BEYOND THE ZERO: "GRAVITY'S RAINBOW" AND MODERN CRITICAL THEORY.
Item
-
Title
-
BEYOND THE ZERO: "GRAVITY'S RAINBOW" AND MODERN CRITICAL THEORY.
-
Identifier
-
AAI8222966
-
identifier
-
8222966
-
Creator
-
MORRIS, PAUL.
-
Contributor
-
Frank Brady
-
Date
-
1982
-
Language
-
English
-
Publisher
-
City University of New York.
-
Subject
-
Literature, Modern
-
Abstract
-
No one has yet produced an analysis of Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow that can account for many of the disturbing complexities of the novel because most of his critics approach it with formalist assumptions about the nature of novels in general. This study, therefore, has two parts. Part I outlines the context and basis of Pynchon's thought in its contemporary literary, philosophical, and psychological matrix. Chapter one examines the novel in terms of the apocalyptic tradition. Chapter two illustrates the basis of Pynchon's vision in terms of N. O. Brown's Love's Body. Some critics have realized Brown's influence on Pynchon, noting that Life Against Death has many parallels to Pynchon's condemnation of modern reality; yet no one has seen the source of Pynchon's redemptive vision in Love's Body. Chapter three derives from the work of Jacques Lacan a theoretical structure of the act of reading and suggests methods of interpretation that are applicable to works like Gravity's Rainbow.;Part II examines the novel from the perspectives developed in Part I. Chapter one examines Pynchon's use of Space as a paradigm of the ego's usurpation of the body and the centralization of psychic functions that are the results of ego structuration. Chapter two illustrates Pynchon's concept of ego structuration in terms of his techniques of characterization. Chapter three analyzes the problems of writing a narrative when the author rejects narratization as a paranoiac endeavor. Chapter four examines Pynchon's use of image systems that subvert their own significance. Chapter five shows how Pynchon bifurcates the text into a metonymic plot line, generated by the narrator, which satirizes modern existence, and a metaphoric countersystem, which embodies the characteristics of his redemptive vision.
-
Type
-
dissertation
-
Source
-
PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
-
degree
-
Ph.D.
-
Program
-
English
