This study presents new insights into the esthetic universe of Albert Camus. It demonstrates that Camus, through a transcendent and metamorphic understanding of esthetics, uses his fictional art as a means of correcting a civilization which has progessively declined into decadence due to a pervasive "paradox of reason" principle emerging from the Enlightenment tradition of reasoned doubt. / This study shows that a critical and dynamic parallelism of thematic variation evidences itself in L'Etranger, La Peste and La Chute. The primary parameters of this parallelism are set out by Camus in Le Mythe de Sisyphe. The fictional works are themselves "expressions" growing out of the "impressions" inherent to an absurd reasoning. / To demonstrate how Camus' novels encompass the essential dialectic of un raisonnement absurde evolving into la creation absurde, exile and revolte are examined in relation to the author's esthetic trinity or man/world/absurdity. Using suicide as a point of departure, Camus shows how thanatos haunts the human psyche and brings about both an impulse to philosophical suicide and the construction of systems of irrational hope based on nostalgie for primal innocence. / This study consists of an Introduction and the following five divisions: (1) Le Mythe de Sisyphe: Nostalgia for the Soul; (2) L'Etranger: The Exile at Zero-Point; (3) La Peste: The Collective Passion; (4) La Chute: The Transpersonal Consciousness of the Appointed Suicide; (5) The Gift of Self: A Passionate Dialect or Creation Corrected. The critical approach of the study concentrates on the narration, character and theme of each of Camus' novels and culminates with the recognition of a twentieth century Romantic response to Nietzschean nihilism. The absurd man accepts the reality of le desert and through art itself discovers a means of surviving therein. / Drawing extensively on Camus' Carnets (1942-1951) as a resource to deciphering the novels' apparent ambiguities and enigmas, a primary and comprehensive sense of limites emerges as the artist's duty in correcting creation and mythically resurrecting beauty from the tragic douleur characteristic of the human condition. It is shown how such a mythic undercurrent forms the essential narrative tension within each novel and gives evidence to Camus' appreciation and understanding of ancient Greek tragedy and thought. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 42-09, Section: A, page: 3988. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1981.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_74598 |
| Contributors | DOVALIS, JERRY GREGORY., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 149 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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