Author(ity) figures : anxieties of authorship, freedom, and control
Abstract
What is the nature of the narrative act? Is the author a god? A pawn? In the fictive realm, who can wield creative and authorial control? The author? The characters? The reader? All of them? In five novels--John Fowles's THE French Lieutenant's Woman and Martin Amis's Other People, Money, London Fields, and The Information, these issues are addressed--implicitly arid explicitly--by the author-figures and author-doubles that inhabit and interact within them. Far from defining an airtight vision of authorship, Fowles's and Amis's author-figures expose the anxieties inherent in the narrative act, as well as its complicated links to the paradoxes of control and powerlessness, and of death and life. Gone is the Author-God of the Victorian novel. What we seem to be left with is a modulation of this authorial divinity--as the narrator of The French Lieutenant's Woman says--in "the new theological image," where freedom and control are as terrifying as they are essential. This thesis will examine the tensions and contradictions with which these novels characterize the writing act and will incorporate critical texts by Friedrich Nietzsche, Roland Barthes, and Michel Foucault to help frame the possible origins of these author-anxieties.
Notes
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Thesis Completion
2001
Semester
Spring
Advisor
Campbell, James
Degree
Bachelor of Arts (B.A.)
College
College of Arts and Sciences
Department
English
Degree Program
English
Subjects
Arts and Sciences -- Dissertations, Academic;Dissertations, Academic -- Arts and Sciences;Amis, Martin -- Criticism and interpretation;Fiction -- Authorship;Fowles, John -- 1926- -- Criticism and interpretation
Format
Identifier
DP0021686
Language
English
Access Status
Open Access
Length of Campus-only Access
None
Document Type
Honors in the Major Thesis
Recommended Citation
Price, Amanda C., "Author(ity) figures : anxieties of authorship, freedom, and control" (2001). HIM 1990-2015. 254.
https://stars.library.ucf.edu/honorstheses1990-2015/254