The bilingual imagination : Joyce, Beckett, Nabokov and the making of modern fiction
Description
TitleThe bilingual imagination : Joyce, Beckett, Nabokov and the making of modern fiction
Date Created2014
Other Date2014-05 (degree)
SubjectComparative Literature, Bilingual authors, Multilingualism and literature, Joyce, James,--1882-1941--Criticism and interpretation, Beckett, Samuel,--1906-1989--Criticism and interpretation, Nabokov, Vladimir Vladimirovich,--1899-1977--Criticism and interpretation
Extent1 online resource (vii, 225 pages)
DescriptionThis dissertation traces the creative tension that results from writing with more than one language in hand. I suggest that bilingual authors are linguistically complex in a manner that makes them fundamentally different from monolingual ones. A deeper awareness of the material way in which bilingual writing diverges from the writing of monolingual authors may not only shed new light on these three authors and their writings but on the workings of language in multilingual fiction, and possibly on the workings of language in literature generally. While James Joyce, Samuel Beckett and Vladimir Nabokov were thoroughly fluent in several languages, multilingualism takes a different form in each of their works. Yet for all three authors a multilingual background is indissolubly connected to the writing, both on the formal level of the text (the use of foreign words, multilingual puns, a play with accent and pronunciation) and as theme and content. Although all their languages leave traces in their writing, I will focus especially on the two languages that in each writer was most important in the actual crafting of the works: English and Italian for Joyce, English and French for Beckett, English and Russian for Nabokov. Through analyses of texts by Joyce (the “Epiphanies,” Ulysses and Finnegans Wake), Nabokov (Король, дама, валет (King, Queen, Knave), Пoдвиг (Glory), Lolita, Pnin and Ada) and Beckett (Watt, and The Trilogy in English and French), of letters (both published and unpublished), interviews, recollections of the writers by their contemporaries, recordings, (auto) biographies, and notebooks, I examine the effect that multilingualism has on their written language and suggest that their complex multilingual background produced distinct literary results.
NotePh.D.
NoteIncludes bibliographical references
NoteIncludes vita
Noteby Maria Kager
Genretheses, ETD doctoral
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.