Award Date

December 2023

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

English

First Committee Member

Beth Rosenberg

Second Committee Member

Kelly Mays

Third Committee Member

Siddharth Srikanth

Fourth Committee Member

Todd Jones

Number of Pages

144

Abstract

Evolving Expressions of Trauma articulates ways that dynamic, changing theories of trauma can provide a language and conceptual space to examine innovative modes and means of expression in Modernist novels and in later, post-colonial and experimental novels. This dissertation asserts that as trauma theory has expanded to encompass and describe different types of traumata, including the mundane, the insidious, and empathetic, it has provided a scaffolding for studying difficult, even impenetrable works from the Modernist period and beyond. The works examined here are strategically selected to demonstrate scope and particularity in the growth of trauma theories and their potential applications to literature. They include James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses; Jean Rhys’s Good Morning, Midnight, Voyage in the Dark, and Wide Sargasso Sea; and Caryl Phillips’ novel The Nature of Blood. Methodologically, Evolving Expressions of Trauma provides first an examination of trauma theory since its inception as a purely neuro-anatomic set of observations through to its contemporary existence as a full-fledged psychoanalytic framework to orient a thorough examination of the selected novels as ones of trauma. Each of the subsequent chapters point toward formal and discursive strategies that indicate, and implicate, specific types of traumata in the authors’ formation and expression of their character’s narratives. This study resolves and looks forward with a final explanation of the usefulness of trauma theory as a set of analytical standards and with a warning regarding its increasing popularity and the potential for reckless, unethical employment in reading and writing literature.

Keywords

Joyce; Modernism; Phillips; Post-colonial; Rhys; Trauma

Disciplines

Arts and Humanities | English Language and Literature | Modern Literature | Other Languages, Societies, and Cultures

File Format

pdf

File Size

1003 KB

Degree Grantor

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Language

English

Rights

IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

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