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THE RHETORIC OF AUTHORITY AND THE DEATH METAPHOR by DEBORAH ANN NOEL (Under the Direction of Christy Desmet) ABSTRACT In this dissertation, I reexamine the "death of the author" critical phenomenon and argue that literary theory in this vein is less about the author than it is about authoritative discourse, which is very different. I use the death-as-absence and writing-as-death metaphors and a poststructuralist critique of authoritative discourse to investigate ways in which Anglo-American literary theorists, poets and writers of fiction have often posited metaphysical authorities as origins for their art in an attempt to remedy the absence signaled by writing. Building on theories suggested by Jacques Derrida and Mikhail Bakhtin, I examine ways in which some literary texts confront the challenge posed by the association of writing with absence while remaining skeptical of authoritative discourse. I argue that James Fenimore Cooper's The Pioneers, Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!, and Toni Morrison's Beloved can be characterized as American historical romances that challenge the logocentric assumptions of the realist novel tradition and portray authoritative discourse as a repressive social force. All four of these works use metaphors of death and feature epitaphs that symbolize the relationships among death, absence, writing and historiography. INDEX WORDS: Authoritative Discourse, Logocentrism, Dialogism, Heteroglossia, The Novel, The Romance, The Historical Romance, Death, Epitaph, Jacques Derrida, Mikhail Bakhtin, James Fenimore Cooper, Nathaniel Hawthorne, William Faulkner, Toni Morrison THE RHETORIC OF AUTHORITY AND THE DEATH METAPHOR by DEBORAH ANN NOEL B.A., The University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 1991 A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The University of Georgia in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY ATHENS, GEORGIA 2003 © 2003 Deborah Ann Noel All Rights Reserved THE RHETORIC OF AUTHORITY AND THE DEATH METAPHOR by DEBORAH ANN NOEL Major Professor: Christy Desmet Committee: Michelle Ballif Barbara McCaskill Electronic Version Approved: Maureen Grasso Dean of the Graduate School The University of Georgia May 2003 DEDICATION I want to dedicate this work to Chris, my mom and the other babysitters who made both this project and two babies happen simultaneously. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Dr. Christy Desmet for her long-distance efforts, her patience and her very helpful comments. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.................................................................................................v CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION: WRITING AND THE EPITAPH.....................................1 2 FOLLOWING THE DEATH METAPHOR TO ITS DESTINATION: LIFE.............................................................................................................19 I. Death/Absence and Writing: A Marriage of Metaphors.........................19 II. Between Plato and Aristotle: Placing the Writer in Paradoxical Positions ................................................................................................23 III. The Author Was Never Really Dead: Derrida's Different Typology..37 IV. Bakhtin's Dialogic and the Author As Opposed to Authority..............51 3 THE AUTHOR AND THE METAPHORIC MEDIATION...........................72 I. The Metaphoric Mediation Unmasked ...................................................72 II. Some Romantic Figures and the Metaphoric Mediation as Transcendence.......................................................................................78 III. The Novelist Inherits the Metaphoric Mediation as Truth, the Ideal Real........................................................................................................97 4 HISTORICAL ROMANCE AND THE EPITAPH: REALITY AND FANTASY BLUR.....................................................................................125 I. Point of View and the Undoing of Authority........................................125 vi II. The Historical Romance: Refracted Reflections of Reality ...............141 III. Epitaphs, Trace and Dialogues With the Dead...................................152 5 THE PIONEERS AND THE SCARLET LETTER: HISTORICAL ROMANCE, THE EPITAPH AND UNDECIDABILITY .......................161 I. Allegory and Symbolism: One Explanation for the Theme of Undecidability .....................................................................................161 II. Fenimore Cooper's Literary Quandary ................................................166 III. The Scarlet Letter: Rhetoric as Unchecked Authority ......................183 IV. Conclusion..........................................................................................197 6 ABSALOM, ABSALOM! AND BELOVED: HISTORY, MODERNITY AND THE ALWAYS INCOMPLETE UTTERANCE......................................200 I. The Thematics of Historical Romance and Poststructuralism in the Twentieth Century...............................................................................200 II. Absalom, Absalom! and Beloved: A Stylistics of Dialogic Discourse and the (Dis)placement of Authority...................................................207 III. Absalom, Absalom! and the Pain and Pleasure of Historical Story- telling...................................................................................................213 IV. Beloved and Historiography as an Incomplete Revisioning ..............224 7 CONCLUSION..............................................................................................236 NOTES.............................................................................................................................245 BIBLIOGRAPHY............................................................................................................263 vii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION: WRITING AND THE EPITAPH Many years before his death, Benjamin Franklin composed the following epitaph, leaving a blank space where the appropriate year could be filled-in at the time of his death. First published in a 1771 almanac, the epitaph did not ultimately grace the final resting place of the writer, but the sentiment remains interesting: The body of B. Franklin Printer Like the cover of an old book, its contents torn out, and stripped of its lettering and gilding, lies here, food for worms. But the work shall not be wholly lost; for it will, as he believed, appear once more, in a new and more perfect edition corrected and amended by the Author. He was born Jan. 6, 1707. Died 17 B. F. (Stories 137) On the surface, the old inventor's epitaph reflects his humorous wit, his down-to-earth American ethos, and his belief in a heavenly afterlife. He seems utterly unafraid of death, almost as if he is looking forward to that eventuality. His choice of metaphor, however, reveals that more than religious faith girds his courage. A world-famous celebrity during his time, Franklin was assured a place in the history books and could reasonably assume his works would be republished for some time after his undoing. Perhaps this secular 1 faith is the rock on which his "last words" are carved. An advertisement with an unlimited run, the epitaph relies on two age-old cognitive metaphors: first, the popular belief that the body is nothing but a shell, something practical but inconsequential; secondly, the notion that republication is a kind of rebirth or resurrection. Franklin considers the text a manifestation of its author and continual republication a sort of earthly immortality. This writing-as-immortality metaphor has persisted throughout the history of written discourse. To have your thoughts and ideas or even merely your name recorded for posterity is to live forever in the annals of human thought. Epitaphs constitute a qualified democratization of that belief, for even the lowliest member of the middle class has a chance to "live on" in the memory banks of the graveyard. But since its earliest manifestation, writing has also maintained a curious association with loss of memory and has signified the absence or death of the author. In Phaedrus (ca. 370 BCE), Plato depicts a debate regarding the value of writing as opposed to speech. A relatively young art in 5th century BC Greece, writing was subject to the skepticism that any newly-introduced technology invariably suffers. By some, oral discourse was considered preferable and primary with regard to its position in the evolution of human communication and in terms of its proximity to philosophical truth. As Plato argued via the figure of Socrates, oral communication enjoys more accuracy and promise because interlocutors can question one another, guide one another closer to the truth thus, the Socratic dialectic. Effective interpretation of discourse is a process involving both listener and speaker, questions and more questions. According to Plato, "live" dialogue is the only true form of communication; writing, with its deathly silence, produces only confusion. Socrates argues: Writing, Phaedrus, has this strange quality, and is very like painting; for the creatures of painting stand like living beings, but if one asks them a question, they preserve a solemn silence. And so it is with written words; you might think they spoke as if they had intelligence, but if you question them, wishing to know about their sayings, they always say only one and the same thing. And every word, when once it was written, is bandied 2 about, alike among those who understand