While the two modernist novels considered in this book, Samuel Beckett's Murphy and Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano , were initially understood within the categories of stoic and tragic despair, more recent criticism has focused upon their carnivalesque dimension. The identification of these hermeneutic polarities presented the author with the challenging problem which underlies the present analysis, namely the question concerning the structural relationship between the contesting thematics. Drawing upon the paradigm of oscillation as established within the natural sciences, and adding a figurative dimension to the concept, the author has adapted this model as a key to unravelling the narrative buoyancy and structural coherence which sustain these novels of Modernism. The book elucidates how the carnivalesque challenge to despair contributes towards innovative narrative configurations, galvanizing the thematic antipodes into vertiginous microcosms of defiant selfhood.

Autorentext

The Author: John Francis Harty is a native of Dublin where he studied Philosophy and English Literature. He was then awarded a scholarship from the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) to pursue post-graduate research at the University of Freiburg im Breisgau on the philosophy of Max Scheler for which he received a Master's Degree. As a freelance journalist he also lived in Hamburg and Paris. He returned to the University of Freiburg im Breisgau and received his Ph.D. in 2007.

Klappentext

While the two modernist novels considered in this book, Samuel Beckett s Murphy and Malcolm Lowry s Under the Volcano, were initially understood within the categories of stoic and tragic despair, more recent criticism has focused upon their carnivalesque dimension. The identification of these hermeneutic polarities presented the author with the challenging problem which underlies the present analysis, namely the question concerning the structural relationship between the contesting thematics. Drawing upon the paradigm of oscillation as established within the natural sciences, and adding a figurative dimension to the concept, the author has adapted this model as a key to unravelling the narrative buoyancy and structural coherence which sustain these novels of Modernism. The book elucidates how the carnivalesque challenge to despair contributes towards innovative narrative configurations, galvanizing the thematic antipodes into vertiginous microcosms of defiant selfhood.

Inhalt
Contents : Kirkegaardian despair Bakhtinian carnivalesque Oscillation scientific and figurative Solipsism Forms of defiant selfhood Nemesis and abject hero Chaos theory Limit experience Indeterminacy Fatal epiphanies Philosophical intertextuality.