Post-imperial Phantom Pains: Negotiating Reception and Text in A. S. Byatt’s Possession, Zadie Smith’s On Beauty, and Ian McEwan’s Saturday

Dahlheim, Mayannah

Dissertation Mo., 23. Juli. 2018 CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

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Post-imperial Phantom Pains : Negotiating Reception and Text in A. S. Byatt’s Possession, Zadie Smith’s On Beauty, and Ian McEwan’s Saturday

This thesis is an analysis of the negotiation of reception and text within contemporary English literature via three contemporary English novels, Possession, On Beauty, and Saturday. Within the three novels, the use of a powerful aesthetic enables access to beauty and truth, heretofore realities beyond the grasp of postmodern and post-structuralist discourses. All three novels critique said discourses with respect to cultural production, selfhood, and safety and, in so doing, create identity narratives that lean heavily on Romantic codes of creativity, power, and place. This, so I argue, makes them romantic realist texts. Additionally, Possession, On Beauty, and Saturday reveal an intriguing post-colonial dynamic within the English cultural space they establish, a dynamic where imperial discourses echo strongly, echoes I define as post-imperial phantom pains.

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Einordnung

Akademische Betreuung:: Heyl, Christoph
Datum der Erstellung:: 23.07.2018
Datum der Einreichung:: 07.07.2015
Datum der Promotion:: 13.04.2016
Datum der Veröffentlichung:: 23.07.2018
URN:: urn:nbn:de:hbz:464-20180723-105315-5
Sprache:: Englisch
Ressourcentyp:: Text
Schlagwörter:: British Literature; British Culture; English Literature; English Culture; Post-colonial Studies; Post-colonial; Post-imperial; Empire; Identity; Narrative; Post-structuralism; Postmodernism; Reception Theory; Cultural Studies; Literary Studies; Contemporary English Literautre; Contemporary British Literature; New Literatures; Contemporary Literature; Victorian Studies; 19th Century English Literature
Kollektion:: E-Dissertationen
Dewey Dezimal-Klassifikation:: 800 Literatur
Sachgruppen der Deutschen Nationalbibliographie:: 800 Literatur, Rhetorik, Literaturwissenschaft
Einrichtung:: Fakultät für Geisteswissenschaften, Institut für Anglophone Studien, Literary and Cultural Studies, British Literature and Culture