Thesis (Ed. D.)--Illinois State University, 1968. / Title from title page screen, viewed Aug. 19, 2004. Dissertation Committee: Virginia H. Vint (chair), F. Louis Hoover, Charles W. Edwards. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 68-73). Also available in print.

Thesis--Columbia Université. / Without thesis statement. Vita: p. [3] of cover. "Bibliographie": p. [184]-191.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, Berkeley, 1987. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 347-353).

Thesis (doctoral)--Hessische Ludwigs-Universität zu Giessen, 1933. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 82-86).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, Berkeley, 1987. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 347-353).

'The Work of Art in Postwar Fiction 1945-2001' explores the responses of postwar novelists to visual art by focusing on the work of Samuel Beckett, William Gaddis, John Berger and W.G. Sebald. In doing so, it opens up a new approach to understanding the relationship between fiction and art in the postwar period as a whole, for what distinguishes these writers is that they use an engagement with visual art in order to historicize their own work as distinctly 'postwar' fiction. This thesis shows that in the writings of these novelists, long running aesthetic issues in the study of the relationship between text and image are reformulated and transformed: medium specificity; ekphrasis; and visual representation as a model for literary realism. Drawing throughout on original archival research, The Work of Art in Postwar Fiction 1945-2001 traces what T.J. Clark terms the 'processes of conversion and relation' between art, its contexts and its commentators, and it is by studying these mediations that the literary consequences of the work of art for these writers are shown. With a historicizing approach throughout, and an interest in the ways in which postwar novelists mediate their engagement with art through history, this thesis contributes to a new understanding of the literature and art of the postwar era, or what Amy Hungerford has called 'the period formerly known as contemporary'. This thesis offers a revisionary account of a relationship previously subsumed under the dominant logic of postmodernism, which according to Fredric Jameson was defined by a 'waning of historicity'. In returning historicity as method and theme to the study of the relationship between literature and art since 1945, The Work of Art in Postwar Fiction 1945-2001 shows the diverse ways in which postwar writers historicized their writing, and reflected on their techniques, in dialogue with visual art. Concerning itself with the distinct challenges posed by focusing on what Hannah Ardent called the 'most recent' past, this thesis also develops new ways of thinking more broadly about the relationships between literature, art and history. Chapter 1, 'Reviewing Postwar Fiction', situates this thesis within recent debates in literary studies surrounding what Mark McGurl has termed a discipline-wide 'hegemony of history'. Chapter 2, on Samuel Beckett, argues that Beckett's postwar art criticism responds to a specific strand of Marxist humanist aesthetics developed after the war, and it studies Beckett's manuscripts to show the relationship between this criticism and the composition of The Unnamable. Chapter 3 discusses William Gaddis's 1955 novel The Recognitions, arguing that the novel pivots around some of the central cruxes of postwar American aesthetic debate: Clement Greenberg's theory of abstraction, and Michael Fried's identification of the problem of 'art and objecthood'. Chapter 4 discusses the work of the British art critic and novelist, John Berger. It shows that Berger's critical account of Cubism shaped the narrative forms of his novels A Painter of Our Time and G., and that these narrative innovations were central to his theory of the artistic and revolutionary 'moment'. Chapter 5 focuses on the relationship between photography, painting and aesthetics in the work of W. G. Sebald. It argues that aesthetic concepts such as 'the readymade' and 'objective chance' offer a better account of Sebald's engagement with art than accounts which draw on trauma theory. The thesis concludes with a short discussion of how the writers studied in this thesis have influenced the contemporary fiction of Jonathan Franzen, Teju Cole, and Tom McCarthy.

This thesis began with the desire to understand the gold ivy painted green that entwines the crystal fountain in Spenser's Bower of Bliss. Although this artificial vegetation struck me as an example of what twentieth-century critics would call "kitsch", I somehow felt that the poet himself was viewing his creation as an object of beauty. In order to test this feeling I began my research by examining the use of the terms "art" and "nature" in Elizabethan writing, for it seemed to me that in the definition of and the relationship between these two terms lay a key to Spenser's esthetic. The artist here has tried to make an artificial substance appear to be natural; reading the Elizabethan critics I found that such attempts at artistic deception were almost unanimously applauded. Spenser's age could not have formulated its esthetic intuitively, however, and in order to understand its historical perspective I have examined the relationship between "art" and "nature" in important historical periods before the Renaissance. Here it was found that at times when painting is dominant, as in the Renaissance, art's imitation of nature is understood naturalistlcally, and a convention of literary pictorialism arises. In the writings of the critics of the Italian Renaissance, art is praised for its approximation to nature, and the poet, like the painter, is admired for his accurate pictures. Turning to the Elizabethan critics I found an esthetic similar to that expressed by the Italian writers. A common philosophy lies behind this esthetic. It is believed that to imitate nature with accuracy is to reproduce in art the harmony of God's creation. In performing this imitation man the artist is demonstrating his relationship to God the Artist. It was found further that the Elizabethan environment also demonstrated the delight in art's ability to deceive that is expressed by the writers of the period. And we find in their surroundings, in visual support of the critical theories, that the Elizabethans are not only delighted when art appears to be nature, but that they are also delighted when nature appears to be art. Looking finally at Spenser's scenes, we find his period's esthetic exemplified. He bases his idea of the beautiful on the conception of a world made up of order and variety. He praises verisimilitude in art, delighting to see art appear to be nature. He also delights when he sees a natural scene that resembles art. In addition he describes with pleasure situations in which art and nature are in friendly competition, or, perhaps the most delightful relationship of all, situations in which art and nature play complementary roles. One of Spenser's characteristically Renaissance traits is his ability to separate ethics and esthetics. This point has often been overlooked for the gold ivy painted green has been dismissed in some previous criticism not as esthetically poor, but ethically, as evil. Rather, in Elizabethan eyes, It is basically an esthetic good and can be used by the poet to create a number of effects. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

Please read the abstract in chapter 6 / Thesis (DLitt (Afrikaans))--University of Pretoria, 2005. / Afrikaans / unrestricted

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