Exploring the traffic between U.S. literary culture and political philosophy, this thesis surveys works by a range of leading male contemporary American novelists alongside the recent resurgent interest in friendship as a political concept. Long exiled from serious political philosophy, friendship returned as a crucial term in late twentieth-century communitarian debates about citizenship. Friendship also became integral to continental philosophy's exploration of the ontology of democracy, and, in a different guise, to histories of sexuality. Across these disciplines, friendship has been invoked as a pliable figure of affiliation, and often idealised as modelling equality. This thesis probes the origins of friendship's re-emergence in American political thought, and analyses how this far-reaching revival has registered in American fiction. The Introduction outlines how friendship has played a central role in the theory and practice of democratic politics since Aristotle suggested philia as fundamental to citizenship. In the U.S. context, male friendship in particular functioned as model for civic association in the nascent republic, and continued to be employed as a figure of egalitarian association in canonical works of nineteenth-century fiction. Yet despite its prominence historically in the U.S. civic imaginary, friendship was sidelined from American political culture for much of the twentieth century, until its rediscovery in the 1980s and 1990s as part of a wide-ranging critique of liberal individualism. The Introduction analyses how this renewal of critical commentary within mainstream liberal thought mirrored continental philosophy's contemporaneous exploration of democratic theory, wherein friendship was similarly examined as a vexed yet evocative site for the contestation of forms of political community. Marshalling this history, the thesis' main chapters argue that contemporary U.S. fiction continues to look to male friendship to explore questions of civic affiliation, political agency, and community, and to probe the history of these concepts in twentieth-century American liberalism. Chapter One focuses on Philip Roth's I Married a Communist (1998) and The Human Stain (2000), and analyses how Roth connects the political culture of the 1940s to the 1990s through the male friendships framing each narrative. Chapter Two draws on the anthropology of the gift to examine forms of reciprocity between male friends in Paul Auster's fiction. Chapter Three considers how novels by Michael Chabon and Jonathan Lethem contextualise their portrayals of interracial male friendship within the legacies of 1960s political radicalism. A Conclusion considers how some of the key themes emerging in previous chapters are reflected in Benjamin Markovits' You Don't Have to Live Like This (2015).

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My study seeks to explore the interest that Spanish women authors such as Josefina Aldecoa, Carme Riera, Nuria Amat, Esther Tusquets, Marina Mayoral, Carmen Martín Gaite, and Olga Guirao have taken in the revival of epistolary fiction in recent decades. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century epistolary fiction in Spain was conditioned by social practices and by literary conventions that typically confined its heroines to an amorous plot and women authors to anonymity. I contend that if modern tradition of epistolary practices and other male-discriminatory practices kept women writers silenced or invisible in the Spanish literary world, contemporary women writers sketch themselves back into their texts. Fictional letters function as written self-portraits for them to reflect and tell their own stories, thereby creating a playful mirror effect between the fictional epistolographer and the historical author. By pushing the conventional boundaries of letter writing as a sentimental genre, contemporary women authors take liberty to rewrite female representation and to give the fictional protagonists a new voice and visibility. They revisit the theme of love in epistolary literature to explore refashioned—and often transgressive—discourses on gender, sexuality, and subject identity.

Esta dissertação estuda o papel do sujeito na literatura e sua relação com a cultura e alteridade através da análise de duas obras: Nove noites, de Bernardo de Carvalho e Coração das Trevas de Joseph Conrad. As obras estudadas mostram a crise que atinge os protagonistas dos dois livros depois do encontro com outras culturas. Em Nove noites o outro é representado pelo índio e em Coração das Trevas pelos africanos. Em Nove noites o antropólogo Buell Quain se suicida depois de uma estada entre os índios Krahô, e em Coração das Trevas vemos a deterioração do homem branco representada pelo personagem de Kurtz. Considerado um homem notável e um altruísta na Europa, Kurtz teria se corrompido no contato com a realidade do Congo e se torna, nas palavras do narrador Marlow, um dos demônios da terra. A dissolução da personalidade e código moral do homem branco, representada pelos dois personagens, será estudada analisando a relação entre personalidade e cultura e como a falta de apoio e controle grupal desarticula valores até então considerados estáveis, assim como o contato com o outro. Esta desarticulação do sujeito causada pelo choque cultural se soma à crise geral do sujeito moderno e ao mal-estar na civilização, como descrito por Freud. A posição paradoxal do antropólogo, que se situa entre duas culturas, faz parte desta análise, do mesmo modo questões pertinentes a posição dos índios e africanos no Congo. No caso específico de Coração das Trevas trabalha-se a interseção entre a análise do sujeito, e suas implicações, e a construção do personagem de Kurtz como símbolo da violência colonial. O trabalho analisa também as semelhanças entre as duas obras, tanto temáticas como em suas técnicas narrativas e a influência da obra de Conrad nos romances de Carvalho / This dissertation studies the role of subject in literature and its relation to culture and alterity through the analysis of two works: Nine Nights by Bernardo Carvalho and Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. This work show the crisis that the protagonists of both books faces after the encounter with other cultures. In Nine nights the Indian and Heart of Darkness by Africans represents the other. Nine nights tells the story of the anthropologist Buell Quain who commits suicide after a stay between the Indians Krahô, and in Heart of Darkness we see the deterioration of the white man represented by the character of Kurtz. Considered a remarkable man and an unselfish in Europe, Kurtz would have been corrupted by contact with the reality of the Congo and becomes, in the words of the narrator Marlow, one of the demons of the land. The dissolution of the personality and moral code of the white man, represented by two characters, will be studied by analyzing the relationship between personality and culture and how the lack of support and control of the group disarticulates values until then considered stable, as well as the contact with other cultures. The disarticulation of the subject caused by culture shock adds to the general crisis of the modern subject and the discontents of civilization, as described by Freud. The paradoxical position of the anthropologist, which is situated between two cultures, is part of this analysis, even as questions regarding the position of Indians and Africans in the Congo. In the specific case of Heart of Darkness will be studied a intersection between the analysis of the subject, and their implications, and the construction of the character of Kurtz as a symbol of colonial violence. The paper also examines the similarities between the two works, both in thematic and in narrative techniques in their work and influence of Conrad's novels Carvalho

Esta dissertação estuda o papel do sujeito na literatura e sua relação com a cultura e alteridade através da análise de duas obras: Nove noites, de Bernardo de Carvalho e Coração das Trevas de Joseph Conrad. As obras estudadas mostram a crise que atinge os protagonistas dos dois livros depois do encontro com outras culturas. Em Nove noites o outro é representado pelo índio e em Coração das Trevas pelos africanos. Em Nove noites o antropólogo Buell Quain se suicida depois de uma estada entre os índios Krahô, e em Coração das Trevas vemos a deterioração do homem branco representada pelo personagem de Kurtz. Considerado um homem notável e um altruísta na Europa, Kurtz teria se corrompido no contato com a realidade do Congo e se torna, nas palavras do narrador Marlow, um dos demônios da terra. A dissolução da personalidade e código moral do homem branco, representada pelos dois personagens, será estudada analisando a relação entre personalidade e cultura e como a falta de apoio e controle grupal desarticula valores até então considerados estáveis, assim como o contato com o outro. Esta desarticulação do sujeito causada pelo choque cultural se soma à crise geral do sujeito moderno e ao mal-estar na civilização, como descrito por Freud. A posição paradoxal do antropólogo, que se situa entre duas culturas, faz parte desta análise, do mesmo modo questões pertinentes a posição dos índios e africanos no Congo. No caso específico de Coração das Trevas trabalha-se a interseção entre a análise do sujeito, e suas implicações, e a construção do personagem de Kurtz como símbolo da violência colonial. O trabalho analisa também as semelhanças entre as duas obras, tanto temáticas como em suas técnicas narrativas e a influência da obra de Conrad nos romances de Carvalho / This dissertation studies the role of subject in literature and its relation to culture and alterity through the analysis of two works: Nine Nights by Bernardo Carvalho and Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. This work show the crisis that the protagonists of both books faces after the encounter with other cultures. In Nine nights the Indian and Heart of Darkness by Africans represents the other. Nine nights tells the story of the anthropologist Buell Quain who commits suicide after a stay between the Indians Krahô, and in Heart of Darkness we see the deterioration of the white man represented by the character of Kurtz. Considered a remarkable man and an unselfish in Europe, Kurtz would have been corrupted by contact with the reality of the Congo and becomes, in the words of the narrator Marlow, one of the demons of the land. The dissolution of the personality and moral code of the white man, represented by two characters, will be studied by analyzing the relationship between personality and culture and how the lack of support and control of the group disarticulates values until then considered stable, as well as the contact with other cultures. The disarticulation of the subject caused by culture shock adds to the general crisis of the modern subject and the discontents of civilization, as described by Freud. The paradoxical position of the anthropologist, which is situated between two cultures, is part of this analysis, even as questions regarding the position of Indians and Africans in the Congo. In the specific case of Heart of Darkness will be studied a intersection between the analysis of the subject, and their implications, and the construction of the character of Kurtz as a symbol of colonial violence. The paper also examines the similarities between the two works, both in thematic and in narrative techniques in their work and influence of Conrad's novels Carvalho

Die Dissertation führt den Begriff des Schauerrealismus (gothic realism) als Werkzeug zur Analyse explizit politischer Gegenwartsliteratur ein. Hierbei thematisiert die Arbeit die kulturelle Arbeit des realistischen Gegenwartsromans und begreift Konventionen der Schauerliteratur als Ausdrucksmittel politischer Aktualität und als kulturelle Marker einer als krisenhaft empfundenen Gegenwart. Gleichzeitig leistet die Arbeit so einen kritischen Beitrag zur gegenwärtigen Periodisierungsdebatte im Bereich der amerikanischen Literatur, indem sie an Hand detaillierter Fallstudien die literarische Methodik und kulturell-politische Arbeit realistischer Romane herausarbeitet, die sich im Spannungsfeld zwischen einem Selbstbekenntnis zum Realismus und dem bewussten Einsatz von Konventionen klassischer Schauerliteratur einer klaren Periodisierungsabsicht entziehen. Basierend auf einem Textkorpus der Romane The Dead Zone und Cujo von Stephen King schlägt die Arbeit den Bogen zum gegenwärtigen realistischen Werk von Cara Hoffman und Julia Keller, um herauszuarbeiten, wie schauerliterarische Tropen als realistisches Ausdrucksmittel einen essentiellen Beitrag zur politischen und kulturellen Arbeit amerikanischer Gegenwartsliteratur leisten. / The dissertation introduces the term “gothic realism“ as a tool to analyze explicitly political contemporary literature. The work discusses the cultural work of the realist contemporary novel and conceptualizes conventions of gothic fiction as a means to express political actuality and as an indicator of a zeitgeist characterized by crisis. At the same time, the work critically contributes to the current periodization debate in American literature by offering detailed readings of the literary method and cultural work of realist novels that veer between a self-professed realism and the explicit use of gothic convention. By doing so, these texts escape clear efforts of periodization. Based on the Stephen King novels The Dead Zone and Cujo, the work theorizes and reads contemporary novels by Cara Hoffman and Julia Keller to show how tropes of gothic fiction as a realist means of representation fundamentally contribute to the cultural and political work of contemporary American literature.

This doctoral thesis examines the ways in which contemporary writers have adopted the critical dystopian mode in order to radically deconstruct the socio-political conditions that preclude equality, inclusion and collective political appearance in twenty-first century Britain. The thesis performs theoretically-informed close readings of contemporary novels from authors J.G. Ballard, Maggie Gee, Sarah Hall and Rupert Thomson in its analysis, and argues that the speculative visions of Kingdom Come (2006), The Flood (2004), The Carhullan Army (2007) and Divided Kingdom (2005) are engaged with a wave of contemporary dystopian writing in which the destructive and divisive forms of consensus that are to be found within Britain's contemporary socio-political moment are identified and challenged. The thesis proposes that, in their politically-engaged extrapolations, contemporary British writers are engaged with specifically dystopian expressions of dissensus. Reflecting key theoretical and political nuances found in Jacques Rancière's concept of 'dissensus', I argue that the novels illustrate dissensual interventions within the imagined political space of British societies in which inequalities, oppressions and exclusions are endemic - often proceeding to present modest, 'minor' utopian arguments for more equal, heterogeneous and democratic possibilities in the process. Contributing new, theoretically-inflected analysis of key speculative fictions from twenty-first century British writers, and locating their critiques within the literary, socio-political and theoretical contexts they are meaningfully engaged with, the thesis ultimately argues that in interrogating and reimagining the socio-political spaces of twenty-first century Britain, contemporary writers of dystopian fiction demonstrate literature working in its most dissensual, political and transformative mode.

Ireland is not a country unfamiliar with trauma. It is an island widely known for its history with Vikings, famine, and as a colony of the English empire. Inevitably, then, these traumas surface in the literature from the nation. Much of the literature that was produced, especially after the decline in the Irish language after the Great Famine of the 1840s, focused on national identity. In the nineteenth century, there was a growing movement for Irish cultural identity, illustrated by authors John Millington Synge and William Butler Yeats; this movement was identified as the Gaelic Revival. Another movement in literature began in the nineteenth century and it reflected the social and political anxieties of the Anglo-Irish middle class in Ireland. This movement is the beginning of the Gothic genre in Irish literature. Dominated by authors such as Sheridan Le Fanu and Bram Stoker, Gothic novels used aspects of the sublime and the uncanny to express the fears and apprehensions that existed in Anglo-Irish identity in the nineteenth century. My goal in writing this thesis is to examine Gothic aspects of contemporary Irish fiction in order to address the anxieties of Irish identity after the Irish War of Independence that began in 1919 and the resulting division of Ireland into two countries. I will be examining Patrick McCabe's The Butcher Boy, Seamus Deane's Reading in the Dark, and Anna Burns' No Bones in order to evaluate their use of children amidst the trouble surrounding the formation of identity, both personal and national, in Northern Ireland. All three novels use gothic elements in order to produce an atmosphere of the uncanny (Freud); this effect is used to enlighten the theme of arrested development in national identity through the children protagonists, who are inescapably haunted by Ireland's repressed traumatic history.; Specifically, I will be focusing on the use of ghosts, violence, and hauntings to illuminate the social anxieties felt by Northern Ireland after the Irish War of Independence.