This study explores the philosophical, linguistic and textual interplay of absence and presence in Margaret Atwood's novel Cat's Eye. The premise of the thesis is that the novel posits language as a problematic communicative medium; as such, language conveys that meanings of words are flexible, mutable and transient. It is through frameworks which both establish states of absence and presence as well as destroy binary oppositions between the two that Cat's Eye conveys its positions about language. Thus, textual and extra-textual discourses about the natures of language and linguistic meaning are situated within recurrent thematic and formal attention to relationships between absence and presence. By exploring the roles of absence and presence in various phenomenological and linguistic contexts, this study concludes that absence/presence is a paradigm in Cat's Eye for the way in which words are (alternately as well as simultaneously) spoken and silent, understood and misunderstood, opposed and united.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.23251 |
| Date | January 1995 |
| Creators | Weinstein, Sheri M. |
| Contributors | Cooke, Nathalie (advisor) |
| 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 | Master of Arts (Department of English.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001472784, proquestno: MM07967, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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