Pearl, Monica B. (1999) Alien tears : mourning, melancholia, and identity in AIDS literature. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

This thesis examines the literary response to the AIDS crisis. It concentrates on
literature produced between 1988 and 1995, published in English, and available in
Britain and the United States.
The AIDS texts investigated here are representative of other AIDS literature
produced during this time period in the way that they both enact and construct the
identities of those affected by AIDS. Mourning and melancholia are the operative
responses revealed in the literature, and revealed as the formative components of
changing identities in response to AIDS and its manifestations.
The thesis is structured in six chapters: a theoretical introductory chapter that
proposes mourning and loss as pre-existing concerns in gay men's literature, followed
by a chapter addressing gay AIDS fiction and its narrative response to mourning. The
next two chapters examine hybrid texts, that is, AIDS texts that do not conform to a
conventional narrative form, and that are connected more firmly to a queer sensibility
than to a gay identity. These texts, the thesis claims, are engaged with the processes
(and resistances) of melancholia rather than with the work of mourning. The
subsequent chapter addresses fictions of caretaking and witnessing, that is, novels
written from the point of view of one who is caring for an other ill with AIDS. These
are identified as more mainstream texts as they involve representations that are not
connected to declared sexual identities and therefore mean to address a wider audience
and to work out a more public discourse of grief around AIDS. In conclusion, the
thesis suggests that although AIDS literature is involved in an effort to resist loss
through narrative form, in fact it is the literature that in some instrumental ways
makes the work of mourning and melancholia in response to AIDS productive rather
than debilitating.

Item Type:	Thesis or Dissertation (PhD)
Subjects:	P Language and Literature > PR English literature P Language and Literature > PS American literature R Medicine > RA Public aspects of medicine
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Medical literature -- United States, Medical literature -- Great Britain, AIDS (Disease) in literature, Grief in literature, Gays in literature
Official Date:	May 1999
Dates:	Date Event May 1999 Submitted
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor:	Carter, Erica
Extent:	329 leaves
Language:	eng

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