This thesis analyzes the newness of ideas in Salman Rushdie’s narrative art in the following eight novels: Midnight’s Children, Shame, The Satanic Verses, Haroun and the Sea of Stories, The Moor’s Last Sigh, The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Furyy and Shalimar the Clown. These novels are concerned with the experience of formerly colonized, still disadvantaged peoples, uprooted, disoriented by the fragmentary tendency of postmodernism and undergoing metamorphosis in their postcolonial migrant conditions, which Rushdie believes represent a “metaphor for humanity” (IH 394). From Rushdie’s point of view, humanity is exposed to the transformation which “comes of new and unexpected combinations of human beings, cultures, ideas, politics, movies, songs” (IH 394). Humanity rejoices in “mongrelization (hybridization), and fears the absolutism of the Pure” (IH 394). In narrating such a medley of human existence, Rushdie creates a new literary language and a form to convey his perspectives of this uncertain world within which human beings have to exist. The thesis is structured in eight chapters interposed between an introduction and a conclusion. For its pivotal significance in Rushdie’s oeuvre The Satanic Verses occupies the first chapter; the other chapters are arranged in chronological order to represent the sequence of publication of the remaining seven novels. Each novel is concerned with a distinctive mise en scene, characterized by its unique motif depicting Rushdie’s insights into the predicament of human existence in a world of indeterminacy adrift in the historic confluence of postcolonialism, postmodernism and neo-colonialism. Ideologically, the thesis deconstructs Rushdie’s view of the world of migrants who are confounded by the force of entrenched metaphysical myths of unreliable provenance. Such view naturally leads Rushdie to critique all forms of fundamentalism which represses the freedom of expression to challenge conventional beliefs

The above named thesis is an inter-disciplinary study which considers John Berger’s multi-media storytelling project, located in the margins of Europe! the postmetropolis/ the canon, in the ‘global’ context of Euro-American postmodernism. This thesis is concerned with the question of how useful ‘theory’ and/or postmodernism might be in the understanding of Berger’s position, and with how Berger’s position might be used to re-locate ‘theory’, and to tell a radical story of postmodernism. The thesis focuses on Berger’s work from the mid 1970s to the mid 1990s. There are two main reasons for this. Firstly, because it was only after Berger emigrated, in 1974, that he declared himself to be a storyteller. And secondly, because the date of Berger’s emigration coincides with the period when the transition from a modern to a postmodern condition began to be felt. The thesis also focuses on Berger’s relation to Walter Benjamin and his writings about the dead, messianism, and storytelling. The argument advanced is that Benjamin’s - and Berger’s - writings about the dead should be read as emerging from and speaking to a specific historical conjuncture, or constellation; one in which the dominant, (post)metropolitan story of unilinear time and progress is coming to an end

This thesis examines the role of New York City in the construction of identity in the works of Paul Auster. It traces how Auster moves from a position of urban nihilism to one of qualified optimism for forms of social life and community in the contemporary metropolis. The work of cultural geographers offers a theoretical framework appropriate to Auster’s urban spatial imagination. Consequently, the chapters are organised in a continuity of spatial scales and examine the dialogue between urban theory and Auster’s fiction. Chapter 1 introduces cultural geography, and relates its key concerns to those in Auster’s work. Its commentators are organised into three perspectives: the ‘systemic’, the ‘local’, and the ‘global in the local’. Chapter 2 considers Auster’s poetry and early prose to demonstrate how a ‘systemic’ experience of the metropolis forces the writer to retreat to the isolation of his room. Chapters 3 and 4 examine the central themes of alienation and the failure of language on the streets of the metropolis in The New York Trilogy, and consider how, at this early point in his career, Auster understands the practices of writing and their relationship to the metropolis. Chapter 5 explores how Auster presents a ‘local’ experience of intimate social connections in ‘downtown’, and how these provide a fleeting stability for his characters. Chapter 6 journeys out of the metropolis to consider Auster’s representations of non-New York places, and the effects on identity of space and mobility. Chapter 7 examines spaces of the imagination through Auster’s representations of dystopic and utopian places, and the role of magic and illusion. Chapter 8 demonstrates how Auster presents a community able to ground a sense of identity in the collaborative practices of story telling and film making.

The thesis focuses on the representations of British political history in the last five decades in the works of Jonathan Coe in comparison with other contemporary British authors who deal with the same historical issues. Specifically I discuss how the transition from the post-war consensus politics and the welfare state to neoliberalism is represented, and how these transformations British society has undergone are the subject of political commentary and criticism in the works of Coe. I discuss the different stylistic approaches deployed by Coe to deal with history, framing my analysis in the context of a discussion around the genre of the historical novel. The comparative approach of my thesis serves the purpose of both providing a wider depiction of the historical period taken in consideration and provides a broader critical evaluation of recent trends in the genre of the historical novel. My thesis is divided in three chapters, each focusing on the representation of a specific historical period, namely: the 1970s and the erosion of the social structure of the welfare state, the 1980s and Thatcherism, and ultimately the 1990s, New Labour's reformulation of neoliberalism, Cool Britannia, and the 2007-2008 financial crisis and the society of the 'precariat'. My argument is theoretically is inscribed in the framework of the discourse around postmodernity. My interpretation of postmodernism relies heavily on Jameson's analysis of post-industrial, late-capitalist society from the 1970s onwards and is intended to contribute to recent arguments about neoliberalism and the novel. The definition of postmodernity is also drawn from Harvey, Lyotard, Eagleton, Baudrillard, Bauman, and Hutcheon. The theoretical discussion around neoliberal consumerist society is framed in the discourse of excess of desire production and constructed lack, and therefore I use the concept of schizophrenia as theorised by Deleuze and Guattari, drawn from the Lacanian tradition. Žižek's analysis of the last developments of the neoliberal society also contributes to the theoretical and interpretative framework of my thesis. My exploration of Coe's novels, The Rotters' Club, What a Carve Up!, The House of Sleep, The Closed Circle and The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim, in relation to other contemporary works by Amis, Hollinghurst, McEwan, Barnes, etc. reveals the ways in which Coe's historical novels of the late 20th/early 21st century rework the realist novel tradition in light of a postmodern (or schizophrenic) late capitalist society.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Florida State University, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 258-268). Electronic version also available.

Thèse de doctorat : Etudes anglophones : Paris 7 : 1995. / Bibliogr. p. 289-363.

Thesis--School of Advanced Airpower Studies. / Title from title screen (viewed Oct. 21, 2003). "May 1992." Includes bibliographical references.

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In his book The American Adam, R. W. B. Lewis suggests that the Adamic tradition accounts for the vitality of the large body of American fiction of the nineteenth century. It is my contention that Lewis' thesis can be applied to the fiction of Ernest Hemingway. After a brief discussion of the main tenets of Lewis' thesis, I would like to explore the way Hemingway makes use of the Adamic myth in his five major novels.

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