This thesis will argue that Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time is a work that can tell us much about our reading process. Powell uses a homodiegetic narrator to tell the stories of a vast array of characters over a large span of time. This narrator, Nicholas Jenkins, is, in the non-sexual sense of the word, voyeuristic. He watches and remembers the actions of others while only participating minimally. Widmerpool, the only other character to appear in all twelve volumes, is a voyeur in the sexual sense of the word. The defining feature of voyeurism is its fundamental asymmetry: the voyeur watches whilst remaining hidden and unseen. It will be argued that the reader is also involved in acts of voyeurism due to his/her asymmetrical relationship with the text. Although this equation of voyeurism and reading may seem to contradict recent reader-response critics, it will be argued that voyeurism is an apt description for the primary stage of reading.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.60579 |
| Date | January 1991 |
| Creators | Thomson, Alexis, 1863-1924. |
| 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: 001255739, proquestno: AAIMM72179, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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