Earth's The End of the Road - an Allegory of the fictional Creation

139 Pages·2010·3.87 MB·English

EN IO JOSÉ DITTERICH
Earth's The End of the Road - an Allegory
of the fictional Creation
Dissertação apresentada ao Curso de Pós-
Graduação em Letras do Setor de Ciên-
cias Humanas, Letras e Artes da Universi-
dade Federal do Paraná para obtenção do
grau de Mestre em Letras na área de Lite-
raturas de Língua Inglesa.
Orientadora: Prof.a Dr.a Brunilda Tempel, Reichmann
CURITIBA
Ï" 9 9 0
Dedico este trabalho a todos
aqueles que, de alguma forma, con-
tribuíram para sua consecução bem
como a todos que se sentiram "rouba-
dos" durante a sua realização, espe-
cialmente Cida, Rafael e Wagner.
AGRADECIMENTOS
A Deus por mais um "talento" e a força de vontade em
desenvolvö-1 o.
- A orientadora, Profa. Dra. Bruni Ida Tempel Reichmann,
pela amizade, apoio, orientação e bibliografia.
- Aos professores de Curso de Pós-Graduação em Letras da
UFPRj, e em especial à F'rofa. Dra. Sigrid Paula Rénaux
pelos valiosos livros emprestados e á Profa. Dra. Anna
Stegh Camatti pela prestatividade constante.
- A Profa. Putin Buffara, pelo incentivo e bibliografia.
- Ao Centro Federal de Educação Tecnológica do Paraná
pela colaboração na realização do Curso.
- Ao CNPq por seis meses de bolsa.
ABSTRACT
Through the present thesis we intend to demonstrate how
the North-American writer John BARTH uses his fiction as a
vehicle for his aesthetic and literary doctrines as well as
his philosophical and moral interpretation of modern society.
The .introduction provides a background of the post-war
panorama in the United States of America, emphasising the
changes that were happening, mainly in the literary field,
where the nihilistic as well as existentialist doctrines
would influence most young writers, including John BARTH.
Next we make a summary of Barth's literary production from
1956 to 1979, showing a possible project the author had in
mind while writing his books, stressing his scholar/wr.iter
characteristics. Then we concentrate more and more in Barth's
nove1 The End of the Road, which is the core of this work.
Interpreting the novel as an allegory of the fictional
creation we analyse it as part of that project, where the
author uses it in order to demonstrate the opposite
tendencies in North-American literature during the 50's, with
one group looking backwards and still developing neo-
realistic novels, while another one was looking forwards,
trying to find out new alternatives which would form the
basis for Post-Modernism. Analyzing the characters in more
details, we try, then, to prove their possible use by the
author as his own avatars as well as representatives of the
current theories, while the plot is shown as art allegory of
the struggle between the opposite currents. In the conclusion
we stress John Barth's theory that the traditional literary
genres are exhausted and the modern writer should face the
fact that he can only use them in a farcical way, through
conscious imitation, a technique which demands knowledge,
research, capacity and craftsmanship.
ii
RSBUMÖ
A presente tese pretende demonstrar o uso que o
escritor norte-americano John Barth fas da ficção como
veiculo de propagação de seus principios estéticd- J. i terários,
bem como de sua interpretação filosófico-moral da sociedade
con temporánea. A .introdução apresenta as transformações
ocorridas no panorama intelectual norte-americano de pós-
guerra, mormente no plano literário, onde? as doutrinas
niilistas e existencialistas exerceriam grande influência,
delineando o arcabouço filosófico do escritor e pensador. A
seguir, faz-se um apanhado geral da obra de BARTH, mostrando
um possível projeto do autor ao escrever seus livros;
destaca-se aí a dualidade pensador/escritor, concentrando-se
cada vez mais na obra The Ein d of the Road, que ê a base da
tese. Interpret.ando-se esse romance como uma alegoria da
criação ficcional, analisa-se a mesma como parte de um
projeto maior, tendo-se o autor utilizado dela com o fito de
confrontar as tendências antagônicas da .literatura norte
americana dos anos 50, onde duas correntes se destacam: uma
voltada para a ficção neo-realista já existente e outra, onde
BARTH se inclui, buscando novas alternativas, que formariam
as bases do Pôs-Modernismo. Através da análise» especifica das
personagens, procura-se, então, comprovar sua possível
utilização pelo autor como porta-vozes das correntes vigentes
e servindo a trama do romance? como uma alegoria do conflito
tanto externo quanto interno entre as duas tendências
dominantes. Conclui-se enfatizando a teoria de BARTH de que
os gêneros literários tradicionais estariam exauridos,
restando ao escritor moderno uma reutilização - ou "revisita"
- das formas existentes, uma imitação conscient e, ou paródia,
como solução, o que requer conhecimento, pesquisa, capacidade
e perícia por parte daqueles que se dispuserem a aceitar o
desafio.
i. i. i
CONTENTS
Abstract i i
Resumo . » . i i i
I. INTRODUCTION Ol
1. Historical Background 02
1.1 In Search of New Values - the New Theories. 04
1.2 Reflections in American Society . . . . .. 06
2. The Influence of the New Theories on Fiction. . 08
2.1 Some Examples 12
3. Fiction at the Crossroad. . 14
3.1 A New Foregrounding for Language 18
3.2 Formal Character i sti 20
4. John Barth - Scholar and Writer 22
II THE END OF THE ROAD - THE NOVEL AS A
THEORETICAL VEHICLE 27
1. Exploring Form for Theoretical Purposes . . .. 27
2. Naming or Baptizing his Characters? . . . . .. 37
3. Sex and Writing: Acts of Creation . . . . . .. 45
4. The End of the Road -- Different Levels of
Reading 57
iv
III - THE CHARACTERS AS LITERARY AVATARS
.1 . Jacob Horner - a Hero with Many Masks and
Tasks .
.l.*l The Writer as the Hero.
1.2 The Hero inside his Furihouse
1.3 Jacob Horner A Rebel who Admires
Discipline . . . .
1.4 The Hero under the Law of Cyclology . . . .
2. Joseph Morgan - a "Don Quixote" of
Traditional Fiction . . . . . . ..
2.1 The Attraction of the Op pos i tes . . . . . ..
2.2 Joseph Morgan an Idol with Feet of Clay .
2.3 Demanding Authenticity in a World of
Phoniness . . . .
3. Rennie Morgan - the Disputed Literature . . . .
3.1 From Domina tor to Domines
3.2 Rennie's Death The Phoenix Fiebern . . . .
4. The Doctor - the Personification of Knowledge .
CONCLUSION . . . . . . ..
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERMCES
V
biblioteca
Ünivwâtfisíâe rade?
I . INTRODUCTION
History is a bloody business,
after all. As one character
observes, the twentieth century may
be turning out to be a disaster, but
the nineteenth and eighteenth
centuries were horrors too. And the
other centuries hardly compare
f svorabl y »
The panorama in American fiction during the last four
decades is so puzzling that even today many books and
articles are being written trying to clarify such a cloudy
and certainly stormy period. John Barth, a worldwide
expressive name of Postmodernism, twenty-four years after the
publication of his first novel, TheFloatingOpera (1956),
published a widely known article, "The Literature of
Replenishment", where he presents a historical background
that sends the reader as far back as Cervantes' D o n Q u i x o te
in order to clear up the complex evolution of the
postmodernist novel, as well as to rectify some misunder-
standings of one of his most polemic articles, "The
Literature of Exhaustion", published in 1967,, lhe impact of
that article was so strong that John BARTH has been
questioned about it until today and tie gives a historical
justification for it: "It was a time that invited
thinking. I wrote the essay in 1967 in Buffalo, in the middle?
of a very apocalyptic time in the history of our republic."-^
In fact, to,understand the turbulent transitional literary
scene in which the postmodern novel was incubated or to place
any fictional production of the time, especially John Barth's
works, it is necessary to recur to History.
1. Historical Background
On e thi n k s .i. m m eel i a t e 1 y o f
Marx's famous observation that
important events .in History tend to
occur twice s the first as a tragedy,
the second time as a farce,^
We shall not go too far back in our hi s tor .1 ca .1 research,
otherwise we may discover that Postmodernist is riot., so "post"
at all*. Let us observe the recent historical background that
prepared the so.il for the new current that was arising.
The World War I, by its cruelties and absurdities
against human kind, destroyed not only half of the civilized
eastern world, b ut also f a i t: h in human beings . Not. o n 1 y t. h e
noble rules of chivalry had been broken, but also the
elementary christian and human principles had not been
respected. For the young generations, part of which had been
forced to participate of those cruelties arid part that had
run away from the.war, the old world had fallen and with it
the blind faith in archaic absolute principles that might
still exist in Politics, Art and Literature. There was no
room for ideologies like Positivism, Determinism or an
"exhausted" academic art, since they represented .imposed
values from a decadent: social structure.
A climate of rebellion against any kind of imposed
t If one observes the history of Nestern Literature, he discovers that he is entering a labyrinth of
either conscious or unconscious iisitation of already used literary structures, Like and endless chain,
even the up-to-datest novels of John Barth show influences of Sterne's Trist ran Shandy (1759), which
reminds us of Don Quixote (1605), which echoes fliaadls de Gaula (XIV century) and so on... Good
references can be found in BOOTH, Wayne C. The Rhetoric of Fiction. Chicaqo, The University ot Chicago
Press, 1975,
values swept the Continent in search of new a .1 terna tí ves that
should substitute the principles of a world that had proven
itself rotten. Novelty, original i ty , individua 1 .i ty were the
buzz words - since anything new ought to be better than the
old values. In such a fertile land for creative minds, many
artistic movements .like Cubism, Dad a i sin, Surrealism and
Futurism spread throughout. Europe and soon reached the
American young generations. Although they were movements that
sheltered many different artistic manifestations, probably
one of the strongest, influences on the New World artist
occurred in I iterature, which broke the academic ropes and
was encouraged to search new formulae, especially in Poetry,
where s u b m i. s s i o n t. cd t r a d i t í o n a 11 y e s t a b 1 i. s h e d p a 1.1 e r n s h a d
always been stronger. Influenced by a world that was excited
b y t h e p o s s .i b i 1 i t. i. es of recen t t. e c h r i o 1 o g i ca.l dis c o ver.i.es,
language and literature also paid technology their tribute:
besides the content, which expressed man's relation with the
new reality, the exaltation of progress and mechanical
strength, language itself, as the "instrument" of
c o m m u ri i c a t .i. o n w as f o r e g r o u n d e d . In d .i. v i d u a 1 ism, r e s e a r c h
joined to linguistic experiments pushed most artists away
from their readers, gradually isolating them in untouchable
ivory towers and the art that once intended to be simple and
popular became so hermetic arid elitist: that only a few
n e o p h y t e s c o u 1 d un d e r s t. a n d .i. t.
Two decades later, the World War II, in spite of
dividing the world politically, had a kind of opposite effect
from the first: war. Perhaps the need of everyone in the?
rebuilding of a more devastated world and the awareness that