From mysticism to postmodernism: "El Castillo interior" by Teresa of Avila, "Les Cent-Vingt Journees de Sodome" by the Marquis de Sade and "Das Schloss" by Franz Kafka.
Item
-
Title
-
From mysticism to postmodernism: "El Castillo interior" by Teresa of Avila, "Les Cent-Vingt Journees de Sodome" by the Marquis de Sade and "Das Schloss" by Franz Kafka.
-
Identifier
-
AAI9207051
-
identifier
-
9207051
-
Creator
-
Bourdeau, Martine Marie-Madeleine.
-
Contributor
-
Adviser: Fred Nichols
-
Date
-
1991
-
Language
-
English
-
Publisher
-
City University of New York.
-
Subject
-
Literature, Comparative | Literature, Romance | Religion, General | Literature, Germanic
-
Abstract
-
This is not a textual study of the three texts, but a reflexion on the various interpretations which have developed around them and how they have determined the reception of the works. My dissertation examines different schools of criticism and articulates a coherent critique and discourse on the question of Modernism/Postmodernism - Modernity/Postmodernity and the important and questionable role played by theory in relation to literature.;Two concepts are examined in these texts: space and the body--which serve to determine the configuration of the castles as a three dimensional projection of the imagination of the writers, their historical context and their location in culture. The space of the castle and the writing of the body in Teresa of Avila, the Marquis de Sade and Franz Kafka are ways of designating and designing the space of criticism and theory, and to confront it with what remains of what we can call literature or writing, when they have been dismantled and re-assembled by discourse.;Among the schools of criticism which are examined are the feminist and psychoanalytical approaches of Teresa of Avila's work, the movement of Modernism around Sade, and the passage from a symbolic to a post-structuralist type of interpretation of Kafka's work. Among the theories of Postmodernism I use are those developed in the fields of art and architecture such as Charles Jencks's. I differenciate Postmodernism as a movement based on a reaction against Modernism by Postmodernity, a term used by philosophers, social thinkers and epistemologists to indicate shifts in knowledge such as the shift of religion toward theological rationalism which mystics such as Teresa of Avila respond to, or that toward a philosophical and social rationalism which a writer like Sade criticizes vehemently.
-
Type
-
dissertation
-
Source
-
PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
-
degree
-
Ph.D.
