This thesis identifies and examines the trope of barbershop violence in American literature. Drawing on a wide range of literary, scholarly, and historical documents, I explore the way that certain authors subvert traditional ideas about barbershop discourse and use the quintessential American setting as a stage for failed nostalgia, tragic miscommunication, and outbursts of irrational violence in order to craft fictions that call on readers to strive for a more authentic and humanistic identification with their fellow man. In the first chapter I take a close look at Herman Melville's tableau of barbering in the 1855 novella Benito Cereno within a socio-historic context and then trace allusions to this seminal barbering scene in a number of works to show how many authors depict barbershop miscommunication and violence in order to highlight the racial disparities at the heart of American society. In Chapter Two I borrow the sophisticated methodology of James Joyce scholar Cheryl Temple Herr to examine contemporary American novelist Don DeLillo's numerous depictions of the barbershop through the prism of Heideggerian ontology. / A Thesis Submitted to the Program in American & Florida Studies in Partial
Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts. / Spring Semester, 2008. / March 24, 2008. / Martin Heidegger, Razor, Don Delillo, Herman Melville, Ernest Hemingway, Babo, Benito Cereno, Barber, Barbershop, Shaving, Shave, Cheryl Herr / Includes bibliographical references. / Dennis Moore, Professor Directing Thesis; John Fenstermaker, Committee Member; Timothy Parrish, Committee Member.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_175736 |
| Contributors | Yadon, Ben (authoraut), Moore, Dennis (professor directing thesis), Fenstermaker, John (committee member), Parrish, Timothy (committee member), Program in American and Florida Studies (degree granting department), Florida State University (degree granting institution) |
| Publisher | Florida State University, Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English, English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, text |
| Format | 1 online resource, computer, application/pdf |
| Coverage | United States |
| Rights | This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s). The copyright in theses and dissertations completed at Florida State University is held by the students who author them. |
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