The thesis examines the phenomenon of the positive philosophy of exile in contemporary literature on the basis of Stefan Themerson's fiction. Themerson's positive attitude to exile and its antecedents--the Stoic ideal of "cosmopolis" and its eighteenth-century transformations--are compared to the views on expatriation expressed by another exiled writer, Witold Gombrowicz, to the moral philosophy of Bertrand Russell, and to the ideology of the twentieth-century avant-garde. / Within emigre literature the works marked by the positive philosophy of exile are treated as a separate form to be distinguished from the works in which exile is only a theme. The positive philosopher of exile bases his optimism on scepticism and the recognition of the arbitrariness of human values. The thesis claims that, although far from being universally true and free from weaknesses, the positive philosophy of exile has a genuine claim to validity as an attempt to contribute to the process of bridging cultural differences without compromising cultural diversity.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.75677 |
| Date | January 1987 |
| Creators | Stachniak, Ewa |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Doctor of Philosophy (Department of English.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 000573290, proquestno: AAINL45949, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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