Since 1987, Linda Lê has composed a corpus (twelve novels, three short-story collections, two compilations of essays, an autobiography) that displays a marked preoccupation with exploring the endless possibilities of literary invention. This interest is manifest most immediately in her fictional depictions of lexically-obsessed protagonists and authors at work and further developed through her creative searching as a reader/writer, which sees her crafting a variety of genres, narratorial configurations, and literary references in her own texts. This thesis addresses the constructive potential of literature figured within Lê's oeuvre by drawing upon the notion of 'l'être des lettres', which expresses the diverse ways in which letters - referring to both a broader literary canon and the solitary activity of reading/writing - contribute to the formulation of Lê's diverse corpus as well as to the elaboration of the literary subject (either Lê as an author or her lexically-obsessed protagonists). The lexical slippage between the terms l'êtrel lettres suggests the transformative possibilities that arise when the subject and the literary converge. 'L'être' will refer to the various modalities of being constructed by and through 'lettres' in Lê's work and that this thesis will examine across three areas: the development of Lê's authorial 'être', or identity, as a result of reading/writing; her thematic representations of the impact of literature upon her protagonists' very being and bodies; and the effects of Lê's preoccupation with the compositional process on the creation, or 'coming to being', of her oeuvre. Departing from the primarily post-colonial and psychoanalytical interpretations of Lê's texts that suggest Lê uses literature to articulate aspects of her own history, this thesis adopts a corpus-based approach to Lê's oeuvre in order to posit reading/writing as a productive force allowing for the composition of separate and distinct literary personae and forms that, beyond her biography, reflect Lê's authorial preoccupations with exploring her craft.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:538772 |
| Date | January 2010 |
| Creators | Krieger, Angela Kristi |
| Publisher | Royal Holloway, University of London |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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