This thesis uses the film philosophy of Gilles Deleuze in Cinema 1: The Movement-Image (1983, trans. 1986) and Cinema 2: The Time-Image (1985, trans. 1989) as a methodology for examining the subject of film in Thomas Pynchon's novel Gravity's Rainbow (1973). The first half of the thesis provides a review of the literature on the subject of film in Gravity's Rainbow, as well as a review of current scholarship on Deleuze's Cinema books, before providing a close reading of both Cinema books that summarizes and explicates the elaborate taxonomy of cinematic signs and images developed by Deleuze. The second half of the thesis uses Deleuze's cinematic taxonomy to analyze examples of time-images and movement-images in Gravity's Rainbow. The thesis concludes by connecting the work of Pynchon's novel to the work of Deleuze's study in a discussion of how film participates in the emergence of a new concept of history during the postwar period.

Thesis (PhD.) --University of Adelaide, Dept. of English, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available in a print form.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Edinburgh, 2001.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Canterbury, 2006. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 120-123). Also available via the World Wide Web.

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The focus of this study is revelation at the limits of communication. It considers the way in which (biblical) apocalyptic literature prominently figures the interconnection between liminality, revelation, and representation. The methodology asserts an indissoluble association between theology, philosophy and literature. As such it is interdisciplinary. A preliminary theory (and theology) of liminality interweaves the theological and philosophical contributions of, amongst others, Karl Barth, Graham Ward, Jürgen Moltmann and Jacques Derrida, thereby initiating a revised perspective on the constitution of literary apocalyptic text production and interpretation. Theorising the limen begins to describe the Trinitarian economy at work in Christian apocalyptic processing of scripture. I begin with the idea that revelation (apokalypsis) is the experience of the limen itself (in a coincidence of opposites). Thus the limen (as an actively divine space) incorporates that which stands on both sides, in vertical and horizontal, linear and cyclical, spatial and temporal movements. I then propose that apocalyptic literature re-presents this complex economy in which the end is rehearsed simultaneously as limit, threshold, and rupture. Theologically, this complicates inter-relational notions of ‘apocalyptic’ and eschatology, and stimulates a debate on a metaphysics of violence in communication (between God, man and Creation). I conclude that, at the extreme limit of human understanding (where words fail), those with faith in God’s love are opened out to revelation in the apocalyptic textual performance of the liminal economy, and thus to hope and forgiveness. Stressing the importance of reading apocalyptically, I begin to demonstrate the relationship between Christian-canonical narratives and the broader western literary canon, the critical process having invited an exploration of those literary characteristics (of tone, mode and genre) shared by (biblical, modern and postmodern) texts. An important principle in the literary analyses is the association between apocalyptic text production and hermeneutics. Christopher Rowland’s description of a ‘visionary mode’ explains how this process works. Thus the preliminary theory leads into a close reading of recent Russian and American works by Mikhail Bulgakov and Thomas Pynchon. These are compared to, and worked through, Mark’s and John’s gospels and the Book of Revelation. The interpretative approach widens the often self-limiting study of apocalyptic literature, and broadens theological debate on revelation. Thus it begins to show how the rhetoric of apocalyptic makes belief compelling.

Thesis (doctoral)--University of Stockholm, 1986. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 115-123).

Thesis (doctoral)--University of Stockholm, 1986. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 115-123).