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J.M. Coetzee and the problems of literature
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Ogden, Benjamin H.. J.M. Coetzee and the problems of literature. Retrieved from https://doi.org/doi:10.7282/T3W37TXW

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TitleJ.M. Coetzee and the problems of literature
NameOgden, Benjamin H. (author); Jehlen, Myra (chair); ATTRIDGE, DEREK (co-chair); McClure, John (internal member); Clarkson, Carrol (outside member); Rutgers University; Graduate School - New Brunswick
Date Created2013
Other Date2013-05 (degree)
SubjectLiteratures in English, Fiction--Authorship, Fiction--Technique, Coetzee, J. M.,--1940---Criticism and interpretation
Extentv, 191 p.
DescriptionThis dissertation traces the evolution of J.M. Coetzee’s thinking concerning literary form in the non-fiction he wrote between 1963 and 1984. During the first two decades of his career, Coetzee completed a Master’s thesis on Ford Madox Ford, a doctoral dissertation on Samuel Beckett, and numerous articles on topics ranging from quantitative stylistics, to linguistics, to classical rhetoric. Although Coetzee’s novels have become among the most widely studied contemporary fiction in the world, his earliest writing about literature has been widely ignored. I argue that in neglecting Coetzee’s early work on literary form scholars have neglected much of his most important thinking concerning both the nature of the novel as a literary genre and literary form itself. If Coetzee’s novels are important in large part because of how they rethink the conventions of fiction, then it is critical to understand that his novels are extensions of the thinking he did as a doctoral candidate in linguistics and literature, and as a professor. This dissertation is also a study of how practicing novelists conceive of fiction writing. Coetzee’s thinking about literary form and the novel genre cannot be properly understood without understanding how practicing writers generally, and Coetzee in particular, understand the craft of fiction writing. A full grasp of Coetzee’s writing is unattainable in isolation from his ideas about writing as a vocation. These ideas, in turn, are inaccessible without an understanding of his early writing on literary form and stylistics. As I study Coetzee’s work on Ford Madox Ford (Chapter One), Samuel Beckett (Chapter Two), and Gerrit Achterberg/Franz Kafka (Chapter Three), I demonstrate how Coetzee’s studies of literature are uniquely shaped by a novelist’s conception of fiction writing.
NotePh.D.
NoteIncludes bibliographical references
Noteby Benjamin H. Ogden
Genretheses, ETD doctoral
Persistent URLhttps://doi.org/doi:10.7282/T3W37TXW
Languageeng
CollectionGraduate School - New Brunswick Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Organization NameRutgers, The State University of New Jersey
RightsThe author owns the copyright to this work.
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