, Mount Saint Vincent University Like their predecessors, The Great American Novel and My Life as a Man are flawed works, but contain enough of undoubted literary merit to reconfirm that Philip Roth is a writer who deserves our attention. However, critics continue to equivocate about the precise nature of Roth's achievement. There seem to be two main reasons for this equivocation. First of all, instead of dealing with his novels according to their merits, critics have allowed themselves to be distracted by side issues. For example, criticism of Goodbye Columbus, Letting Go, and Portnoy's Complaint has tended to be over-preoccupied with Jewish cultural issues to the exclusion of discussion of the novels as literature. Mordecai H. Levine's "Philip Roth and American Judaism"1 typifies this approach to Roth. For Levine, Letting Go succeeds because Gabe Wallach recovers his Jewishness, and Portnoy's Complaint fails because it creates negative feelings about the Jewish family and Judaism. Roth's real achievements (and failures) have been similarly obscured by a group of critics who operate on the premise that, to achieve artistic success, a writer must be "committed." Stanley Cooperman's "Old Jacob's Eye? With a Squint"2 is a rather subtle example of this type of criticism. Cooperman offers many perceptive insights into Roth's novels, but his total argument is seriously weakened by his insistence that Roth fails as an artist simply because he finds the moral values of his society too empty to treat as anything but mannerism and because he regards the formal tradition as eccentric. -
Roth and War: Two Cases
ROTH AND WAR: TWO CASES __________________________________________________________________ A thesis presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School at the University of Missouri ___________________________________________ In Partial Fulfillment Of the Degree Master of Arts _____________________________________________ by BRIAN VAN REET Dr. Speer Morgan, Thesis Advisor JULY 2009 The undersigned, appointed by the dean of the Graduate School, have examined the thesis entitled ROTH AND WAR: TWO CASES presented by Brian Van Reet, a candidate for the degree of master of arts, and hereby certify that in their opinion it is worthy of acceptance. ___________________________________________________ Professor Speer Morgan ___________________________________________________ Professor Samuel Cohen ___________________________________________________ Professor Steve Weinberg ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thanks to Professor Speer Morgan, Professor Samuel Cohen, and Professor Steve Weinberg. All three men gave me generous and invaluable gifts of time, patience, and expertise. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS……………………………………………………………………………..……ii INTRODUCTION: THE ARC OF A CAREER…………………………………………….…….…….1 CHAPTERS “DEFENDER OF THE FAITH”: WAR AS CONFLICTED IDENTIT…………...…12 INDIGNATION: SEX, WAR, AND THE CONSOLATION OF HISTORY………...33 CONCLUSION: WIELDING WAR……………………………………………………………………..46 WORKS CITED………………………………………………………………………………………………50 iii INTRODUCTION The Arc of a Career “There’s a strong warlike component to your Fate line. Your Fate line sort of rises in the Mount of Mars. You actually have three Fate lines. Which is very unusual. Most people don’t have any.” ‐ Jinx reading Roth’s palm in Operation Shylock War is one of Philip Roth’s recurrent themes, its martial drumbeat marking time throughout a career that varies greatly in style and subject matter. At his best, Roth represents the most complex problems of the 20th century in terms that are smaller and more knowable than the global forces one reads about in history textbooks. -
The Dying Animal by Philip Roth
Press Release The Dying Animal by Philip Roth • About the Author, Philip Roth Decades after the 1960s sexual revolution, one man remains determined to live a life of emancipated manhood. As David Kepesh, the narrator of Philip Roth’s THE DYING ANIMAL, candidly states—and he states everything candidly—his main concern is "how to be serious over a lifetime about one’s modest, private pleasures." It’s a subject much more far-reaching than it might appear, for in asserting his claim to pleasure he must defy the institutions of family and marriage and conventional notions of love. The potential rewards are also great: freedom to live life on one’s own terms—and, as Kepesh reminds us, "Sex isn’t just friction and shallow fun. Sex is also the revenge on death." But death casts its shadow even in the most unexpected places, and it may coax Kepesh out of a life of nonattachment, for a girl for whom he feels something dangerously close to love. Kepesh is white-haired and over sixty, an eminent TV culture critic and star lecturer at a New York college, when he meets Consuela Castillo, a decorous, well-mannered student of twenty-four, the daughter of wealthy Cuban exiles, who promptly puts his life into erotic disorder. Since the sexual revolution of the 1960s freed him from his wife and child, Kepesh has experimented with living what he calls an "emancipated www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com 1 of 3 Copyright (c) 2003, Houghton Mifflin Company, All Rights Reserved manhood," beyond the reach of family or a mate.