Texte remanié de: Thesis Ph. D.--English and American literature--Colchester (GB)--University of Essex, 2007. / Bibliogr. p. 261-268.

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Thesis (M.A.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of English Language and Literature, 1989. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 392-398).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1970. / Typescript. Vita. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.) -- Central Connecticut State University, 2005. / Thesis advisor: Barry H. Leeds. "... in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in English." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 125-127). Also available via the World Wide Web.

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1974. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

"Norman Mailer has often been criticized on the grounds implied above. His naturalistic style has evoked revulsion, his political beliefs ridicule and reproof, and the sensational quality of his material the accusation of dishonesty. Confronted by the writings themselves, and by Mailer's nonfiction essays on art and politics, such reactions appear irrelevant. To the greater understanding of the man, in both artistic and political roles, this paper is devoted"--Introduction. / Carbon copy of typescript. / "August, 1957." / "Submitted to the Graduate Council of Florida State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts." / Advisor: Louis Shores, Professor Directing Paper. / Includes bibliographical references.

This thesis examines the American novelist Norman Mailer’s relationship to the 20th century avant-garde. Mailer is often remembered as a pioneer in the new documentary modes of subjective non-fiction of the sixties. Looking beyond the decade’s themes of fact and fiction, this thesis opens up Mailer’s aesthetics in general to other areas of historical and theoretical enquiry, primarily art history and psychoanalysis. In doing so, it argues that Mailer’s work represents a thoroughgoing aesthetic and political response to modernism in the arts, a response that in turn fuels a critical opposition to postmodern aesthetics. Two key ideas are explored here. The first is narcissism. In the sixties, Mailer was an avatar of what Christopher Lasch called the “culture of narcissism”. The self-advertising non-fiction was related to an emerging postmodern self-consciousness in the novel. Yet the myth of Narcissus has a longer history in the story of modernist aesthetics. Starting with the concept’s early articulation by Freudian psychoanalysis, this thesis argues that narcissism was for Mailer central to human subjectivity in the 20th century. It was also a defining trait of technological modernity in the wake of the atom bomb and the Holocaust. Mailer, then, wasn’t just concerned with the aesthetics of narcissism: he was also deeply concerned with its ethics. Its logic is key to almost every major theme of his work: technology, war, fascist charisma, sexuality, masculinity, criminality, politics, art, media and fame. This thesis will also examine how narcissism was related for Mailer to themes of trauma, violence, facing and recognition. The second idea that informs this thesis is the theoretical question of “the real”. A later generation of postmodernists thought that Mailer’s initially radical work was excessively grounded in documentary and traditional literary realism. Yet while the question of realism was central for Mailer, he approached this question from a modernist standpoint. He identified with the modernist perspectivism of Picasso and his eclectic “attacks on reality”, and brought this modernist humanism to a critical analysis of postmodernism. The postwar (and ongoing) debates about postmodern and realism in the novel connect in Mailer, I argue, to what Hal Foster calls the “return of the real” in the 20th century avant-garde. This thesis also links Mailer to psychoanalytical views on trauma and violence; anti-idealist philosophy in Bataille and Adorno; and later postmodern art historical engagements with realism and simulation. Mailer’s view was that a hunger for the real was an effect of a desensitising (post)modernity. While the key decade is the sixties, the study begins in 1948 with Mailer’s first novel The Naked and the Dead, and ends at the height of the postmodern eighties. Drawing on a range of postmodern theory, this thesis argues that Mailer’s fiction sought to confront postmodern reality without ceding to the absurdity of the postmodern novel. The thesis also traces Mailer’s relationship to a range of contemporary art and visual culture, including Pop Art (and Warhol in particular), and avant-garde and postmodern cinema. This study also draws on a broad range of psychoanalytical, feminist and cultural theory to explore Mailer’s often troubled relationship to narcissism, masculinity and sexuality. The thesis engages a complex history of feminist perspectives on Mailer, and argues that while feminist critique remains necessary for a reading of his work, it is not sufficient to account for his restless exploration of masculinity as a subject. In chapter 7, the thesis also discusses Mailer’s much-criticised romantic fascination with black culture in the context of postcolonial politics.

This dissertation is a companion to Norman Mailer’s Egyptian novel, Ancient Evenings (1983). Presented in seven parts, it combines a monograph and a selection from the novel outfitted with footnotes, plates, and captions. Part I provides an overview of the dissertation, a definition of terms, and a statement of my editorial principles. Part II is a biographical description of the author in relation to Ancient Evenings and its significance in the arc of his oeuvre. Also explored are Mailer’s unrealized plans to produce two related novels that would have formed a triad that embodied his existential ideology. Part III consists of criticism by me that will later take the form of a general introduction, footnotes, and endnotes for an annotated edition of Ancient Evenings. Part IV is a synthesis of published critical reactions to the novel placed in conversation with Mailer’s own commentary on his creative process and intentions. Ancient Evenings is notoriously difficult to navigate, and to provide a beacon for readers, Part V includes a character list and a synopsis of each of the novel’s seven “books.” Part VI is the second section of the novel, “The Book of the Gods,” presented as an annotated edition. The Coda includes a transcription of a previously unpublished prose piecethat represents the development of a novel, The Boat of Ra, that would have followed Ancient Evenings had Mailer completed his triad. For the use of future scholars, the bibliography documents Mailer’s confirmed research materials. Norman Mailer’s Book of the Dead speaks to the development of a major work by one of the most influential authors and public intellectuals of the second half of the twentieth century. / 2019-11-21T00:00:00Z