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Constellations of allegory : Gabriel García Márquez, Angela Carter and J.M. Coetzee
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Rahwan, Yamen Rahmoun (2010) Constellations of allegory : Gabriel García Márquez, Angela Carter and J.M. Coetzee. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.
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Official URL: http://webcat.warwick.ac.uk/record=b2491684~S15
Abstract
This thesis has two aims. First, it is a study of the idea of allegory and some of its
literary manifestations within the context of late modernity. It attempts to disentangle
and critically evaluate the multitude of theories and definitions that have been
mobilised around this problematic term. Through an analysis of these theories, this
study attempts to establish a critical use of allegory that preserves the insight of these
varying notions of allegory by advancing the following twofold hypothesis. The first
side of this hypothesis posits allegory as a distinct generic trope in which characters
are engaged in a quest or a journey that involves the recognition and interpretation of
metaphors and metonyms, with an aim to arrive at an "interpretative utopia" in
which signifier and signified coincide. This is a definition that Deborah Madsen
constructs and that this thesis embraces but revises. The second side of the
hypothesis proposes that in the allegories of late modernity the recognition and
interpretation thematised are historically variable and must be understood in relation
to specific historical contexts. This assumption informs the examination and
deployment of, amongst others, Fredric Jameson’s ideas of the national allegory and
the postmodern allegory; Walter Benjamin’s theorisation of allegory, melancholia
and the dialectical image; Paul de Man’s study of the relation between allegory,
irony and subjectivity; and Theodor W. Adorno’s philosophy of ethics and its
relation to allegory.
The second aim of the thesis is to put these critical insights to work in a dialectical
relationship with the fiction of Gabriel García Márquez, Angela Carter, and J.M.
Coetzee. All the novels chosen thematise the failure of a utopian coincidence of
signifier and signified, sign and meaning, a failure which conditions the
understanding of capitalist modernity. The consequences of that failure are
dramatised differently, in accordance with the specific experience of modernity in
each case. In the context of the uneven development of Latin America, the
continental allegories of García Márquez deal with the themes of melancholy and
power, the accumulation of allegorical fragments and the potentiality for dialectical
images. In the postmodernist allegories of Angela Carter, the failure of interpretation
reflects a larger cultural dominant of commodification and fetishisation of the
signifier. The postcolonial allegories of J.M. Coetzee deal with the cognitive failures
of an identity thinking which underlies the Manichean allegory of coloniser and
colonised, a failure that results in ethical melancholia. Overall, while positing their
common use of generic allegory to deal with these crises of recognition and
interpretation, the thesis emphasises the differences rather than the similarities of
these writers.
This convergence in one area but divergence in others throw a questioning light on
the discussion of Franco Moretti’s idea of conducting a study in "world literature"
via the use of "distant reading". Through examining Moretti’s method, the thesis
shows that allegory is a dynamic problematic rather than a fixed conceptual term.
Item Type: | Thesis (PhD) | ||||
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Subjects: | P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) | ||||
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Allegory, García Márquez, Gabriel, 1928- -- Criticism and interpretation, Carter, Angela, 1940-1992 -- Criticism and interpretation, Coetzee, J. M., 1940- -- Criticism and interpretation | ||||
Official Date: | July 2010 | ||||
Dates: |
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Institution: | University of Warwick | ||||
Theses Department: | Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies | ||||
Thesis Type: | PhD | ||||
Publication Status: | Unpublished | ||||
Supervisor(s)/Advisor: | Bell, Michael, 1941- | ||||
Sponsors: | Jāmiʻat Ḥalab [Aleppo University] | ||||
Extent: | ii, 372 leaves | ||||
Language: | eng |
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