Vision and voice : D.H. Lawrence, Henry Miller and Jack Kerouac as autobiographers of the soul

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: At the root of this thesis lies a certain spirit that imbues the work of D. H. Lawrence, HenryMiller and Jack Kerouac, different as their work undeniably is. It is this spirit, or quality,difficult to pin down and circumscribe, that first instilled the trust and belief (if one may use aterm in keeping with the subject) that there are certain significantly similar characteristics inwhat must remain three very different literary voices. Furthermore, it became increasingly clearthat one could not divorce any comparative discussion of these voices from the specific worldview,philosophy or metaphysic, to use Lawrence's term - in short, vision - that informs andshapes each writer's voice. Significantly, it is inasmuch as their visions are comparable thattheir voices also are.It is the coming into being of the modem individual that lies at the centre of the fiction ofLawrence, Miller and Kerouac. It is my contention that their conceptions of the dynamic of thisprocess have much in common, and that therefore, their voices share certain importantcharacteristics. At the root of their respective visions lies the belief that modem westernsociety has a stifling effect on the individual, a belief which results in a clear and unambiguousrejection of the modem social system, by both the writers and their central protagonists. Forthem it is essentially in society's materialism, or mechanised conformity, that the wholeness ofthe individual, and a more vital sense of place in the world is threatened. Their call, then, is forthe individual to reject social codes and conventions, and this criminality is reflected on atextual level in the urgent, exuberant and generally transgressive (also controversial, in termsof contemporary standards) nature of their fiction. In addition to this, the very dynamic of theindividual's coming into being is conceived of as a leaping off into the unknown, anabandonment to the chthonic flux and the flow of the (collective) unconscious. This is asacred instant, which effects the dissolution of the individual (self-) consciousness, and,upon ceasing, propels the individual into a new sense of self. It is around such sacred instantsthat the work of these writers is organised.For the purpose of placing them in the canon I have defined Lawrence, Miller and Kerouac asvisionary writers, coming from a tradition decidedly Romantic in its focus on the (creative)individual. To this end I have included a necessarily brief consideration of basic Romantictenets which I explore in terms of Lawrence's, Miller's and Kerouac's shared literary hero, theAmerican poet, Walt Whitman. In this opening discussion I explore and elaborate on some ofthe major qualities and concepts put to use in the course of this thesis. Whitman is useful as an introduction also because he (like many of the Romantics) tends to blur the boundariesbetween himself and his protagonists/speakers. This is particularly the case with Miller andKerouac, but Lawrence himself draws very strongly on autobiographical details in writing hisfiction. Since, then, their fictions tend to draw on the writers' lives so overtly (while frequentlyaltering and adapting the precise autobiographical facts), I have approached Lawrence, Millerand Kerouac as autobiographers of the soul, inasmuch as they trace the development of theindividual soul (or self) in the context of external experiences.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University