Philosophy and the confessional novel: A critical confession analysis
Abstract
The purpose of Philosophy and the Confessional Novel: A Critical Confession Analysis is to redirect literary criticism back to works of literature as the center of its critical attention. A "Confessional Novel" within the context of this study is a novel wherein the developing story or developing character is representative and reflective of the ongoing development of the reader. The authors (Dickens, Dostoevsky, Mann and Camus) of the novels (A Tale of Two Cities, Crime and Punishment, Doctor Faustus and The Plague) included in this study are, I claim, acutely interested and, in all cases, insistent that the reader notice the re-creative process which, in turn, compels a response. "Critical Confession Analysis" as a mode of critical response begins when the reader notices his or her thoughts are "in the text" through the confessions given by the text. Here, the reciprocal act of the confessional novel towards the reader who has re-centered literature is its ability to re-centralize and pay critical attention to the reader. Briefly, the one becomes conversant with the other. The leading question for this investigation is not "what is literature?" Rather, and significantly self-critical, the fundamental question is "what is reading?" or more specifically "what am I doing as a critical reader?" The hypothesis is that the subject positions established by the reader's recognition of human relatedness between his or her thinking and the written story will produce a response that critically assesses the developments of the reader's intimacy with and an ongoing understanding of the novel. Methodologically, this will mean rereading our own marginalia and being critical of our initial reactions to or judgments of or predetermined strategies for the text which transgress the confessional novel's intention to be known. Re-reading as such, being critical of the text inclusive of our notes and marks, will, I argue, be an interpretive attempt at not only one's analysis of what the novel knows of itself, but is also a way to analyze what it is that literature will teach the reader to know about oneself. Because this dissertation is making a claim for moral reading as opposed to moralizing approaches to it, the criteria established through this project are carefully chosen from among philosophers who explicitly privilege and define, in one way or another, reading. These philosophers are Aristotle, Saint Augustine, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Camus, Derrida and Stanley Cavell. However, I do not claim any dominant philosophical school of thought or attempt to reconcile the rifts between them. Rather, and because the notion of "giving language as giving knowledge" is a prevalent theme of this project, I have accepted various concepts for Critical Confession Analysis which are consistent not only within each philosopher's thinking, but are also consistent with this project's concept of responsible critical response. The criteria set forth in this approach to the confessional novel are self-critical; as self-critical, confessional; as confessional, open to re-creation. It is not clear from this study that all novels are confessional. The novels chosen for this project, however, are quite explicit about the separation of the spectacle of institutional hyperbole and human meaning; about the difference between moralizing constructions of power and moral introspection. The chapters of this project are meant to show, through these novels and the concepts given by philosophy, the development of the theory of reading advanced through Critical Confession Analysis. Chapter II analyzes how literature authorizes the critic to respond to literature through Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities. Chapter III investigates, as an extension of Chapter II and a transition into a reading of Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, the overarching, pre-confessional question of all literature "Will you hear me?" Chapter IV continues by suggesting that "hearing" the text creates for the reader a recognition of the self or a relatedness to the text which I have termed I-ness. Chapter V, this dissertation's most complex, shows through Mann's Doctor Faustus that the trouble of responding as an act of love for another will include "becoming" as Nietzsche writes "what one is." Chapter VI is a comparative study of The Plague and a concept given by The Myth of Sisyphus: "The Ethics, in one of its aspects, is but a long and reasoned personal confession. Abstract thought at last returns to its prop of flesh." As the concluding chapter, Chapter VI incorporates each of the steps of the development of Critical Confession Analysis. I explain, through this reading of The Plague, and emphasize the necessity of beginning new ways to accept and approach literature and philosophy as illustrated gifts of language which compel us to respond reciprocally and critically to the their advocacy of the human being.
Degree
Ph.D.
Advisors
Plotnitsky, Purdue University.
Subject Area
Comparative literature|Modern literature|Romance literature|Slavic literature|African literature|Philosophy|British and Irish literature
Off-Campus Purdue Users:
To access this dissertation, please log in to our
proxy server.