This dissertation demonstrates that irrationality in representative modernist novels is a significant and valuable feature of subjectivity. Building on contemporary theories of the novel, the thesis develops two closely related issues: the novel as an aesthetic vehicle of subjectivity and the novel as a reflection of its socio-historical moment. In major novels by William Faulkner, Hermann Broch, and Virginia Woolf a surrender to irrationality is paradoxically portrayed as a positive act which can contribute to a more complete fulfilment of the self. Furthermore, twentieth century notions of the self are often expanded, complicated, or revised at least in part through the genre of the novel which is used to represent them. / In three main chapters, the thesis draws an original link between studies of the novel as genre on the one hand, and explorations of the meaning of irrationality in early twentieth century fiction on the other. The first on Faulkner includes a section outlining my research into the theoretical domain of subjectivity, irrationality, modernism, and the novel which serves as a background for Faulkner, but remains pertinent also to the chapters on Broch and Woolf which follow. With reference to recent social theorists, philosophers of the novel, medical researchers, and literary critics, the dissertation establishes that Faulkner Broch, and Woolf construct works which advance the notion that irrationality can be conducive to the development of an autonomous, private self which is actively engaged in the outside world. Moreover, in each of the novels at the centre of this study, irrational characters personify an aspect of the novel which is essential to the structural development of the genre. / Key works by Faulkner, Broch, and Woolf insist that irrationality is at the core of a dynamic and modernist representation of identity. In novels by Faulkner, irrationality contributes to a flexible sense of time and to the elaboration of a valuable intersubjective communication. In Broch's trilogy, an irrational approach to reality encourages the development of a temporal, ethical, and subjective freedom. For Woolf, the validation of irrational impulses restrains a compulsive and debilitating drive towards introspection and facilitates social interaction.

Thesis (doctoral)--ELTE Universität, Budapest, 2001.