Skip to content Skip to navigation
University of Warwick
  • Study
  • |
  • Research
  • |
  • Business
  • |
  • Alumni
  • |
  • News
  • |
  • About

University of Warwick
Publications service & WRAP

Highlight your research

  • WRAP
    • Home
    • Search WRAP
    • Browse by Warwick Author
    • Browse WRAP by Year
    • Browse WRAP by Subject
    • Browse WRAP by Department
    • Browse WRAP by Funder
    • Browse Theses by Department
  • Publications Service
    • Home
    • Search Publications Service
    • Browse by Warwick Author
    • Browse Publications service by Year
    • Browse Publications service by Subject
    • Browse Publications service by Department
    • Browse Publications service by Funder
  • Help & Advice
University of Warwick

The Library

  • Login
  • Admin

The voice of authority : Evelyn Waugh's fiction

Tools
- Tools
+ Tools

Kirk, Peter Nigel (1983) The voice of authority : Evelyn Waugh's fiction. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

[img]
Preview
Text
WRAP_thesis_Kirk_1983.pdf - Submitted Version

Download (13Mb) | Preview
Official URL: http://webcat.warwick.ac.uk/record=b1463404~S1

Request Changes to record.

Abstract

A large part of the extant criticism of Evelyn Waugh's fiction is orientated
towards either a biographical or a literary-historical interest: there are
comparatively few detailed surveys of the novels themselves. This study
attempts such a survey, and in particular examines the tension which inheres
in the relationship of Waugh's poised, urbane narrators to the social and
moral chaos they depict. I have been interested in the source and management
of that poise, the testing, as it were to destruction, of a series of
narrative positions. There is a very modern equation to be observed in
Waugh's fiction, between the potentially anarchic mode of fiction and what
Waugh felt to be the actual anarchy of contemporary civilisation. His
novels can with interest be read in terms of a comic exploitation of this
equation, and subsequently, as the writer aged, of his attempts to evade
its logic, to discover a 'voice of authority'. Apparently secure narrative
stances are repeatedly undermined, and a succession of 'realities'
compromised - Tony Last's, William Boot's, John Plant's, Guy Crouchback's.
It is this awareness and exploitation of the reflexive quality of fiction,
and its use in disclosing the nature of his age which lends Waugh's writing
its real and enduring interest.
I seek to draw out this awareness through detailed examination of the
different novels' precise narrative stance, the source of their 'voice',
and have been largely content to let stand other commentators' descriptions
of Waugh's broader thesis. My method involves close attention to Waugh's
language, from the conviction that nuances of tone and the development of
marginal allusions and metaphors are the keys to many of his characteristic
effects.

Item Type: Thesis (PhD)
Subjects: P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN0080 Criticism
P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN0441 Literary History
P Language and Literature > PR English literature
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): Waugh, Evelyn, 1903-1966 -- Criticism and interpretation, English fiction -- 20th century -- History and criticism
Official Date: December 1983
Dates:
DateEvent
December 1983Submitted
Institution: University of Warwick
Theses Department: Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies
Thesis Type: PhD
Publication Status: Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor: Bergonzi, Bernard
Extent: xiii, 341 leaves
Language: eng

Request changes or add full text files to a record

Repository staff actions (login required)

View Item View Item

Downloads

Downloads per month over past year

View more statistics

twitter

Email us: wrap@warwick.ac.uk
Contact Details
About Us