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This dissertation examines the work of Felipe Alfau, a Spanish-American writer who wrote two novels and a collection of children’s stories in the first half of the twentieth century which were the focus of a short-lived critical enthusiasm in the early 1990s. It recognizes the important contribution made by those early critics, but also tries to make a case for a reading of Alfau at variance with the kinds of readings his work has previously received. Specifically, it points at structural and thematic complexities in Alfau’s narratives that have been attributed to his experimentation with self-reflexivity and metafiction, experimentation which many have claimed anticipates the work of writers of the second half of the century. My dissertation shows how other unrelated concerns may have led him to boldly reconsider the parameters of narrative form. I contend that for Alfau confabulation, collaboration, and art are generators of narratives that present the self as an insoluble mystery. What I intend to demonstrate is that Alfau views these sources as problematic repositories that fail to capture and preserve human experience, yet simultaneously believes that they are the only means at our disposal for doing so. His narratives communicate the frustrations such a paradox entails, but also celebrate human faith in those means in spite of such frustrations.

This dissertation examines the work of Felipe Alfau, a Spanish-American writer who wrote two novels and a collection of children’s stories in the first half of the twentieth century which were the focus of a short-lived critical enthusiasm in the early 1990s. It recognizes the important contribution made by those early critics, but also tries to make a case for a reading of Alfau at variance with the kinds of readings his work has previously received. Specifically, it points at structural and thematic complexities in Alfau’s narratives that have been attributed to his experimentation with self-reflexivity and metafiction, experimentation which many have claimed anticipates the work of writers of the second half of the century. My dissertation shows how other unrelated concerns may have led him to boldly reconsider the parameters of narrative form. I contend that for Alfau confabulation, collaboration, and art are generators of narratives that present the self as an insoluble mystery. What I intend to demonstrate is that Alfau views these sources as problematic repositories that fail to capture and preserve human experience, yet simultaneously believes that they are the only means at our disposal for doing so. His narratives communicate the frustrations such a paradox entails, but also celebrate human faith in those means in spite of such frustrations.

published_or_final_version / Comparative Literature / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

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The renewed interest in representational figure painting that occurred in the 1960s and 1970s caused artists, art historians, and critics to consider whether or not this contemporary work belonged to the abstract, modernist direction painting had taken in the 20th century. This paper considered the problem as it was reflected in the careers of contemporary figure painters Philip Pearlstein, Jack Beal, and Alfred Leslie. The opinions of critics and historians and the views of the artists themselves were researched. The critics reached the consensus that all three artists' works were a logical extension of the modernist tradition in painting. Pearlstein concurred. He felt strongly that subject matter was irrelevant if the artist's attitude toward it was modernist in sensibility. Beal and Leslie found that abstract modern art was of little interest to them and concerned themselves with figure painting as a narrative genre allowing personal expression.The author also used this issue as a framework for the evaluation of her own series of three representational oil paintings of human figures wrapped in fabric. After describing the paintings, she concluded that they did reveal aspects of the artists' and critics' criteria of modernism (i.e. evenness of detail, large scale, and aggressive imagery) that should be pushed further in future work.

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