Fahrenheit 451
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
AMERICAN UNIVERSITY OF BEIRUT SETTING BOOKS ON FIRE: LITERARY REPRESENTATIONS OF BOOK BURNING IN AUTO-DA-FÉ AND FAHRENHEIT 451 by MARIA HENRI HAFEZ A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts to the Department of English of the Faculty Arts and Sciences at the American University of Beirut Beirut, Lebanon April 2021 AMERICAN UNIVERSITY OF BEIRUT SETTING BOOKS ON FIRE: LITERARY REPRESENTATIONS OF BOOK BURNING IN AUTO-DA-FE AND FAHRENHEIT451 by MARIA HENRI HAFEZ Approved by: Dr. Sonja Mejcher-Atassi, Associate Professor Department of English Advisor Dr. Kathryn Maude, Assistant Professor Member of Committee Department of English Dr. Adam John Waterman, Assistant Professor Member of Committee Department of English Date of thesis defense: April 26th, 2021 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my gratitude to my thesis advisor Dr. Sonja Mejcher-Atassi for her guidance and invaluable advice during the process of planning and writing my thesis, and for helping me develop this project. I would like to thank Dr. Kathryn Maude for her insightful feedback and words of encouragement, and Dr. Adam John Waterman for his suggestions. And thank you to Dr. David Currell for supporting this idea from the beginning. I would like to thank my family for their unconditional support and encouragement. 1 ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS OF Maria Henri Hafez for Master of Arts Major: English Literature Title: Setting Books on Fire: Literary Representations of Book Burning in Auto-da-Fé and Fahrenheit 451 This thesis studies the literary representations of book burning in two twentieth century novels: Auto-da-Fé by Elias Canetti and Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. Book burning is a cultural and historical phenomenon which is analyzed in this thesis in its literary representations in order to understand the significance of this act within various contexts. The first chapter of the thesis analyzes Elias Canetti’s Auto-da-Fé which was published in 1935 and situates itself within the context of the interwar years. The end of the Weimar era and the rise to power of totalitarian regimes in Europe has a significant impact on Canetti’s representation of book burning and on the significance of this act within the narrative of the novel. In Auto-da-Fé, book burning marks the end of an important period of European history and represents a moment of liberation to the protagonist Peter Kien who joins his library in the flames. Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 is the focus of the second chapter of the thesis. The dystopian science-fiction was published in 1953, in a postwar context, and deals with book burning as a totalitarian tool for imposing ideology. Moreover, key elements of the Cold War such as censorship and the rise of mass culture are addressed in the novel’s depictions of book burning. The last section of this chapter approaches book burning as a subversive tool of resistance in Bradbury’s novel and studies its use as a way to preserve culture rather than destroy it. The third chapter of the thesis is a comparative study of the analyses made in the previous chapters. Auto-da-Fé and Fahrenheit 451 are read and analyzed together in order to uncover the similarities and differences in their representations of book burning. The multiple analyses of book burning reveal the various ways in which this act can be interpreted depending on the historical circumstances and narrative elements of the novels which represent it. This thesis concludes by tackling a recent instance of book burning in Lebanon and reflecting upon the state of this practice in the twenty-first century. 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .......................................................... 1 ABSTRACT .................................................................................. 2 INTRODUCTION: BURNING QUESTIONS ABOUT BOOK BURNING .................................................................................... 5 1.1. Research Questions and Description: ................................................................... 7 1.2. Theoretical Framework ....................................................................................... 10 1.3. Literature Review ................................................................................................ 14 1.3.1. Literature on Book Burning .................................................................... 14 1.3.2. Literature on Auto-da-Fé ........................................................................ 16 1.3.3. Literature on Fahrenheit 451 ................................................................... 18 UP IN FLAMES .......................................................................... 23 2.1. Biblioclasm in Auto-da-Fé .................................................................................. 23 2.1.1. The Funeral Pyre of Modernity .................................................................... 24 2.1.2. The Auto-da-fé of the Library ...................................................................... 34 2.2. Burning for Liberation ......................................................................................... 42 2.2.1. Dreams and Reality, United in the Flames ................................................... 43 2.2.2. The Surrealism of Book Burning .................................................................. 46 FIGHTING CULTURE WITH FIRE ......................................... 50 3.1. Libricide in Fahrenheit 451 .................................................................................. 50 3.1.1. The Fire of Totalitarianism ........................................................................... 53 3.1.2. The Heightened Reality of the Cold War Years ........................................... 61 3 3.2. Facing the Fire of Resistance ............................................................................... 70 3.2.1 A Spark of Resistance .................................................................................... 70 3.2.2. Burning to Remember ................................................................................... 74 WHERE THERE ARE BOOKS, THERE IS FIRE .................... 79 4.1. The Universality of Book Burning ...................................................................... 79 4.2. When Beliefs Lead to Destruction ...................................................................... 81 4.3. The Absence of Flames ....................................................................................... 83 4.4. The Reader, Between the Regime and the Leader .............................................. 85 4.5. The Ashes of Culture Rest in Memory ............................................................... 90 CONCLUSION: BLAZING A TRAIL FOR THE TWENTY- FIRST CENTURY ...................................................................... 97 5.1. Lebanon, Phoenix Against Its Will ...................................................................... 99 5.2. Burning Through the Screen? ............................................................................ 104 BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................................................................... 108 4 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION: BURNING QUESTIONS ABOUT BOOK BURNING Book burning is a powerful and versatile tool which has been used for centuries as a symbolic act, or with a purpose of cultural and ideological oppression. The most significant act of symbolic book burning to me, an English literature student living in Beirut, is the burning of the history textbooks by Lebanese student protesters in November 2019. A group of students gathered in front of the Ministry of Education and set fire to their history textbooks. They were protesting against the governmental censorship of history and purposeful omission of all historical facts and events from the civil war onwards. This protest is mentioned in a few articles only, and not remembered as a defining moment of the October 17 revolution. However, witnessing this act of book burning on television was an eye-opening moment for me. I watched these young students questioning the historical narrative given by the government, the same narrative which was given to my class eight years before. Watching them burn the books, and reading about the protest, took me back to my teenage years when my friends and I, just like the students, were painfully aware of the missing information in our history textbooks. The protesters’ motives were not generational but national, they were expressing a fundamental flaw in the educational system, a missing piece in national memory and identity. Their book burning brought up in me a deep-seated feeling of resentment for the missing pieces of our education. This incident made me realize the immense power held within an act of book burning. This book burning is significant to me because the act which was, in my mind, associated with destruction 5 and oppression, acquired a new meaning. In the fire emanating from the pages of the history textbooks arose a sense of resistance to the imposed narrative and a spirit of unity among the protesters and the ones, like me, watching from their television screens. Witnessing the students set fire to censored history books, I understood that book burning is not simply cultural destruction and censorship, but a powerful act with an important significance which varies according to the context and way in which it is enacted. For this reason, I am dedicating this thesis to the investigation of the significance of book burning in its literary