Where art meets life in secret : excavating subjects in selected works of Michael Ondaatje

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: In re-imagining the relationship between words and life, or alternately between self and world, thenovelist is in a unique position not merely to reproduce these interlinked relationships through the practice of writing, but to use the unique possibilities extended by the form and content ofthe novel as literary genre toreveal this interpenetration of ontological and epistemological domains; to render visible what is normally regarded as separate. To disclose how the imaginative domain of fiction writing mirrors thenovelistic characterof material reality, this dissertation discusses three Michael Ondaatje works, The English Patient, Anil's Ghostand Divisadero.Througha careful close reading it explores the manner in which Ondaatje's form of philosophical thought juxtaposes many genres and expressive forms into a highly complex, playful and self-referentialmetafictional whole. With a focusonclose reading supplemented rather than determined by critical theory, this dissertation then sets out to demonstrate how the author's work advances the provocative central thesis that fictional texts not only reflect upon events, thoughts and emotions,but that philosophical works of literature and art are necessarilyperformative and interrogative, able to question aspects of the self, and ultimately able to present ethical ways of being and therapeutic escape to readers.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University