This is a study of the use of language in Joseph Heller's novels Catch-22, Something Happened, Good as Gold, God Knows and Picture This. Heller's fiction is characterized by self-negating sentences and logic, a repetitive story line and circular structure. Each novel concerns the relationship between people and language, but the relationship invariably is circular and inherently non-progressive. The separation between people and language, analogous to the separation between existence and expression, is the basis for Heller's thematics. / Joseph Heller is a novelist who writes about language. Heller's novels all contain or evoke a common system characterized by self-containment and self-reference. In this system, language and literature are self-referential. It is implicit within Heller's writing that literature is a self-contained, non-progressive system, and consequently, it cannot yield a conclusive resolution. The self-contained system of his novels becomes analogous for literature, language, and finally knowledge. Definitive knowledge, being a derivative of language, is impossible. Eventually, Heller's fiction allows no final resolution because of the inconclusive nature of language itself.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.22626 |
| Date | January 1994 |
| Creators | Rojas, René |
| Contributors | Lindeman, Yehudi (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: 001462146, proquestno: MM05425, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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