Walsh University Narrative Aporia

Walsh University Narrative Aporia: Deconstructing the Epiphanic Moment in Early Modernist Literature A Thesis by Nicholas Beaver English Department Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a Bachelor of Arts Degree with University Honors April 2019 Accepted by the Honors Program Date Date Ty Hawkins, Ph. D., Honors Director Date Table of Contents Section Page Introduction.................................................................................................................................1 Methodology...................................................................................................................2 Literature Review........................................................................................................................7 Deconstruction.................................................................................................................8 The Literary Epiphany....................................................................................................12 “The Dead”.....................................................................................................................19 Lord Jim..........................................................................................................................23 The War of the Worlds....................................................................................................25 Review Conclusion.........................................................................................................28 The Men of Now’s Palaver: The Literary Epiphany of “The Dead”..........................................30 The Moment of Ideas: The Literary Epiphany of Lord Jim........................................................42 “A Man of Exceptional Moods” The Literary Epiphany of The War of the Worlds...................53 Conclusion, Significance, and Further Research.........................................................................62 Works Cited.................................................................................................................................65 1 Introduction At its core, literature is the attempt to fathom and articulate the human condition, and put to words insights, knowledge, and revelations gained through experience. To this end, no literary device has been so frequently invoked than the epiphany, the sudden manifestation of meaning or insight that provides illumination. Inextricable from the development of the literary canon, the epiphany as a vehicle for revelation and insight has seen sustained usage for centuries, with writers bringing unique interpretations and conventions to a growing compendium that continues to see development today. Ashton Nichols in The Poetics of Epiphany argues that the development of the epiphany first evolved as a “way of establishing poetic meaning,” (1) in the Romantic Era poets like Wordsworth and Coleridge. These writers paved the way for Victorian and Modernist writers like Conrad and Joyce to further develop the epiphany through their conceptions of the “visionary moment” and “epiphanic moment” respectively. The culmination of this continued development has made the epiphany one of the most common and enduring literary devices that remains in use. Despite the ubiquitous nature of the epiphany and its prevalence in the literary canon, conceptions of the device remain vague and undefined. Existing scholarship has chiefly honed its focus on identifying instances of the epiphanic within literature, striving to point out occurrences and, at best, providing limited interpretations within the varying fields of literary criticism. Other critics such as Geoffrey Hartman, Northrop Fyre, and Nichols have traced the origins of the Joycean epiphany to the 19th century Romantic Period, in which the initially divine qualities of the epiphany (as traditionally understood as a religious experience) are shifted to the human imagination. Fyre in particular points to Joyce’s adoption of Wordsworth’s “spots of time” to “associate all manifestations of divinity with the creative spirit of man...[for Joyce], 2 the basis of the epiphany, in its literary context, is an actual event, brought into contact with the creative imagination” (qtd. In Nichols, 2). Here, the epiphany begins to become increasingly secularized, but maintains an ethereal link to its original divine origins that Joyce and other Modernist writers would later use to treat the aesthetic implications of revealed knowledge. The conclusions drawn from this body of criticism provide a list of epiphanic occurrences within literature and a rough diagram of its evolution, as well as some indication of the literary stakes inherent in the device, but still have little knowledge as to the structure and mechanics of the device itself. Literary critics and authors like Professor Paul Maltby argue that there is no sustained analysis of the epiphanic or visionary moments through a poststructuralist lens (Maltby, 3), with the net result being that the shape of understanding regarding the epiphany is amorphous and as ethereal as the epiphanic experience itself, leading to confusion as to the exact purpose, interpretation, and conventions surrounding the device. This project addresses these concerns by offering a postmodern perspective that strives to provide a structure to the epiphanic moment through the lens of Deconstructionist literary theory. Methodology: I base my analysis upon this currently available Deconstructionist scholarship, notably John Paul Riquelme, Ross Murfin, and founding Deconstructionist author Jacques Derrida, as well as Julia Kristeva and Hélène Cixous. Riquelme’s Deconstructive reading of the Joycean epiphany in “For Whom the Snow Taps: Style and Repetition in ‘The Dead,’” for example, provides the framework and methodology I follow most closely. His analysis, which follows a close-reading of the text that reveals “echos” of binary tensions that lead to an ultimate destruction of the protagonist’s character and an “interpretative multiplicity” for the ending follows the chief 3 guideposts of Deconstructive readings in literary criticism. These authors provide a base for my research, but are limited by several considerations that fall beyond their own analyses. Notably, none of them addresses the epiphanic moment as a literary device directly, and instead focus on the binaries and tensions that lead to epiphany, or the aftermath of the moment. Kristeva’s application of Deconstructive conceptions such as the “abject” borders closely on an analysis of the epiphany that I intend to offer, but her critique explores the epiphany only tangentially. Outside of her treatment, virtually no usage of Deconstructive conceptions are leveraged in discussion of the epiphany, legitimizing Maltby’s claim that “the convention of the visionary moment has been neglected by scholars trained in postmodern epistemology” (Maltby, 2). Lastly, existing critiques such as those of Zack Bowen and David Hayman fail to treat the epiphanic moment as a literary device outside of a monolithic application within a single work. These critiques typically strive to supervene with a ready-made interpretation to justify the usage of the epiphany, and thus, fail to problematize or treat the structure of the epiphany as its own phenomenon. I build from the research presented by authors like Derrida, Riquelme and Kristeva, but also address the limits presented by their approaches. I use the techniques presented by these authors, but expand the arsenal of Deconstructive analysis to introduce concepts such as aporia and Parousia into the conception of the epiphanic moment. This simultaneously allows for a deeper and more thorough critical application of Deconstructive techniques, and also increases the tools available to formulate a structure of the epiphany in a postmodern vein. I apply these tools in a focused and sustained analysis of the epiphany, the leading textual elements that triggered it, and its implications upon the narrative and text as a whole. Lastly, I expand the critical focus from a singular, isolated application of the device to a broader range, in order to treat the epiphany not 4 only within a work, but as a phenomenon throughout works by pointing to larger trends in its application and comparing them in light of other writers within my project’s scope. A Deconstruction-informed exercise addresses binary tensions in texts and their tendency to be hierarchized (eg. “Up” is privileged over “Down”). Deconstruction aims to locate these binaries and disrupt them, often revealing a state of undecidability in texts that has been termed “aporia” or intellectual vertigo. Such revelations can point to how the epiphanic moment often emerges out of a gridlock of undecidability between two or more conflicting elements, and how the epiphany itself serves as either an extension of aporia or its dismantlement and resolution. On a schematic level, envisioning the literary epiphany as the manifestation of a narratorial deadlock, or narratorial aporia, can better underscore the epiphany’s significance within literature as the point of destruction for characters as the conflicting nature of their world and identity reach a breakdown, or as the catalyst for a fundamental change or awakening engendered by this division. The destroyed identities of characters can often be “recalled” in a secondary epiphany through Parousia or prosopopeia, theories advanced by Deconstructionist Paul de Man as methods of “positing voice or

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