My study is an investigation of the discourse of madness in Timothy Findley's fiction, where madness is defined as a discursive element that is both structural and thematic. The work encompasses Findley's short stories, novels, a work of non-fiction, and personal archival material. I argue that what has been called a diverse body of work (Hunter) is, in fact, solidly cohesive in its use of the discourse of madness that systematically subverts patterns of authority. My purpose is to reveal a discursive structure that both supports and subverts narrative coherence, locating its degree of disruption within a psychodynamic exchange. / My theoretical model situates the reader as the recipient of and participant in the initiating text's psychodynamic discourse, and so implicates the reader in the subversion of authority. The study amalgamates psychocriticism and reader response theory to demonstrate that Findley's writing actively engages the reader in a visceral exchange that I liken to that encountered within the psychoanalytic interview (Bollas). With the addition of the psychoanalytic component, my research moves substantially beyond the position taken by Wolfgang Iser on reader response and by Norman Holland, both of whom acknowledge the value of psychocriticism but maintain a dualistic (reader/text) model. While Iser and Holland assign the status of co-production of the text to the activity of reading, both neglect to address specific production value to the activity of writing which, in effect, leaves the reader as lone producer. / By introducing the "idiom" of the author my theoretical model becomes triadic so that my reading can move beyond the simple oscillation between text and reader to engage the author in a way that amplifies important questions of status raised by the psychodynamic model, such as: "Who is reading whom?" "Who is the analyst and who the analysand? Who is maintaining or manipulating authority?" These, in turn, raise further questions regarding subject/object relations and the ways in which transference-countertransference between selves and others, subjects and objects, conscious and unconscious states take place. In addressing these questions in terms of the triadic process of reading, which re-instates the initiating author, the value and originality of this study becomes apparent in its investigation of biographical material to literary production.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.35626 |
| Date | January 1998 |
| Creators | Steinson, Elizabeth Hay. |
| 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 | 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: 001641335, proquestno: NQ44599, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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