DOCSLIB.ORG

Earth's the End of the Road - an Allegory of the Fictional Creation

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Earth's the End of the Road - an Allegory of the Fictional Creation EN IO JOSÉ DITTERICH Earth's The End of the Road - an Allegory of the fictional Creation Dissertação apresentada ao Curso de Pós- Graduação em Letras do Setor de Ciên- cias Humanas, Letras e Artes da Universi- dade Federal do Paraná para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Letras na área de Lite- raturas de Língua Inglesa. Orientadora: Prof.a Dr.a Brunilda Tempel, Reichmann CURITIBA Ï" 9 9 0 Dedico este trabalho a todos aqueles que, de alguma forma, con- tribuíram para sua consecução bem como a todos que se sentiram "rouba- dos" durante a sua realização, espe- cialmente Cida, Rafael e Wagner. AGRADECIMENTOS A Deus por mais um "talento" e a força de vontade em desenvolvö-1 o. - A orientadora, Profa. Dra. Bruni Ida Tempel Reichmann, pela amizade, apoio, orientação e bibliografia. - Aos professores de Curso de Pós-Graduação em Letras da UFPRj, e em especial à F'rofa. Dra. Sigrid Paula Rénaux pelos valiosos livros emprestados e á Profa. Dra. Anna Stegh Camatti pela prestatividade constante. - A Profa. Putin Buffara, pelo incentivo e bibliografia. - Ao Centro Federal de Educação Tecnológica do Paraná pela colaboração na realização do Curso. - Ao CNPq por seis meses de bolsa. ABSTRACT Through the present thesis we intend to demonstrate how the North-American writer John BARTH uses his fiction as a vehicle for his aesthetic and literary doctrines as well as his philosophical and moral interpretation of modern society. The .introduction provides a background of the post-war panorama in the United States of America, emphasising the changes that were happening, mainly in the literary field, where the nihilistic as well as existentialist doctrines would influence most young writers, including John BARTH. Next we make a summary of Barth's literary production from 1956 to 1979, showing a possible project the author had in mind while writing his books, stressing his scholar/wr.iter characteristics. Then we concentrate more and more in Barth's nove1 The End of the Road, which is the core of this work. Interpreting the novel as an allegory of the fictional creation we analyse it as part of that project, where the author uses it in order to demonstrate the opposite tendencies in North-American literature during the 50's, with one group looking backwards and still developing neo- realistic novels, while another one was looking forwards, trying to find out new alternatives which would form the basis for Post-Modernism. Analyzing the characters in more details, we try, then, to prove their possible use by the author as his own avatars as well as representatives of the current theories, while the plot is shown as art allegory of the struggle between the opposite currents. In the conclusion we stress John Barth's theory that the traditional literary genres are exhausted and the modern writer should face the fact that he can only use them in a farcical way, through conscious imitation, a technique which demands knowledge, research, capacity and craftsmanship. ii RSBUMÖ A presente tese pretende demonstrar o uso que o escritor norte-americano John Barth fas da ficção como veiculo de propagação de seus principios estéticd- J. i terários, bem como de sua interpretação filosófico-moral da sociedade con temporánea. A .introdução apresenta as transformações ocorridas no panorama intelectual norte-americano de pós- guerra, mormente no plano literário, onde? as doutrinas niilistas e existencialistas exerceriam grande influência, delineando o arcabouço filosófico do escritor e pensador. A seguir, faz-se um apanhado geral da obra de BARTH, mostrando um possível projeto do autor ao escrever seus livros; destaca-se aí a dualidade pensador/escritor, concentrando-se cada vez mais na obra The Ein d of the Road, que ê a base da tese. Interpret.ando-se esse romance como uma alegoria da criação ficcional, analisa-se a mesma como parte de um projeto maior, tendo-se o autor utilizado dela com o fito de confrontar as tendências antagônicas da .literatura norte americana dos anos 50, onde duas correntes se destacam: uma voltada para a ficção neo-realista já existente e outra, onde BARTH se inclui, buscando novas alternativas, que formariam as bases do Pôs-Modernismo. Através da análise» especifica das personagens, procura-se, então, comprovar sua possível utilização pelo autor como porta-vozes das correntes vigentes e servindo a trama do romance? como uma alegoria do conflito tanto externo quanto interno entre as duas tendências dominantes. Conclui-se enfatizando a teoria de BARTH de que os gêneros literários tradicionais estariam exauridos, restando ao escritor moderno uma reutilização - ou "revisita" - das formas existentes, uma imitação conscient e, ou paródia, como solução, o que requer conhecimento, pesquisa, capacidade e perícia por parte daqueles que se dispuserem a aceitar o desafio. i. i. i CONTENTS Abstract i i Resumo . » . i i i I. INTRODUCTION Ol 1. Historical Background 02 1.1 In Search of New Values - the New Theories. 04 1.2 Reflections in American Society ...... 06 2. The Influence of the New Theories on Fiction. 08 2.1 Some Examples 12 3. Fiction at the Crossroad. 14 3.1 A New Foregrounding for Language 18 3.2 Formal Character i sti 20 4. John Barth - Scholar and Writer 22 II THE END OF THE ROAD - THE NOVEL AS A THEORETICAL VEHICLE 27 1. Exploring Form for Theoretical Purposes .... 27 2. Naming or Baptizing his Characters? ...... 37 3. Sex and Writing: Acts of Creation ....... 45 4. The End of the Road -- Different Levels of Reading 57 iv III - THE CHARACTERS AS LITERARY AVATARS .1 . Jacob Horner - a Hero with Many Masks and Tasks . .l.*l The Writer as the Hero. 1.2 The Hero inside his Furihouse 1.3 Jacob Horner A Rebel who Admires Discipline . 1.4 The Hero under the Law of Cyclology . 2. Joseph Morgan - a "Don Quixote" of Traditional Fiction ........ 2.1 The Attraction of the Op pos i tes ....... 2.2 Joseph Morgan an Idol with Feet of Clay . 2.3 Demanding Authenticity in a World of Phoniness . 3. Rennie Morgan - the Disputed Literature . 3.1 From Domina tor to Domines 3.2 Rennie's Death The Phoenix Fiebern . 4. The Doctor - the Personification of Knowledge . CONCLUSION ........ BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERMCES V biblioteca Ünivwâtfisíâe rade? I . INTRODUCTION History is a bloody business, after all. As one character observes, the twentieth century may be turning out to be a disaster, but the nineteenth and eighteenth centuries were horrors too. And the other centuries hardly compare f svorabl y » The panorama in American fiction during the last four decades is so puzzling that even today many books and articles are being written trying to clarify such a cloudy and certainly stormy period. John Barth, a worldwide expressive name of Postmodernism, twenty-four years after the publication of his first novel, TheFloatingOpera (1956), published a widely known article, "The Literature of Replenishment", where he presents a historical background that sends the reader as far back as Cervantes' DonQuixote in order to clear up the complex evolution of the postmodernist novel, as well as to rectify some misunder- standings of one of his most polemic articles, "The Literature of Exhaustion", published in 1967,, lhe impact of that article was so strong that John BARTH has been questioned about it until today and tie gives a historical justification for it: "It was a time that invited thinking. I wrote the essay in 1967 in Buffalo, in the middle? of a very apocalyptic time in the history of our republic."-^ In fact, to,understand the turbulent transitional literary scene in which the postmodern novel was incubated or to place any fictional production of the time, especially John Barth's works, it is necessary to recur to History. 1. Historical Background On e thi n k s .i. m m eel i a t e 1 y o f Marx's famous observation that important events .in History tend to occur twice s the first as a tragedy, the second time as a farce,^ We shall not go too far back in our hi s tor .1 ca .1 research, otherwise we may discover that Postmodernist is riot., so "post" at all*. Let us observe the recent historical background that prepared the so.il for the new current that was arising. The World War I, by its cruelties and absurdities against human kind, destroyed not only half of the civilized eastern world, b ut also f a i t: h in human beings . Not. o n 1 y t. h e noble rules of chivalry had been broken, but also the elementary christian and human principles had not been respected. For the young generations, part of which had been forced to participate of those cruelties arid part that had run away from the.war, the old world had fallen and with it the blind faith in archaic absolute principles that might still exist in Politics, Art and Literature. There was no room for ideologies like Positivism, Determinism or an "exhausted" academic art, since they represented .imposed values from a decadent: social structure. A climate of rebellion against any kind of imposed t If one observes the history of Nestern Literature, he discovers that he is entering a labyrinth of either conscious or unconscious iisitation of already used literary structures, Like and endless chain, even the up-to-datest novels of John Barth show influences of Sterne's Trist ran Shandy (1759), which reminds us of Don Quixote (1605), which echoes fliaadls de Gaula (XIV century) and so on... Good references can be found in BOOTH, Wayne C. The Rhetoric of Fiction. Chicaqo, The University ot Chicago Press, 1975, values swept the Continent in search of new a .1 terna tí ves that should substitute the principles of a world that had proven itself rotten.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • John Barth Literary Manuscripts [Finding Aid]. Library of Congress. [PDF Rendered Tue Sep 23 15:00:19 EDT 2014] [XSLT Processor
    John Barth Literary Manuscripts A Finding Aid to the Collection in the Library of Congress Manuscript Division, Library of Congress Washington, D.C. 2008 Revised 2010 April Contact information: http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mss/mss.contact Additional search options available at: http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mss/eadmss.ms008022 LC Online Catalog record: http://lccn.loc.gov/mm82050971 Prepared by Manuscript Division staff Revised by Margaret McAleer with the assistance of Lena H. Wiley Collection Summary Title: John Barth Literary Manuscripts Span Dates: 1955-1978 Bulk Dates: (bulk 1955-1968) ID No.: MSS50971 Creator: Barth, John, 1930- Extent: 90 items ; 11 containers plus 2 oversize ; 8.4 linear feet Language: Collection material in English Location: Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Summary: Author. Holograph and annotated typed manuscripts and corrected galley and foundry proofs of several of Barth's early novels, short stories, nonfiction writings, and speeches. Selected Search Terms The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the Library's online catalog. They are grouped by name of person or organization, by subject or location, and by occupation and listed alphabetically therein. People Barth, John, 1930- Barth, John, 1930- End of the road. 1958. Barth, John, 1930- Floating opera. 1955. Barth, John, 1930- Giles goat-boy; or, The revised new syllabus. 1966. Barth, John, 1930- Sot-weed factor. 1960. Borges, Jorge Luis, 1899-1986. Subjects American essays. American fiction. American literature. Short stories. Speeches, addresses, etc. Occupations Authors. Administrative Information Provenance The literary manuscripts of John Barth, author, were given to the Library of Congress by Barth in 1968.
    [Show full text]
  • 100 Best Last Lines from Novels
    100 Best Last Lines from Novels 1. …you must go on, I can’t go on, I’ll go on. –Samuel Beckett, The Unnamable 22. YOU HAVE FALLEN INTO ARt—RETURN TO LIFE –William H. Gass, (1953; trans. Samuel Beckett) Willie Masters’ Lonesome Wife (1968) 2. Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you? –Ralph Ellison, 23. In your rocking-chair, by your window dreaming, shall you long, alone. In your Invisible Man (1952) rocking-chair, by your window, shall you dream such happiness as you may never feel. –Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie (1900) 3. So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. –F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925) 24. Go, my book, and help destroy the world as it is. –Russell Banks, Continental Drift (1985) 4. …I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the 25. It was the devious-cruising Rachel, that in her retracing search after her missing Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with children, only found another orphan. –Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (1851) my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could 26. The knife came down, missing him by inches, and he took off.
    [Show full text]
  • The Location of “The Author” in John Barth's LETTERS
    The Author’s Metamorphosis: The Location of “the Author” in John Barth’s LETTERS Naoto KOJIMA Abstract 1979 年に発表されたジョン・バースの浩瀚な小説『レターズ』は、トマス・ピンチョ ンの『重力の虹』と並び、アメリカ文学におけるポストモダン小説の極点として考えら れている。『レターズ』をリアリズムと（ポスト）モダニズム的言語実験との綜合を試 みる小説とする議論を踏まえながら、この論文は、それ以前のバース作品に特徴的な自 己言及的メタフィクションが問題とした、「作者」の位置についての矛盾との関係にお いて『レターズ』の達成を捉える。そしてそのメタフィクションの矛盾からの脱却が、 小説の構造的なレベルだけでなく物語内容のレベルにおいても、作中に登場する「作者」 の正体を巡る謎解きのプロットとして表れていることを示す。手紙の書き手の一人であ る「作者」こそが、物語中での不在の息子ヘンリー・バーリンゲイム７世にほかならず、 その両者がテクストの内部と外部を行き来する作者の「変身」によって特徴づけられて いるのである。従来の研究ではこの小説における「作者」の正体（と小説の構造との関 係）を十分に突き止められてはおらず、その点でこの『レターズ』論は一つの新たな作 品解釈の提示であり、同時に、小説における「作者」の位置づけを巡る考察でもある。 Key Words: author, metafiction, presence/absence, realism, postmodernism 1. Introduction John Barth is a highly self-conscious writer. From the beginning of his career, his fiction has shown a distinctive self-referential nature. In his first novel, The Floating Opera, Todd Andrews mourns the dilemma of writing his own story in a Tristram Shandy-like manner: “Good heavens, how does one write a novel! I mean, how can anybody stick to the story, if he’s at all sensitive to the significances of things?…[E]very new sentence I set down is full of figures and implications that I’d love nothing better than to chase to their dens with you, but such chasing would involve new figures and new chases, so that I’m sure we’d never get the story started, much less ended, if I let my inclinations run unleashed” (2). He realizes that it is impossible to tell the story completely. Telling a story holds an inevitable difference between the telling and the told. - 251 - His self-reflective fictions derive from this acknowledgement of painful resignation. In his career as a writer, Barth’s orientation toward a self-referential structure is inextricably interwoven with his failed effort to write an autobiographical novel.
    [Show full text]
  • Speaking of Myth. an Interview with John Barth
    SPEAKING OF MYTH. AN INTERVIEW WITH JOHN BARTH CRISTINA GARRIGÓS GONZÁLEZ Universidad de León John Barth is probably the most important American postmodemist author writing nowadays: The prime maximalist of American Fiction as some critics have called him. Bom in Cambridge, Maryland in 1930, he is the author of ten novéis - The Sot-Weed Factor (1960) or Letters (1980) among them - a series of short fictions {Lost in the Funhouse, 1968^, a volume of novellas (Chimera, 1972), and two collections of non-fiction {The Friday Book, 1984 and Further Fridays, 1995). His works Th? Floating Opera and Lost in the Funhouse were finalist for the National Book Award in fiction, which he won in 1973 mth Chimera. Interviews with Barth usually center around his last book, a work in process or his opinión on Postmodemism, a task to which he dedicated his two seminal essays "The Literature of Exhaustion" and "The Literature of Replenishment". But in this interview, conducted in León during a visit of the author to our country, Barth discusses his relationship with four literary figures, which he has acknowledged as the "four regnant deities in his personal pantheon."^ These icons are in literary-historical order Odysseus, Scheherazade, Don Quixote and Huckleberry Finn. For him, there is no fifth, yet. These figures have appeared recurrently in his works: as characters, as surrogates for them, and he has discussed widely their relevance in his work in his numerous essays. The admiration of Barth for these mythological icons, "the four compass-points of my narrative imagination" as he calis them, is not half-hazard.
    [Show full text]
  • Apocalypse in the Novels of Cormac Mccarthy
    “The Salitter drying from the earth”: Apocalypse in the novels of Cormac McCarthy A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in English in the University of Canterbury by Christopher Yee University of Canterbury 2010 Contents Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................... 3 Abstract ..................................................................................................................................... 4 Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 5 1. Apocalypse ........................................................................................................................ 6 2. Manifest Destiny ............................................................................................................... 8 3. Overview of Chapters...................................................................................................... 12 Chapter One: Apocalyptic Time in Blood Meridian ............................................................... 18 1. Resistance of linear time: Holden and the narrator ......................................................... 20 2. The Kid ............................................................................................................................ 32 3. The Epilogue ..................................................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • Heide Ziegler
    Heide Ziegler John Barth: Ironischer Repräsentant der .Postmoderne' John Barth ist einer der bedeutendsten Vertreter der literarischen ,Postmoderne'. Der Ausdruck ,Postmoderne' hat sich nicht unwesent­ hch an seinem Werk entwickelt und diesem umgekehrt repr'.isentativen Charakter verliehen. Die Suche nach einer Konstante in Barths sich wan­ delnden intellektuellen Positionen und emotionalen Dispositionen zwischen 1955, dem Jahr als er seine ersten beiden Romane schrieb, und 1984, dem Jahr seiner bislang letzten Publikation, dürfte somit einer Suche nach dem potentiellen Kern dieses ambivalenten, sowohl experiment- als auch traditionsorientierten Zweigs der zeitgenössischen amerikanischen Literatur gleichkommen; und der Facettenreichtum von Barths Obsessionen - Grenzbestimmungen zwischen Imagination und Wirklichkeit, Geschichte und Mythos, Literatur und Gesellschaft - ist umgekehrt das Ergebnis der diesem Kern inhärenten Anregungsener­ gie. Immer wenn sich daher Barth die Frage stellt, was die .Postmoderne' eigentlich sei, sucht er in bewußtem Narzißmus das objektive Korrelat seiner selbst in einem vielfältig gebrochenen allgemeinen Spiegelbild. Barth definiert die Anfangs- und vorläufige Endphase seiner eige­ nen literarischen Entwicklung in zwei komplementären theoretischen Abhandlungen. Die Ausgangsposition beschreibt er in "The Litera­ ture of Exhaustion" (1967), einer inzwischen zu einem Manifest der ,Postmoderne' gewordenen Hommage a Jorge Luis Borges. Barth be­ wundert Borges, denn .. his artistlc vlctOry. if you Iike. is that he con­ fronts an intellectual dead end and employs it against itself to ac­ complish new human work". I Ähnlich sucht Barth selbst in The Sot­ Weed Factor (1960) und Gi/es Goat-Boy (1966) die Sterilität histo­ rischer, beziehungsweise metaphysischer Klischees genau durch deren exuberanten Einsatz ironisch zu entlarven und zugleich zu transzendieren. Barths vorläufige theoretische Endposition dagegen findet sich in "The Literature of Replenishment: Postmodernist Fiction" (1980).
    [Show full text]
  • Issn 2454-8537
    ISSN 2454-8537 Vol: 4 I Issue: 1 I May, 2020 International Journal of Humanities in Technical Education – ISSN 2454-8537 Vol: 4, Issue 1 – May - 2020 Department of Communication Skills, Marwadi Education Foundation’s Group of Institutions, Rajkot – Gujarat (INDIA) A Study of Existentialism in John Barth’s The End of the Road R. Murugesan Ph.D Research Scholar Department of English, Annamalai University, Tamilnadu Abstract John Barth is one of the postmodern writers in American literature. Barth's complicated, greatly self- conscious, and comic texts as well as applauded essays have clearly established the author's status as a dynamic defender of North American literary Postmodernism. John Barth is one of the major novelists of American postmodernism. Barth’s contribution to the practice and theory of postmodernism is in this sense undisputable. However, much of the criticism dealing with his work in relationship to postmodernism is prompted by Barth’s own theories of “exhaustion” and “replenishment,” leaving his writing relatively untouched by theories of postmodernism in general. This study aims to change that. What is of particular interest here is the relationship between Barth’s aesthetic and the ideology critical work of the historical avant-gardes, which were the first to mobilize art against itself and its institutional practices and demands. Barth's second novel, The End of the Road, gives similar characteristics with its precursor. Like Todd, Jake (Jacob Homer) is a nihilistic protagonist who cannot get meaning in the world and who exists in isolation and separation from the rest of society. He also takes on a similar superior position with regards to the rest of humanity as does Todd and virtually all of Barth's characters.
    [Show full text]
  • Meaning and Morality in the Works of Cormac Mccarthy
    MEANING AND MORALITY IN THE WORKS OF CORMAC MCCARTHY A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the Requirements for the degree of Master of Humanities By SHANE PHOENIX MOON B.A., Antioch University Midwest, 2011 2015 Wright State University WRIGHT STATE UNIVERSITY GRADUATE SCHOOL May 1, 2015 I HEREBY RECOMMEND THAT THE THESIS PREPARED UNDER MY SUPERVISION BY Shane P. Moon ENTITLED The Search for Meaning and Morality in the Works of Cormac McCarthy BE ACCEPTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF Master of Humanities. ___________________________ Donovan Miyasaki, PhD Thesis Director ___________________________ Valerie Stoker, PhD Committee of Final Examination: Director, Master of Humanities Program _________________________________ Donovan Miyasaki, PhD _________________________________ Scott Wilson, PhD _________________________________ Andrew Strombeck, PhD _________________________________ Robert E.W. Fyffe, PhD Vice President for Research and Dean of the Graduate School ABSTRACT Moon, Shane Phoenix. M.Hum. Department of Humanities, Wright State University, 2015. The Search for Meaning and Morality in the Works of Cormac McCarthy. This thesis examines the work of Cormac McCarthy, in which I will argue against assertions that McCarthy’s work is nihilistic in that he presents a world in which life is meaningless. I will analyze three of McCarthy’s novels, one from each of the common categorizations of his work: Child of God (Appalachian period), Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West, and The Road (Western period), and The Road. Through this analysis, I will conclude that McCarthy’s novels are not nihilistic; instead, McCarthy’s novels contain strong allusions to the existential philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre, Friedrich Nietzsche and Soren Kierkegaard.
    [Show full text]
  • ANALYSIS Giles Goat-Boy (1966) John Barth
    ANALYSIS Giles Goat-Boy (1966) John Barth (1930- ) “In the metaphoric world called the University, control is held by a computer, WESAC [WESCAC], which is able to run itself and to tyrannize people, for it has the ability to subject them to a radiating and disintegrating force, that is, to EAT them, an acronym for its power of ‘Electroencephalic Amplification and Transaction.’ WESAC is so out of hand that one of its developers, Max Spielman, believes it can only be controlled through reprogramming by a Grand Tutor, a prophet, who will bring a ‘New Syllabus,’ that is, a new philosophy. For this role and this purpose he selects George Giles, whom he had raised among goats as a goat, though he was actually a human found as an infant in the tapelift of WESAC. In his undertaking George has to contend with a troublemaker, Maurice Stoker, who alone fully understands the operation of WESAC, and with a minor poet, Harold Bray, who contends that he is a Grand Tutor. George enters the computer to destroy it, and learns to confound WESAC by answering its questions through paradoxes that paralyze the machine. When George emerges, authorities eager to put WESAC back into operation seize him and send him back to the animal site of his boyhood, for he is now the University’s scapegoat.” James D. Hart The Oxford Companion to American Literature, 5th edition (Oxford 1941-83) 282 “It is not, I hasten to say, a merely blasphemous work of empty nihilism, though some reviewers have reacted as if it were.
    [Show full text]
  • The Road Narrative in Contemporary American
    THIS IS NOT AN EXIT: THE ROAD NARRATIVE IN CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN LITERATURE AND FILM by JILL LYNN TALBOT, B.S.Ed., M.A. A DISSERTATION IN ENGLISH Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Texas Tech University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Approved Accepted Dean (C(f the Graduate School May, 1999 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my dissertation director, Dr. Bryce Conrad, for agreeing to work with me on this project and for encouraging me to remain cognizant of its scope and its overall significance, both now and in the future. Thanks also to committee member Dr. Patrick Shaw, who not only introduced me to an American fiction that I could appreciate and devote myself to in both my personal and professional life, but who has guided me from my first analysis of On the Road, which led to this project. Thanks also to committee member Dr. Bill Wenthe, for his friendship and his decision to be a part of this process. I would also like to thank those individuals who have been supportive and enthusiastic about this project, but mostly patient enough to listen to all my ideas, frustrations, and lengthy ruminations on the aesthetics of the road narrative during this past year. Last, I need to thank my true companion, who shares my love not only for roads, but certain road songs, along with all the images promised by the "road away from Here." 11 TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii ABSTRACT v CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION 1 II. THE REALITY OF THE ROAD: THE NON-FICTION ROAD NARRATIVE 2 6 John Steinbeck's Travels with Charley: In Search of America 27 William Least Heat-Moon's Blue Highways: A Journey into America 35 John A.
    [Show full text]
  • Twentieth-Century American Road Narratives from <Em>
    University of Mississippi eGrove Electronic Theses and Dissertations Graduate School 2019 Road Trippin': Twentieth-Century American Road Narratives from On The Road to The Road Scott M. Obernesser University of Mississippi Follow this and additional works at: https://egrove.olemiss.edu/etd Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Obernesser, Scott M., "Road Trippin': Twentieth-Century American Road Narratives from On The Road to The Road" (2019). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 1652. https://egrove.olemiss.edu/etd/1652 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at eGrove. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of eGrove. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ROAD TRIPPIN’: TWENTIETH CENTURY AMERICAN ROAD NARRATIVES AND PETROCULTURES FROM ON THE ROAD TO THE ROAD A Dissertation Presented in partial fulfillment of requirements For the degree of Doctorate of Philosophy In the Department of English The University of Mississippi by SCOTT M OBERNESSER December 2018 Copyright Scott M Obernesser 2018 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ABSTRACT “Road Trippin:’ Twentieth-Century American Road Narratives and Petrocultures from On The Road to The Road ” examines late-twentieth century U.S. road narratives in an effort to trace the development of American petrocultures geographically and culturally in the decades after World War II. The highway stories that gain popularity throughout the era trace not simply how Americans utilize oil, but how the postwar American oil ethos in literature, film, and music acts upon and shapes human interiority and vice versa. Roads and highways frame my critique because they are at once networks of commerce transportation and producers of a unique, romantic national mythos that impacts American literary and extra-literary textuality throughout the late-twentieth century.
    [Show full text]
  • Ana-Maria DELIU Faculty of Letters, Babeș-Bolyai University Cluj-Napoca, Romania [email protected]
    Ana-Maria DELIU Faculty of Letters, Babeș-Bolyai University Cluj-Napoca, Romania [email protected] TRANSGRESSIVE METAFICTION: DECONSTRUCTING WORLDS IN JOYCE’S ULYSSES AND BARTH’S LOST IN THE FUNHOUSE Abstract: The question “to what degree does metafiction construct and deconstruct worlds” generates a conceptual and paradigmatic rethinking of metafiction, based on the theoretical tools of possible worlds theory, especially fictional worlds. More specifically, to what degree does metafiction succeed in constructing a verisimilar possible world or, on the contrary, undress it of materiality and illusion of reality, turning rather to itself as a text (metafiction is self-conscious, auto-referential fiction, drawing attention to its mechanisms and its status as an artifact while a possible world is a world which is credible, ontologically different from ours only in being non-actualised). Moreover, in metafictions like James Joyce‟s Ulysses, or John Barth‟s Lost in the funhouse, deconstructing worlds means not only de-materialising worlds, turning to form in an extremely overt way, and moving from mimesis of product to mimesis of process, but also the French deconstruction praxis of denouncing structuralist dichotomy signified-signifier, thus loosing oneself in a network of signifiers which ultimately destroy the metaphysics of the signified. After poststructuralism murders the author, the latter revives as a practical fiction in a textual world of indecidables. Key words: fiction theory, transgressive metafiction, deconstruction, practical fiction, James Joyce, John Barth Dematerialisation and Deconstruction Firstly, I would like to mention that I wrote this study in relationship with another one published in the first issue of Metacritic Journal for Comparative Studies and Theory (50-60).
    [Show full text]