[PDF] The Aesthetics of Effacement: A Comparative Study of the Literary

View - Download The Aesthetics of Effacement: A Comparative Study of the Literary

Previous PDF

Next PDF

1

The Aesthetics of Effacement:

A Comparative Study of the Literary

Output of Nikolai Gogol and Oscar Wilde

PhD Thesis 2019

Brigit Katharine McCone

Student no. 09129731

2 I declare that this thesis has not been submitted as an exercise for a degree at this or any other university and it is entirely my own work. I repository or allow the Library to do so on my behalf, subject to Irish Copyright Legislation and Trinity College Library conditions of use and acknowledgement. Signed ___________________________________________________ 3

SUMMARY

This thesis marks the first comprehensive comparative study of the literary output of Nikolai Gogol and Oscar Wilde, from an intersectional perspective blending genre theory, queer theory, postcolonial theory and Jungian psychoanalysis, to examine the authors as sexually and ethnically closeted while estimating the impact of this closeting on their fiction. The thesis concludes that Nikolai Gogol and Oscar Wilde have significant parallels in their conception of the artistic process, explicable by a shared exposure anxiety, significant stylistic parallels, explicable by a shared imperative to generate interpretative suspense and facilitate plausibly deniable self-expression, and significant thematic parallels in their treatment of sexuality, ethnicity and identity, explicable by a shared experience of sexual and ethnic closeting. By establishing that all major sexual themes in the fiction of Nikolai Gogol have direct parallels in the fiction of Oscar Wilde, this thesis contributes to the contextualization of Gogol as a closeted writer, while proposing new aesthetic frameworks for the evaluation of Oscar Wilde. 4

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I am grateful for the advice and encouragement of my supervisor, Dr Sarah Smyth, of the Department of Russian and Slavonic Studies of Trinity College Dublin, and my co-supervisor, Dr Paul Delaney of the School of English, and my two examiners Jarlath Killeen and Claire Whitehead. My research was made possible by a Foundation Scholarship and Studentship from Trinity College Dublin. I also received guidance on Ukrainian perspectives from Professor Vladimir Zviniatskovsky while at the 2012 Nyzhin Conference on Gogol Studies. Any errors or misunderstandings remain my own. 5

Table of Contents

Introduction .................................................................................................. 6

Chapter 1 Literature Review ................................................................... 18 PART 1 - THE HAUNTED PORTRAIT ................................................ 43 Chapter 2 The Artistic Process As Faustian Gothic Horror .................... 44 Chapter 3 - Artwork As Site of Exposure ................................................... 61 Chapter 4 Artistic Creation as Destroyer of Artist .................................. 73 Chapter 5 - Aversion to Spectators ............................................................. 84 Chapter 6 - The Aesthetics of Effacement ................................................ 101 PART 2 - THE NIGHTINGALE AND THE NOSE ............................ 129 Chapter 7 - Diagnosis of Sexuality and Ethnicity .................................... 130 Chapter 8 - 'The Garden of Eros': Lost Paradise ...................................... 168 Chapter 9 -'The Burden of Itys': Dissociation ........................................... 201 Chapter 10 -'Charmides': Realization of the Shadow .............................. 231 Chapter 11 -'Panthea': Individuation ....................................................... 256 Chapter 12 -'Humanitad': Regressive Restoration of Persona ................. 282

Conclusion ................................................................................................ 304

Bibliography ............................................................................................. 311

6

Introduction

- Oscar Wilde, The Critic as Artist1 ishman - Vladimir Nabokov, Nikolai Gogol2 The goal of this thesis is to make the first comprehensive review of stylistic and thematic parallels in the literary output of Nikolai Gogol3 and Oscar Wilde, including drama and poetry, within an interpretative framework that potentially explains their correspondence as the result of a shared experience of sexual and ethnic closeting. The fact that Gogol and Wilde belong to two distinct geographical regions, literary traditions and time periods, lessens the possibility that their aesthetic similarities derive from a common culture. The works of Nikolai Gogol (1809-1852) are not cited by critics, or by the author himself, as a major influence on Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), although Wilde wrote approving literary criticism of the work of Dostoevsky,4 who has been noted for his creative debt to Gogol.5 Wilde's first performed play, in August 1883

1 Wilde, Oscar, De Profundis, The Ballad of Reading Gaol & Other Writings, p. 243

2 Nabokov, Nikolai Gogol p. 38, referring to Gogol's colloquial and absurdist use of the Russian

language which Nabokov considers paralleled only by Hiberno-English and therefore suited only to an

Irish translator.

0\NROD+RKRO

FbdheZ=h]hevSDUWO\EHFDXVH

Gogol published in the Russian language, but particularly because this variant is familiar to an

English-language readership.

4 Wilde, 'Injury and Insult' (Pall Mall Gazette, 2 May 1887) in Jackson ed., Aristotle at Afternoon Tea:

The Rare Oscar Wilde, pp. 88-90

5 Early works directly inspired by Gogol include Dostoevsky's Poor Folk, a reworking of 'The

7 in New York, first published 1880, was Vera, or the Nihilists, set in Russia and influenced by translations of Russian literature and anarchist propaganda, specifically Sergei Nechayev's Catechism of a Revolutionary. Although Wilde's literary appreciation for the novels of Turgenev, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky was mainstream in Victorian Britain,6 his romanticization of anarchist terrorism as a form of idealism in Vera and his idealization of the anarchist philosopher Peter Kropotkin in De Profundis (written 1895- Christ that see7 was sharply discordant with the dominant Victorian discourse on the danger, bloodthirstiness and criminality of anarchism, which tended to deny or downplay its political idealism.8 Considering the absence of references to Gogol within the writings of Wilde, major parallels in the stylistics of the two can more easily be attributed to "convergent evolution", a biological term for unrelated organisms which acquire similar forms due to similar environmental influences. A similar view is adopted by Marina Romanets, who compares Irish and Ukrainian literary traditions through the lens of their shared experience of colonial assimilation pressure and defensive nationalism, rather than claims of direct influence by one literary tradition upon the other.9 This study adopts Romanets' concept of colonial assimilation pressure as a force productive of literary parallels between the Ukrainian and Irish, while considering its intersection with, and operational Overcoat', The Landlady, which Karlinsky has attributed to the influence of Gogol's 'Terrible Vengeance' (The Sexual Labyrinth of Nikolai Gogol, p. 44), and 'Notes From The Underground',

whose conception as a first person narrative of mental collapse is closely related to Gogol's 'Diary of

a Madman'.

6 Beasley and Bullock eds., Russia in Britain, 18801940

7 Wilde, De Profundis, The Ballad of Reading Gaol & Other Writings, p.84

8 Shpayer-Makov, 'The Reception of Peter Kropotkin in Britain, 1886-1917'

9 Romanets, Anamorphosic Texts and Reconfigured Visions

8 resemblance to, the assimilation pressure of heteronormativity. Each from a minor gentry background, growing up on the periphery of 19th- century empires, in Ukrainian or Irish cultures stereotypically viewed as comically provincial by the imperial culture, both journeyed to the cosmopolitan capital of Empire - St. Petersburg for Gogol and London for Wilde - as young men, and won their greatest acclaim as playwrights satirizing the imperial culture in its own language. The peaks of their careers were followed by periods of social attack and exile which, in many ways, illustrate the dangers of self-revelation for both men. In Wilde's case, social attack and exile followed the revelation of his homosexuality through public trial and imprisonment. Gogol's case was more complex, with self-imposed exile in western Europe following perceived misinterpretation of The Inspector General, first performed on 19th April 1836 in St. Petersburg, but he too faced scathing social attack after an attempt at philosophical self-revelation with the 1847 publication of Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends. In Part One of the thesis, titled 'The Haunted Portrait', both authors' attitude to the artistic process and its impact on their aesthetics is examined and compared. Strikingly, in Wilde's novel The Picture of Dorian Gray (first serialized 1890, published

1891) and Gogol's short story 'Portrait', the writers choose an identical device in the

image of the haunted portrait, and in each case use this device to explore issues of artistic authenticity and corruption of the soul, within a Faustian Gothic horror which poses mimesis itself as a source of dread. Using Noel Carroll's 1990 study of the analytic aesthetics of horror, The Philosophy of Horror, Chapter Two of the thesis, 'The Artistic Process as Faustian Gothic Horror', examines both authors' positioning of the art within the generic expectations of Faustian Gothic horror. Can the conventions of the horror genre be used to locate the authors' primary sources of 9 aversion or anxiety within the artistic process? The three following chapters undertake a thematic analysis of the artistic process, as it is portrayed in the fiction of Oscar Wilde and Nikolai Gogol. In Chapter Three, 'Artwork As Site of Exposure', both authors' treatment of artworks is compared and contrasted, with particular attention to their recurrent preoccupation with the theme of artwork as site of exposure for its creator's moral character. In Chapter Four, 'Artistic Creation as Destroyer of Artist', the authors' concept of the relationship between artwork and artist is compared and contrasted, with particular attention to both authors' recurrent theme of the artist violently destroyed by artistic creation. Does the violence directed against artists, and its consistent repetition across the authors' fiction, express the intensity of threat perceived in the artistic process? In Chapter Five, 'Aversion to Spectators', both authors' portrayals of the relationship between artist and society is compared and contrasted. Do the authors share an aversion to reader interpretation or spectator scrutiny? This fifth chapter concludes with an assessment of the extent to which Nikolai Gogol and Oscar Wilde may be claimed to exhibit a parallel exposure anxiety in their fiction. Would such exposure anxiety plausibly motivate aversion to reader interpretation and the development of an -expression? Chapter Six, 'The Aesthetics of Effacement', which concludes Part One of the thesis, surveys the shared aesthetic choices of both authors and suggests a motivation for parallels between the two in a shared impulse towards interpretative suspense and plausible deniability of expression. within this thesis to distinguish suspense generated through uncertainty of interpretation, as opposed to suspense over uncertainty of narrative outcome, established as the conventional goal of drama by Aristotle's Poetics. This wider concept 10

GWRHQFRPSDVVWKHquotesdbs_dbs21.pdfusesText_27

[PDF] flowchart for binary to hexadecimal

[PDF] flowchart of if else statement in java

[PDF] flower dictionary with pictures book

[PDF] flower emoji meanings

[PDF] flower encyclopedia pdf

[PDF] flower meaning gratitude

[PDF] flower names and meanings

[PDF] flower names and pictures pdf

[PDF] flowers and their meanings in literature

[PDF] flowers name pdf download

[PDF] flowers of bengal

[PDF] flowers pdf download

[PDF] flu cases world map

[PDF] flu deaths 2018 2019

[PDF] flu deaths 2019