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Lessoning Fiction: Modernist Crisis and the Pedagogy of Form

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Lessoning Fiction: Modernist Crisis and the Pedagogy of Form University of New Hampshire University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository Doctoral Dissertations Student Scholarship Spring 2018 Lessoning Fiction: Modernist Crisis and the Pedagogy of Form Matthew Cheney University of New Hampshire, Durham Follow this and additional works at: https://scholars.unh.edu/dissertation Recommended Citation Cheney, Matthew, "Lessoning Fiction: Modernist Crisis and the Pedagogy of Form" (2018). Doctoral Dissertations. 2387. https://scholars.unh.edu/dissertation/2387 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Scholarship at University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. LESSONING FICTION: MODERNIST CRISIS AND THE PEDAGOGY OF FORM BY MATTHEW CHENEY B.A., University of New Hampshire, 2001 M.A., Dartmouth College, 2007 DISSERTATION Submitted to the University of New Hampshire in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English May 2018 ii This dissertation has been examined and approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English by: Dissertation Director, Robin Hackett, Associate Professor of English Delia Konzett, Professor of English Siobhan Senier, Professor of English Rachel Trubowitz, Professor of English A. Lavelle Porter, Assistant Professor of English New York City College of Technology, City University of New York On 29 March 2018 Original approval signatures are on file with the University of New Hampshire Graduate School. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS DEDICATION iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS v LIST OF FIGURES ix NOTE ON PUNCTUATION AND EDITIONS CITED x ABSTRACT xiv 1. INTRODUCTION 1 Modernism 5 Crisis and Propaganda 17 The Limits of Fiction 23 Pedagogy 29 Virginia Woolf, Samuel R. Delany, and J.M. Coetzee 34 Aesthetics and Ethics 39 2. APPROACHING CRISIS: VIRGINIA WOOLF 44 Genesis of an Essay-Novel 49 Explosion from Within 60 Propaganda and Pedagogy 68 Testaments of Commitment 76 Aesthetic Education, Ethical Imagination 80 A Crisis of Fictionality 84 3. AMIDST CRISIS: SAMUEL R. DELANY 88 Metamodernist 90 Critical Fictions 95 Plagues and Carnivals 98 A Pedagogy of Margins 106 Continuing Crisis 125 Pornotopia 134 The Systems of the World 149 4. AFTER CRISIS: J.M. COETZEE 160 Too Much Truth for Art to Hold 161 From Social Crisis to the Crisis of Fictionality 174 The Death of the Authority: Diary of a Bad Year 185 Good Infinity: Summertime 199 A Pedagogy for Liberation 210 5. CONCLUSION 213 Coda 222 BIBLIOGRAPHY 224 iv DEDICATION For my mother, Elizabeth Webb Cheney v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I owe significant thanks to the University of New Hampshire Graduate School for awarding me two Summer Teaching Assistant Fellowships that supported research for this dissertation and a Dissertation Year Fellowship that allowed me to complete it in a reasonable amount of time. Without that financial support, my work would have certainly been delayed and perhaps never completed. The staff of the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University welcomed and guided my work with the Samuel R. Delany Papers, and this dissertation would have been vastly weaker without their support and knowledge. Anonymous reviewers for my essay “The Reader Awakes: Pedagogical Form and Utopian Impulse in The Years” (Woolf Studies Annual) asked provocative questions that shaped my reading of The Years not only in that essay, but also in this dissertation, and I am grateful to them, to Mark Hussey, editor of Woolf Studies Annual, and Robin Hackett, co-editor of the special section on Jane Marcus for which my essay was a contribution. My instructors at UNH each helped me focus and develop ideas that would directly influence the ideas presented in this study: Brigitte Bailey, Monica Chiu, Christina Ortmeier- Hooper, Petar Ramadanovic, Rachel Trubowitz, and Leah Williams. I am grateful, too, to the many faculty who showed kindness to me and interest in my work even though I did not study with them directly. It was as an undergraduate at UNH in a seminar taught by the late Jean Kennard that I first studied Woolf, an extraordinary experience from which I continue to draw. This dissertation is dedicated to my mother, who began working at Plymouth State College (now University) as a secretary a few years before I was born, and continued working vi there in various capacities for over forty years. My stepmother began working at Plymouth State in the mailroom and then the library. Long before I knew anything of faculty or administrators, I knew the world of the staff who make academic life possible. Though work on a dissertation often feels solitary, it is always supported by the daily efforts of the administative assistants, the librarians, the clerks, the interns, and all the other people who make a university work. I will never know the names of many people whose labor behind the scenes enabled my own, but I do know a few. Thank you to Roxanne Brown, Carla Cannizzaro, Jennifer Dubé, and Sabina Foote in the English Department for keeping all my records in order, for finding me office space and keys, for patiently listening to ridiculous requests as if they were not ridiculous, and for telling me not to drive to Durham in a blizzard. Thank you to all the librarians at Dimond Library for smiling as I checked out hundreds of books, for helping with esoteric interlibrary loan requests, and for working miracles. Particular thanks to Jake Viebrock in Collections Management, who acquired numerous books that I requested, allowing this dissertation to be significantly more comprehensive than it would have been otherwise. Finally, Janine Wilks, the Academic and Student Services Assistant for the English Department’s Graduate Program, made everything possible, and without her knowledge, organization, patience, and good spirit, I would never have finished classes, never mind have finished a dissertation. My exam and dissertation committee has read more of my writing than almost anyone else alive, and their conversation, challenges, suggestions, enthusiasms, insights, and knowledge influenced every line of what is here. Though circumstances prevented her being at my dissertation defense, Sandhya Shetty accompanied me the whole way until that point. Her voice is one that is always present when I write, always challenging me to go deeper, to see the other side, to question my assumptions. No-one else has taught me as much about what it means to be vii a serious academic. Rachel Trubowitz stepped in only days before the defense, and with her typical verve and acumen seemed like she might have been on the team from the beginning. Delia Konzett had never met me before I asked if she would agree to be on the committee, and I continue to be overjoyed that she did, because I cannot imagine my work now without her incisive commentary. From the moment I met Siobhan Senier, I knew I would do anything I needed to do to work with her; that she let me convince her that her participation in this project made sense is something for which I will forever be grateful. Lavelle Porter and I were introduced to each other by Samuel Delany, and that makes it a particularly special friendship for me. I am grateful to Lavelle for letting me be his first Ph.D. student, and for making sure I didn’t cut corners or try to make difficult ideas disappear in simplicity. Robin Hackett was the first person in the English Department’s Graduate Program that I ever talked to, and she has been an extraordinary teacher, mentor, role model, editor, and friend. I can’t imagine how I would have completed this work without Robin’s support. Numerous friends and family members provided me with conversation, distraction, snacks, money, laughter, refuge, and sympathy. While Samuel R. Delany the byline is a subject of this dissertation, Chip Delany the man is a friend who made much of it possible; his trust in me and his enthusiasm for my work (even, or especially, when our interpretations are utterly different) is one of the great blessings of my life. Jason Burbank and Nilupa Gunaratna provided me with food, shelter, and friendship during my work at the Gotlieb Center at Boston University. Kenneth James, Ron Drummond, and Henry Wessells provided key information at important moments. Keguro Macharia gave me life-saving tips about how to avoid becoming overwhelmed by the dissertation process. viii During the research for and writing of this dissertation, my life was sustained by my parents, Elizabeth Cheney and Ann Thurston, my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins, and numerous friends, some of whom I’m sure I will inadvertently neglect to mention here: Eric Schaller and Paulette Werger; Ann and Jeff VanderMeer; Cinthia Gannett and John Brereton; many faculty and staff at Plymouth State University, particularly Liz Ahl, Robin DeRosa, Cathie LeBlanc, and Ann McClellan; Nora Cascadden; Morganne and Steve Freeborn; and Seth Willey, my brother except for blood, who may sometimes drive me crazy but always keeps me sane. Finally, to my fellow UNH students past and present, I owe thanks for more than I have room to say here: Eden Wales-Freedman and Luke Dietrich showed the way; Kristin Stelmok, Catherine Welter, and Katherine Young welcomed me; Noah Burton, Michael Haselton, Jeremy Parker, Sherrard Harrington, and Paul Rowe shared an office and great conversation; Mary Grace Elliott, Jin Lee, and Stephen Roxburgh were the best of companions, challengers, and confidantes; and, last and farthest from least, Elizabeth Sheckler was sometimes my co- conspirator and always my cohort. ix LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Original title page of “The Tale of Plagues and Carnivals”, Bantam, 1985 110 x NOTE ON PUNCTUATION AND EDITIONS CITED Ellipses, Italics, and Titles Because both Virginia Woolf and Samuel R.
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