FROM DOUBLE WORDS TO DOUBLE TRUTHS: A RHETORIC OF SKEPTICISM IN THE MODERNIST NOVEL by DRAGAN ILIC B. A., University of Nis, Serbia, 2004 A thesis submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Colorado in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Comparative Literature Graduate Program 2014 This thesis entitled: From Double Words to Double Truths: A Rhetoric of Skepticism in the Modernist Novel written by Dragan Ilic has been approved for Comparative Literature Graduate Program ________________________________________ David Ferris ________________________________________ Mark Leiderman April, 2014 The final copy of this thesis has been examined by the signatories, and we Find that both the content and the form meet acceptable presentation standards Of scholarly work in the above mentioned discipline Ilic, Dragan (Ph. D., Comparative Literature) A Rhetoric of Skepticism in the Modernist Novel Thesis directed by Professor David Ferris The dissertation is guided by a group of questions concerning the discourse of skepticism as it has been explored in modernist fiction. I examine to what extent the rhetoric of skepticism is dependent on irony; what happens to the skeptic in a mass-mediated society; why is over-identification the proper rhetorical locution of an active skepticism; and finally I address the question is the skeptic necessarily doomed to fall into contradiction by arguing on both sides of the problem? The crux of my argument is that in modernist fiction, skepticism and its consequences are revealed rhetorically through the form of writing rather than by mere assertion and argument. Skepticism is thus transformed from a form of doubt to a form of narration. In contrast to traditional philosophical criticism that primarily focuses on the formative impact of philosophical ideas on modernist fiction, I emphasize those rhetorical efforts within modernist narratives that resist the influence of formal philosophical thinking of skepticism and are irreducible to the treatment of skepticism in classical epistemology. In this way, I challenge the reductive claims about modernism as a form of unrestrained epistemological skepticism and show that modernist novels perform a hard narrative labor against such a simplistic philosophical account. In order to answer two fundamental questions, where did the problem of skepticism come from and why was it so concentrated in modernist fiction, I have selected novels not from any single national tradition, but from the literary culture that cuts across Great Britain, Ireland, the United States, and Russia. By doing so, I aim to provide a sampling of modernist work that is wide-ranging, culturally diverse, yet coherent. I closely read Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Nathanael West’s The Day of the Locust, Ilya Ehrenburg’s Khulio Khurenito, and Samuel Beckett’s Molloy. By following this trajectory, I address some of the most pressing questions that “haunt” skeptical discourse from its earliest beginnings and show that irony, ekphrasis, over-identification, epanorthosis, and the dissoi logoi best illustrate how modernist narratives deeply reflect on skepticism and fruitfully rework some of its basic tenets, and are, in return, decisively formed by them. iii Acknowledgments First of all, I am particularly thankful to my dissertation advisor David Ferris for his excellent overseeing of this research, from initial encouragement through numerous valuable comments and suggestions to the satisfaction of closure. He has provided guidance and insight in every stage of this dissertation’s writing and has encouraged me throughout to hold fast to my arguments, but also, to challenge them when necessary. His erudition, perspicuity, and good spirit have decidedly shaped both this text and my scholarly interests and pursuits. Mark Leiderman has read my work with patience and acuity, and has helped me to find interesting ideas that have significantly enriched the entire project. My sincere gratitude to Eric White, Davide Stimilli, and Jeremy Green for their invaluable participation in this work and for the good and thought-provoking advice along the way. I also wish to thank my colleagues at the University of Colorado at Boulder who have provided a congenial atmosphere for my research and professional life. And finally, I am immeasurably grateful to my wife Aleksandra Ilic for her unwavering patience, support, and love. iv CONTENTS Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 1 Chapter 1: A Merciless Logic for a Worthy Purpose: A Rhetoric of Skepticism in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness Introduction ................................................................................................................. 15 Heart of Darkness as a Skeptical Meditation ................................................................ 21 Skepticism and Irony ................................................................................................... 26 Skepticism and Epiphany ............................................................................................. 41 Skepticism and Anagnorisis ......................................................................................... 47 Skepticism and Conrad’s Negative Modifiers ............................................................... 52 Chapter 2: Skepticism in the Desert of the Real: Nathanael West’s The Day of the Locust as a Skeptical Narrative Introduction ................................................................................................................. 62 Simulation and Narrative Remediation ......................................................................... 68 Skepticism and Satire ................................................................................................... 86 Skepticism and Ekphrasis ............................................................................................ 97 Chapter 3: Skepticizing with a Hammer: Ilya Erenburg’s Khulio Khurenito and the Rhetoric of Over-identification Introduction ............................................................................................................... 107 Khulio Khurenito’s Skeptical Underpinnings .............................................................. 112 The Nietzschean Novel and the Reevaluation of Skepticism ....................................... 126 v Skepticism and Over-identification ............................................................................ 133 The Moral and Political Implications of Skepticism.................................................... 143 Khulio Khurenito as a Skeptical Prophecy .................................................................. 154 Chapter 4: The Syntax of Skepticism: Samuel Beckett’s Molloy as a Skeptical Narrative Introduction ............................................................................................................... 158 The Syntax of Weakness: Preliminaries ...................................................................... 160 Antithesis and the Dissoi Logoi .................................................................................. 166 Epanorthosis .............................................................................................................. 172 The Skeptical Method ................................................................................................ 180 Catachrēsis ................................................................................................................ 191 Beckett’s Humor, or Beckett the Turk. ................................................................... … 196 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................. 206 Bibliography .......................................................................................................................... 212 vi Introduction In his groundbreaking essay “The Critic as Artist” (1891), written at the dawn of literary modernism, Oscar Wilde writes: “It is enough that our fathers believed. They have exhausted the faith-faculty of the species. Their legacy to us is the skepticism of which they were afraid” (in Ellmann, 382). Following Oscar Wilde’s indictment, my dissertation explores how modernist writers challenged and reworked the legacy of skepticism by means of rhetoric and narration. Unlike their forefathers, modernist novelists were not afraid to face the specter of skepticism. My goal is to show to what formal breakthroughs and narrative results the modernist engagement with skepticism has ultimately led. In philosophical discourse, skepticism has been most commonly understood as characterized by two distinctive features. First of all, it is based on a thesis that nothing can be known. The thesis is usually followed by a sort of prescription: since nothing can be known one should suspend judgment on all matters. Historically, the thesis that nothing can be known prevailed over the prescription within the tradition of Cartesian skepticism. The prescription, on the other hand, dominated the Pyrrhonist school of skeptical thought leading to practical questions such as is skepticism livable at all, and can the skeptic actually enact a total suspension of judgment? In what follows I am taking a fundamentally different tack and I argue that in modernist fiction, skepticism is neither understood as a philosophical