DOCTORAL THESIS Geoffrey H. Hartman and the Challenge of Reading Postmodern Fiction Soultouki, Maria Award date: 2008 General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal ? Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 04. Oct. 2021 Geoffrey H. Hartman and the Challenge of Reading Postmodern Fiction by Maria Soultouki BA English Literature MA Religion and Literature A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of PhD English Literature Department of English and Creative Writing University of Roehampton 2011 Abstract This thesis re-engages the work of the distinguished literary critic, Geoffrey H. Hartman as a means of interpreting postmodern literature. Contemporary literary criticism has acknowledged the value of Hartman’s work in thinking about contemporary culture but, until now, there have not been any attempts to apply his interpretative methods to the reading of postmodern fiction. By identifying some of Hartman’s main concerns and drawing on his revisions of his theory, this thesis offers a case study of a selection of postmodern texts, which are characteristic of the challenges that postmodern literature presents. The postmodern literary text becomes challenging for literary interpretation through its extreme experimentation and by textually transgressing traditional forms of narration. The postmodern text’s incorporation of images, its attention and use of assonance, and its itinerate, indiscriminate assemblage of diverse creative expressions complicates the interpretive task. I aim to show how Hartman’s critical contribution can inform the reading of the postmodern text but also, how the consideration of the postmodern highlights the significance of Hartman’s theoretical work. I begin by developing the complexities that the consideration of postmodern literature and Hartman’s critique present and relate the authors and texts that become the focus of this investigation in the chapters that follow. Chapter 2 considers the relationship of the postmodern text to its use of illustrations and images and explores what this relationship manifests for the nature of the postmodern. Chapter 3 draws on Hartman’s understanding of literary interpretation as the listening for different meanings of the word, with particular attention to the typographical manifestations of the dissemination of meaning in the creation of the postmodern novel. Chapter 4 examines the implications of the postmodern rejection of ii modernist concerns, in literary interpretation and postmodern theory and the effects of the postmodern condition on the development of identity and historical consciousness. Chapter 5 focuses more closely on the problems of narrative orientation and direction that develop through typographical experimentation and relates these concerns to the challenge of following Hartman’s intellectual progressions in his critical contributions. The final chapter of this thesis explores the nature and role of the contemporary critical essay in the postmodern condition and the future of literature. iii Acknowledgements The Department of English and Creative Writing in Roehampton University has been my intellectual home for the past eight years and I wish to thank everyone there, staff and students, for giving me the opportunity to be a part of an inspiring literary community. Particularly, I wish to thank Dr. Mark Knight for his time and guidance in this project. Dr. Knight’s direction as my teacher during my BA and MA degrees and a mentor over these last four years had shaped the foundations of my critical thought and for that I am eternally grateful. I am also thankful for Dr. Kevin McCarron’s encouragement and continuous support, not only in this project but throughout my time in Roehampton. Professor Geoffrey Hartman has been more than inspiring in the writing of this thesis. His invitations to meet him at Yale University during the first and final year of this research project revealed to me that as well as being a distinguished literary thinker, Professor Hartman is a great teacher. Taking the time to read closely and discuss part of my work had a considerable positive effect on the progress of this thesis. But it is his modesty, generosity and inexhaustible excitement about literature and life itself that will remain with me and I am grateful for these and all the other occasions I have spent in his and Renée’s company. Finally, I wish to thank my family for their support. In the Christian Orthodox tradition my mother’s name, Olga, is the name of a woman who became a Saint because of her lyrical and discursive abilities. My mother’s persuasive words have counselled me to stay on course with my research choices and her loyalty has been my foundation. My brothers, George and Paul, have stimulated my work with their insightfulness, as both my challengers and invigorators. I am also grateful to my friends and companions, for their help, support and comments on my work. I would like to dedicate this dissertation to Paul and Maria, my grandparents. They never had the chance to have a proper education but they made sure I did. iv Contents 1. Introduction……………………………………………………………………….1 1.1. a. The Postmodern Challenge…………………………………………...…....2 b. Closing In: Ihab Hassan’s and Linda Hutcheon’s Models for the Postmodern…………………………………………………………...16 1.2. HiStory: Hartman Revisited……………………………………...………….29 1.3. Reading the Postmodern Text: An Analysis……………………...………....46 2. Image in the Postmodern Text……………………………………………...…..59 2.1. The Question of Representation……………………………...……………...60 2.2. Before Postmodernism………………………………...…………………….63 2.3. Representation in the Postmodern Novel: Coupland’s Artifact…………......68 2.4. Image in JPod: Black and White Magic………………………………….....75 2.5. Image and Numbers……………………………..…………………………..79 2.6. Image and Letters………………………………...………………………….87 2.7. Conclusion: Debris and Slippage in the United Scrapes……………..……...92 v 3. Calicoes of Echoes……………………………………………………….….…...96 3.1. Sound and the Lack of Visibility in House of Leaves……………………….97 3.2. Hartman and the Dispersing of Meaning…………………………………102 3.3. Topography and Typography: Hartman’s ‘Spot Syndrome’ and Problems of Orientation………………………………………………….…………...…109 3.4. Disembodied Echoes…………………………………....………………….116 3.5. Conclusion: The Fabric of Sound………………………………………….123 4. Transgression and Postmodern Fiction...……………………………..…..….127 4.1. Postmodern Theory and Literary History……………………………….....128 4.2. Transgression and Filth………………………………..…………………...135 4.3. Interpretation and Nosology……………………………………...………...144 4.4. Transgression and Stealth…………………………………………..……...148 4.5. Conclusion: Failing Real Fiction………….………………………….........157 5. The Text, the Step and the Walk………………………………………..…….160 5.1. Starting Points……………………………………………………...………161 5.2. Peripatetic…………………………………………………………………..164 5.3. Definitions………………………………………………………………….175 5.4. Revelations: About Deferring Declamations…………...……………..……185 5.5. Conclusion: In the Post………………………………………………….…196 vi 6. The (Con)Tent of the Literature of Criticism…………………………..……199 6.1. Introduction: In Attention………………………………………………….200 6.2. Hartman’s ‘New Ethic’ and Literary Criticism in the Postmodern Condition…………………………………………………………………...205 6.3. Second Nature: The Fictional Essay and the Short Story………………….213 6.4. Metafiction or the Literature of Criticism?...................................................223 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………...235 Bibliography ……………………………………………………………………...246 vii ‘And I can learn to love and make love to the paradoxes that bug me and on really romantic evenings of self I go Salsa dancing with my confusion.’ Waking life (2001) ‘Great art is radical.’ Geoffrey Hartman, Criticism in the Wilderness, 98. viii Chapter 1 Introduction ‘The Challenge’ Without Aeolus, without responsive lyre, without unction or wild auditors, I speak to you, whoever you may be, in ship’s belly, whale’s belly, your own, hiding from these vomit-words of old. I am the mortal year, and in your heart, insinuate a last formal clinging, some right of song, due pause, and firm inscription: Bring now unwonted fire to your lips. Soon is your middle year, your Christ year past, the beasts you met or fled from in the wood, convert them in the eagle fields of mind and test their stubbornness with stubs of song. Bring now unwonted fire to your lips.1 This thesis aims to examine the nature and position of the postmodern text, and show how Geoffrey H. Hartman’s theoretical contribution can assist the reading and interpretation of postmodern fiction. In this introductory chapter I will set up the main concerns that are the objects of examination in this thesis. The chapter differs significantly from those that follow: here I attempt to map out and organize the complexities of Hartman’s criticism, postmodern theory and