Zugleich: Diss. Würzburg, 2007. / Literaturverz.

This study arose out of what I saw as a gap in the criticism of Patrick White's fiction in which satire and its related subversive forms are largely overlooked. It consequently reads five of White's post-1948 novels from the standpoint of satire. It discusses the history and various theories of satire to develop an analytic framework appropriate to his satire and it conducts a comprehensive review of the critical literature to account for the development of the dominant orthodox religious approach to his fiction. It compares aspects of White's satire to aspects of the satire produced by some of the notable exemplars of the English and American traditions and it takes issue with a number of the readings produced by the religious and other established approaches to White's fiction. I initially establish White as a satirist by elaborating the social satire that emerges incidentally in The Tree of Man and rather more episodically in Voss. I investigate White's sources for Voss to shed light on the extent of his engagement with history, on his commitment to historical accuracy, and on the extent to which this is a serious high-minded historical work in which he seeks to teach us more about our selves, particularly about our history and identity. The way White expands his satire in Voss given that it is an eminently historical novel is instructive in terms of his purposes. I illustrate White's burgeoning use of satire by elaborating the extended and sometimes extravagant satire that he develops in Riders in the Chariot, by investigating the turn inwards upon his own creative activity that occurs when he experiments with a variant subversive form, satire by parody, in The Eye of the Storm, and by examining his use of the devices, tropes, and strategies of post-modem grotesque satire in The Twyborn Affair. My reading of White's novels from the standpoint of satire enables me to identify an important development within his oeuvre that involves a shift away from the symbolic realism of The Aunt's Story (1948) and the two novels that precede it to a mode of writing that is initially historical in The Tree of Man and Voss but which becomes increasingly satirical as White expands his satire and experiments with such related forms as burlesque, parody, parodic satire, and grotesque satire in his subsequent novels. I thus chart a change in the nature of his satire that reflects a dramatic movement away from the ontological concerns of modernism to the epistemological concerns of post-modernism. Consequent upon this, I pinpoint the changes in the philosophy that his satire bears as its ultimate meaning. I examine the links between the five novels and White's own period to establish the socio-historical referentiality of his satire. I argue that because his engagement with Australian history, society, and culture, is ongoing and thorough, then these five novels together comprise a subjective history of the period, serving to complement our knowledge in these areas. This study demonstrates that White's writing, because of the ongoing development of his satire, is never static but ever-changing. He is not simply or exclusively a religious or otherwise metaphysical novelist, or a symbolist-allegorist, or a psychological realist, or any other kind of generic writer. Finally, I demonstrate that White exceeds the categories that his critics have tried to impose upon him.

<p>Patrick White is a man divided: one part of him strives for permanence, surety, the ideal, while knowing the contingent, temporal realm he inhabits must inevitably undermine such striving. The desire, and the knowledge of its futility, leads him into a misanthropic devaluation of human creative possibility and, complementarily, into the arbitrary use of imposed symbolic resolutions directed to an elect who can "see". It has been this part of White, largely, that criticism has been industrious in explicating, if not in quite the terms I have used above. But there is another part of White which strains away from the former dualism of idealism and despair, significance and banality, towards a vital wholeness to be apprehended in human relationships. It is this aspect of White which embodies his genuine novelistic power and which, consequently, helps us to understand and place" the former "cerebral" response to the complexity of finding meaning in the twentieth century.</p> <p>The present study deals with four novels in four chapters, and briefly discusses a fifth in an epilogue. It opens with an introduction in which I link the division found in White to T.S. Eliot's theory of the "dissociation of sensibility", and so to the major modernists, Eliot, Yeats, and Lawrence. I then devote a chapter to each of The Aunt's Story (1948), Riders in the Chariot (1961), The Vivisector (1970), and A Fringe of Leaves (1976). The main thrust of these chapters is to demonstrate how White's development as a writer moves from ambivalence toward his vision, through a compensatory rigid dualism, to an increasing awareness and acknowledgement of the reality that creative relationship offers. The epilogue comments briefly on White's most recent novel, The Twyborn Affair (1979), in which he indulges many of the predilections he had sufficiently "placed" through the writing of A Fringe of Leaves. Evidence that White has not forgotten the discoveries of Fringe is present, but in a tenuous form. Though White's creativity is of major status, the divisions that tend to undermine it still have a powerful hold on him.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Nikos Kazantzakis� Captain Michales is a freedom fighter in nineteenth century Crete. Patrick White�s Voss is a German explorer in nineteenth century Australia. Two men struggling for achievement, their disparate social contexts united in the same fundamental search for meaning. This thesis makes comparison of these different struggles through thematic analysis of the texts, examining within the narratives the role of food, perceptions of body and soul, landscapes, gender relations, home-coming and religious experience. Themes from the novels are extracted and intertwined, within a range of theoretical frameworks: history, anthropology, science, literary and social theories, religion and politics; allowing close investigation of each novel�s social, political and historical particularities, as well as their underlying discussion of perennial human issues. These novels are each essentially explorations of the human experience. Read together, they highlight the commonest of human elements, most poignantly the need for communion; facilitating analysis of the individual and all our communities. Comparing the two novels also continues the process of each: examining the self both within and outside of the narratives, producing a new textual self, arising from both primary sources and the contextual breadth of such rewriting.

Nikos Kazantzakis� Captain Michales is a freedom fighter in nineteenth century Crete. Patrick White�s Voss is a German explorer in nineteenth century Australia. Two men struggling for achievement, their disparate social contexts united in the same fundamental search for meaning. This thesis makes comparison of these different struggles through thematic analysis of the texts, examining within the narratives the role of food, perceptions of body and soul, landscapes, gender relations, home-coming and religious experience. Themes from the novels are extracted and intertwined, within a range of theoretical frameworks: history, anthropology, science, literary and social theories, religion and politics; allowing close investigation of each novel�s social, political and historical particularities, as well as their underlying discussion of perennial human issues. These novels are each essentially explorations of the human experience. Read together, they highlight the commonest of human elements, most poignantly the need for communion; facilitating analysis of the individual and all our communities. Comparing the two novels also continues the process of each: examining the self both within and outside of the narratives, producing a new textual self, arising from both primary sources and the contextual breadth of such rewriting.

Este trabalho apresenta uma análise intertextual do romance The Solid Mandala, do escritor australiano, ganhador do prêmio Nobel, Patrick White, publicado em 1966, como parte de um esforço para estimular estudos sobre sua obra no Brasil e para investigar por que sua fortuna crítica tem passado por uma fase negativa recentemente. Primeiro, mostramos brevemente sua biografia e as condições relacionadas à produção e publicação de The Solid Mandala. Em seguida, apresentamos o contexto histórico do romance. As relações de conflito e complementação envolvendo os irmãos gêmeos Waldo e Arthur Brown na narrativa são analisadas, com destaque para a relação deles com a literatura (um tema importante no romance), retratando o papel das personagens como leitores e escritores na história, apreendendo, assim, seus sentimentos, suas visões de mundo e filosofia de vida (Waldo aspira à uma carreira de escritor e Arthur de fato compõe um poema). Os estudos de Gérard Genette sobre Narratologia são utilizados para embasar a análise, particularmente na relação intertextual entre The Solid Mandala e The Brothers Karamazov, do escritor F. Dostoyevsky, que é o título que chama a atenção de Arthur. Na busca pelo todo de sua vida, Arthur incorpora vários elementos (centrados em um único ponto, suas mandalas) e consegue criar sua própria filosofia. No final vemos que Arthur transcende sua realidade ao usar a leitura do romance russo como um instrumento. Esse estudo destaca a pertinência de revisitar a obra de Patrick White (uma vez que ela prova estar em sintonia com as questões filosóficas sendo discutidas atualmente) e coloca The Solid Mandala no contexto da literatura mundial. / This work performs an intertextual analysis of the Nobel Prize winning Australian novelist Patrick White’s The Solid Mandala, published in 1966, as part of an effort to boost studies of his novels in Brazil and to investigate why his critical fortune has been undergoing a negative phase recently. First, we briefly present his biography and the conditions surrounding the writing and publication of The Solid Mandala. Later on, we present the historical context of the novel. The relations of conflict and complementation involving the twin brothers Waldo and Arthur Brown in the narrative are analysed, but we focus on their relation to literature (which is an important theme in the novel), depicting their roles as readers and writers in the story, thus, apprehending their feelings towards each other, worldviews and outlook on life (Waldo aspires to become a great writer, and Arthur actually produces a poem). Gérard Genette’s studies on Narratology are used to support our analysis, particularly in the intertextual relation between The Solid Mandala and F. Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, which is the title that calls Arthur’s attention. In his pursue to find the whole of his life, Arthur incorporates various elements (centred at just one point, his mandalas) and is able to create his own philosophy. At the end we see that Arthur transcends his reality by using the reading of the Russian novel as an instrument. This study enlightens the pertinence of revisiting Patrick White’s oeuvre (since it proves to be so well tuned in to the current philosophical issues being discussed), and places The Solid Mandala in the context of worldwide literature.

Este trabalho apresenta uma análise intertextual do romance The Solid Mandala, do escritor australiano, ganhador do prêmio Nobel, Patrick White, publicado em 1966, como parte de um esforço para estimular estudos sobre sua obra no Brasil e para investigar por que sua fortuna crítica tem passado por uma fase negativa recentemente. Primeiro, mostramos brevemente sua biografia e as condições relacionadas à produção e publicação de The Solid Mandala. Em seguida, apresentamos o contexto histórico do romance. As relações de conflito e complementação envolvendo os irmãos gêmeos Waldo e Arthur Brown na narrativa são analisadas, com destaque para a relação deles com a literatura (um tema importante no romance), retratando o papel das personagens como leitores e escritores na história, apreendendo, assim, seus sentimentos, suas visões de mundo e filosofia de vida (Waldo aspira à uma carreira de escritor e Arthur de fato compõe um poema). Os estudos de Gérard Genette sobre Narratologia são utilizados para embasar a análise, particularmente na relação intertextual entre The Solid Mandala e The Brothers Karamazov, do escritor F. Dostoyevsky, que é o título que chama a atenção de Arthur. Na busca pelo todo de sua vida, Arthur incorpora vários elementos (centrados em um único ponto, suas mandalas) e consegue criar sua própria filosofia. No final vemos que Arthur transcende sua realidade ao usar a leitura do romance russo como um instrumento. Esse estudo destaca a pertinência de revisitar a obra de Patrick White (uma vez que ela prova estar em sintonia com as questões filosóficas sendo discutidas atualmente) e coloca The Solid Mandala no contexto da literatura mundial. / This work performs an intertextual analysis of the Nobel Prize winning Australian novelist Patrick White’s The Solid Mandala, published in 1966, as part of an effort to boost studies of his novels in Brazil and to investigate why his critical fortune has been undergoing a negative phase recently. First, we briefly present his biography and the conditions surrounding the writing and publication of The Solid Mandala. Later on, we present the historical context of the novel. The relations of conflict and complementation involving the twin brothers Waldo and Arthur Brown in the narrative are analysed, but we focus on their relation to literature (which is an important theme in the novel), depicting their roles as readers and writers in the story, thus, apprehending their feelings towards each other, worldviews and outlook on life (Waldo aspires to become a great writer, and Arthur actually produces a poem). Gérard Genette’s studies on Narratology are used to support our analysis, particularly in the intertextual relation between The Solid Mandala and F. Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, which is the title that calls Arthur’s attention. In his pursue to find the whole of his life, Arthur incorporates various elements (centred at just one point, his mandalas) and is able to create his own philosophy. At the end we see that Arthur transcends his reality by using the reading of the Russian novel as an instrument. This study enlightens the pertinence of revisiting Patrick White’s oeuvre (since it proves to be so well tuned in to the current philosophical issues being discussed), and places The Solid Mandala in the context of worldwide literature.

Este trabalho apresenta uma análise intertextual do romance The Solid Mandala, do escritor australiano, ganhador do prêmio Nobel, Patrick White, publicado em 1966, como parte de um esforço para estimular estudos sobre sua obra no Brasil e para investigar por que sua fortuna crítica tem passado por uma fase negativa recentemente. Primeiro, mostramos brevemente sua biografia e as condições relacionadas à produção e publicação de The Solid Mandala. Em seguida, apresentamos o contexto histórico do romance. As relações de conflito e complementação envolvendo os irmãos gêmeos Waldo e Arthur Brown na narrativa são analisadas, com destaque para a relação deles com a literatura (um tema importante no romance), retratando o papel das personagens como leitores e escritores na história, apreendendo, assim, seus sentimentos, suas visões de mundo e filosofia de vida (Waldo aspira à uma carreira de escritor e Arthur de fato compõe um poema). Os estudos de Gérard Genette sobre Narratologia são utilizados para embasar a análise, particularmente na relação intertextual entre The Solid Mandala e The Brothers Karamazov, do escritor F. Dostoyevsky, que é o título que chama a atenção de Arthur. Na busca pelo todo de sua vida, Arthur incorpora vários elementos (centrados em um único ponto, suas mandalas) e consegue criar sua própria filosofia. No final vemos que Arthur transcende sua realidade ao usar a leitura do romance russo como um instrumento. Esse estudo destaca a pertinência de revisitar a obra de Patrick White (uma vez que ela prova estar em sintonia com as questões filosóficas sendo discutidas atualmente) e coloca The Solid Mandala no contexto da literatura mundial. / This work performs an intertextual analysis of the Nobel Prize winning Australian novelist Patrick White’s The Solid Mandala, published in 1966, as part of an effort to boost studies of his novels in Brazil and to investigate why his critical fortune has been undergoing a negative phase recently. First, we briefly present his biography and the conditions surrounding the writing and publication of The Solid Mandala. Later on, we present the historical context of the novel. The relations of conflict and complementation involving the twin brothers Waldo and Arthur Brown in the narrative are analysed, but we focus on their relation to literature (which is an important theme in the novel), depicting their roles as readers and writers in the story, thus, apprehending their feelings towards each other, worldviews and outlook on life (Waldo aspires to become a great writer, and Arthur actually produces a poem). Gérard Genette’s studies on Narratology are used to support our analysis, particularly in the intertextual relation between The Solid Mandala and F. Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, which is the title that calls Arthur’s attention. In his pursue to find the whole of his life, Arthur incorporates various elements (centred at just one point, his mandalas) and is able to create his own philosophy. At the end we see that Arthur transcends his reality by using the reading of the Russian novel as an instrument. This study enlightens the pertinence of revisiting Patrick White’s oeuvre (since it proves to be so well tuned in to the current philosophical issues being discussed), and places The Solid Mandala in the context of worldwide literature.