Towards a Literary Criticism: Lowry, Durrell, Dolores, and the alchemical balance between 【翻译】

Acknowledgements
Throughout graduate school I suspected that the tendency in literature departments to
indulge in theory shortly before working it upon a literary text denied each voice the rigorous
investigation it deserves. Paul Bruss’s spirited Fall 2009 lectures on the overlooked and
prophetic complexity of certain 20th century British authors encouraged me to push forward with
an essay by Michael Oakeshott that had troubled me since Eric Kos’s undergraduate political
theory courses. Dr. Kos taught in a distinctly Socratic fashion, pursuing classic philosophical
questions methodically before freeing them to mingle with the other voices of the conversation.
Somehow this led to my writing a thesis that disavows the interdisciplinary approach to literature
only to reaffirm it through creative writing.
My graduate committee has graciously allowed me to develop an unorthodox style of
writing born of misgivings with our realm of scholarship: neither Charles Cunningham nor
Christine Neufeld have condemned my work for its open irrationalism or sacrifice of a system.
Instead, they read my early drafts with assiduous alacrity. Paul defended its strange methods,
sympathetic to the tension I perceived in all things aesthetic; Charles expressed a helpful dose of
skepticism for my proposal; and Christine commended the penultimate draft at one of her terrific
graduate cocktail parties.
The community at Eastern is a fertile and exacting milieu; without its influence my work
would likely remain a pile of scribbles in the basement. And if it were not for the life support and
drifting sense of direction of Mary Pierce—my “elusive bunny”—I would not have found myself
in Michigan, let alone earning an MA in Ypsilanti.
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Abstract
I begin this study with the formalistic essays of Michael Oakeshott and Susan Sontag, observing
the precarious position of aesthetics in contemporary literary discourse. Rather than fit the novels
Under the Volcano and the Alexandria Quartet into normative Kantian or New Critical
frameworks, I follow the course of alchemical allusions in Lowry’s novel and relate them to the
troubled theme of modern love in Durrell’s, writing in an experiential, plot-driven manner
towards a narrative describing the effects of these texts upon my fiction. After I discuss the
traces of Sade in Durrell, the metafictional novelette “Dolor” concludes the project, betraying
numerous critical themes: the decentered subject, anxieties of authorship, and writing the body as
text. My aim is to suggest that if literature is not beholden to logical truth, criticism might follow
a more literary course by exposing itself to the elements of fiction—whose assimilative revenge
upon theory seems long overdue.
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgements ......................................................................................................................... ii
Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... iii
Chapter 1: Surface Criticism ........................................................................................................... 5
Background: Formal Conversation ............................................................................................. 5
Under the Quartet...................................................................................................................... 12
Interim ....................................................................................................................................... 25
Chapter 2: The Attempted Return ................................................................................................. 30
Justine in the Real ..................................................................................................................... 30
Sade in Durrell .......................................................................................................................... 40
Chapter 3: Theory in Fiction ......................................................................................................... 47
Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 47
“Dolor” ...................................................................................................................................... 51
Spinning Darks ...................................................................................................................... 65
Crockery in the Bedroom ...................................................................................................... 73
Afterword .................................................................................................................................. 83
Works Cited .................................................................................................................................. 90

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