This thesis contends that there has often been a critical tendency to understate the challenges to the genre of autobiography that occur in Audrey Thomas's three novels: Songs My Mother Taught Me, Mrs. Blood, and Blown Figures. Chapter one qualifies autobiography in terms of its reliance on the liberal humanist subject as both author and protagonist. In the context of poststructuralist criticism, the author cannot be the unified, unique, original locus of truth that the liberal humanist subject is posited to be. Thus, as the subject collapses the foundation of autobiography collapses. Chapter two is a detailed analysis illustrating that the three novels stylistically and thematically deny the existence of the liberal humanist subject. thereby exemplifying the poststructuralist challenge to autobiography. The Canadian canons reliance on mimetic literature---of which pure autobiography would be the prime example---is offered as an explanation for critics' understatement of the texts' denial.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.20145 |
| Date | January 1996 |
| Creators | Reeds, Nolan. |
| Contributors | Cooke, N. (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: 001608601, proquestno: MQ43938, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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