FROM SPATIALITY TO TEXTUALITY: THE DISAPPEARANCE OF THE CITY IN THE MODERN NOVEL

BARBARA LEE HUSSEY, Purdue University

Abstract

This study traces a particular evolution in the form and self-concept of the modern novel. The organizing principle of this delineation consists of the use of a selected number of novels make of the city, a treatment which culminates in the city's disappearance as a representational space and in its transformation into text. Recent studies of architectonic fiction provide a critical basis for the consideration of several novels which employ spatial entities as structural models--the most popular of these models being the city. Therefore, the first chapter examines two novels which approximate a metropolis through the juxtaposition of multiple perspectives--John Dos Passos' Manhattan Transfer and Carlos Fuentes' La region mas transparente. Both works represent an extreme expression of "plastic" construction insofar as they give stable form to conflict and spatialize, by echoing, their own contents. Through the use of the city, they provide a context for the coexistence of oppositions as well as a space for the containment of time. Their attitude toward themselves, which may encompass their view of the role of literature in the world, is basically optimistic and self-affirming. Both novels appear to project permanence and conclusiveness. The second chapter examines several changes in both critical perspectives and in the form of the novel itself. As the work questions its representational ability as well as the "reality" of reality, mobile constructs replace stable ones. James Joyce's Ulysses and Guillermo Cabrera Infante's Tres tristes tigres, which approximate a cyclical journey through a city, represent a preliminary step in this direction. As the novelist begins to substitute mobility for montage, his assessment of the permanence of any literary vision changes correspondingly. Both Joyce and Cabrera Infante recognize the instability of the literary tradition with respect to the future as they exploit their precursors. When the city that was central (subject, protagonist and structural model) to Manhattan Transfer becomes two cities on the periphery of La modification, the work forsakes representationalism to concentrate on the structure of a process that is identical to the structure of the work. An approximation of a train ride from Paris to Rome during the course of which the protagonist decides to return to Paris, La modification takes form for content. It is and is about this process, which relates to its emerging "textuality" or awareness of its own fiber. The novel's activity parallels what Ortega y Gasset, in La deshumanizacion del arte, calls the adjustment of vision necessary to focus on the glass of a window through which one has been looking to see the garden (world) beyond. The work replaces attention to "reality" with attention to structure, and this emphasis on the process of construction dictates a view of the work as transitory. Alain Robbe-Grillet writes, in Pour un nouveau roman, that each new work breaks with tradition but necessitates a subsequent new departure, and La modification's inconclusive conclusion prepares for this aperture. The third chapter, which treats Julio Cortazar's Rayuela, documents its destruction of "real" space necessary to the creation of an autonomous textual reality. Rayuela employs two "real" cities as squares in a hopscotch game which the novel approximates. Just as the game relies on continual movement, Rayuela's interest lies in the dynamic process of its ongoing creation. Along with its mobility and conscious textuality, comes an attitude that fiction should not attempt to duplicate reality (which Cortazar finds misleading, at best) and that art is more a street game than an enduring, sacred "object."

Degree

Ph.D.

Subject Area

Comparative literature

COinS