Inaug.-Diss., Erlangen. / "Literaturverzeichnis": p. 67-69.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Pennsylvania, 1936. / Bibliography: p. 100-102.

This thesis discusses the oriental fiction of W. Somerset Maugham in the light of current theoretical models introduced by postcolonial and gender studies. Immensely popular from their time of publication to the present, Maugham's novels and short stories set in Asia and the South Pacific exhibit a consummate recycling of colonialist tropes. Through their manipulation of racial, gender, and geographical binarisms, Maugham's texts produce a fantasy of a seemingly stable British male subjectivity based upon emotional and somatic continence, rationality, and specularity. The status of the British male subject is tested and confirmed by his activity in the colonies. Maugham's situation of writing as a homosexual man, however, results in affiliations which cut across the binary oppositions which structure Maugham's texts, destabilising the integrity of the subject they strive so assiduously to create. Commencing with Maugham's novel The Moon and Sixpence, and his short story collection The Trembling of a Leaf, both of which are set in the South Pacific, the thesis moves to a discussion of Maugham's Chinese travelogue, On a Chinese Screen, and his Hong Kong novel, The Painted Veil. Further chapters explore the Malayan short stories, and Maugham's novel set in the then Dutch East Indies, The Narrow Corner. A final chapter discusses Maugham's novel of India, The Razor's Edge. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Maugham does not even attempt a liberal critique of British Imperialism. Writing and narration are, for him, processes closely identified with codes of imperial manliness. Maugham's putatively objective narrators, and the public "Maugham persona" which the writer carefully cultivated, display a strong investment in the British male subjectivity outlined above. Yet Maugham's texts also endlessly discover writing as a play of signification, of decoration, of qualities that he explicitly associates in other texts with homosexuality. If Maugham's texts do not critique the formation of colonial subjects they do, to a critical reader, make the rhetoric necessary to create such subjects peculiarly visible.

This thesis discusses the oriental fiction of W. Somerset Maugham in the light of current theoretical models introduced by postcolonial and gender studies. Immensely popular from their time of publication to the present, Maugham's novels and short stories set in Asia and the South Pacific exhibit a consummate recycling of colonialist tropes. Through their manipulation of racial, gender, and geographical binarisms, Maugham's texts produce a fantasy of a seemingly stable British male subjectivity based upon emotional and somatic continence, rationality, and specularity. The status of the British male subject is tested and confirmed by his activity in the colonies. Maugham's situation of writing as a homosexual man, however, results in affiliations which cut across the binary oppositions which structure Maugham's texts, destabilising the integrity of the subject they strive so assiduously to create. Commencing with Maugham's novel The Moon and Sixpence, and his short story collection The Trembling of a Leaf, both of which are set in the South Pacific, the thesis moves to a discussion of Maugham's Chinese travelogue, On a Chinese Screen, and his Hong Kong novel, The Painted Veil. Further chapters explore the Malayan short stories, and Maugham's novel set in the then Dutch East Indies, The Narrow Corner. A final chapter discusses Maugham's novel of India, The Razor's Edge. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Maugham does not even attempt a liberal critique of British Imperialism. Writing and narration are, for him, processes closely identified with codes of imperial manliness. Maugham's putatively objective narrators, and the public "Maugham persona" which the writer carefully cultivated, display a strong investment in the British male subjectivity outlined above. Yet Maugham's texts also endlessly discover writing as a play of signification, of decoration, of qualities that he explicitly associates in other texts with homosexuality. If Maugham's texts do not critique the formation of colonial subjects they do, to a critical reader, make the rhetoric necessary to create such subjects peculiarly visible. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

This study analyzes the expression of Maugham's ironic vision in his short stories set in the South Seas and Southeast Asia. Through point of view, setting, character, and plot, Maugham explores the dialectic of expectation outcome, hope-disappointment, and illusion-reality. In the exotic short stories, not only do Maugham's characters confront this dialectic, but readers do as well. Using irony as a heuristic, Maugham prods his readers into rethinking unexamined assumptions about human nature and about the often disillusioning repercussions of clinging to ideals or having unrealistic expectations of life.The narrative voice in Maugham's stories, whether that of the omniscient or the dramatized first-person narrator, draws attention to the discrepancy between the ideal and the actual, using irony to highlight characterization as people are shown to be something other than they might be or what they are. Further, the narrators also establish a context for irony by inviting readers to share their insights on characters and conflicts, thereby emphasizing their distance from the characters who speak and act in ignorance of the actual state of affairs.Relying upon the conventions of realism, which assumes that man may find his destiny shaped by his responses to an environment, and using that environment to achieve artistic ends, Maugham demonstrates that setting generates irony as it precipitates tension, conflict, and sudden revelations of character. In other instances, the irony grows from Maugham's explorations of his characters' expectations of the exotic settings, suggesting that the tropical paradises are places of nightmares, as well as dreams.The volatile combination of setting and character often erupts in shocking plot reversals that have become the hallmark of Maugham's narrative techniques. The ironies of plot surface as characters and the first-person narrators confront realities that have been hidden or that have been denied. In many cases, the characters and the narrators have allowed their ideals or expectations to mislead them or cloud their judgment. Other plot ironies occur with the frame stories, as the narrators connect the fictive world of the story to the factual world of the reader, thus juxtaposing the ironic dialectic of reality and fiction.Throughout the exotic short stories, the designs of Maugham's narrative technique suggest that irony effectively expresses his philosophic stance on the ambiguity of human motives and the futility of idealism. / Department of English