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Silva, Luciano Cabral da. "The fourfold serial killer in Bret Easton Elliss American Psycho." Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, 2015. http://www.bdtd.uerj.br/tde_busca/arquivo.php?codArquivo=8749.
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Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico<br>Patrick Bateman, o protagonista narrador do romance American Psycho (1991), de Bret Easton Ellis, confunde por ser rico, bonito e educado e, ao mesmo tempo, torturador, assassino e canibal. Mas esta personalidade antagônica não o torna singular. O que o particulariza são as quatro faces que ele apresenta ao longo de sua narrativa: (1) ele consome mercadorias e humanos, (2) compete para ter reconhecimento, (3) provoca horror por suas ações, e (4) não é um narrador confiável. Sendo um yuppie (termo popular usado nos Estados Unidos na década de 1980 para denominar jovens e bem sucedidos profissionais urbanos), Bateman é materialista e hedonista. Ele está imerso em uma sociedade de consumo, fato que o impossibilita de perceber diferenças entre produtos e pessoas. Sendo um narcisista, ele se torna um competidor em busca de admiração. No entanto, Bateman também é um serial killer e suas descrições detalhadas de torturas e assassinatos horrorizam. Por fim, nós leitores duvidamos de sua narrativa ao notarmos inconsistências e ambiguidades. Zygmunt Bauman (2009) afirma que uma sociedade extremamente capitalista transforma tudo que nela existe em algo consumível. Christopher Lasch (1991) afirma que o lendário Narciso deu lugar a um novo, controverso, dependente e menos confiante. A maioria das vítimas de Bateman são membros de grupos socialmente marginalizados, como mendigos, homossexuais, imigrantes e prostitutas, o que o torna uma identidade predatória, segundo Arjun Appadurai (2006). A voz autodiegética e a narrativa incongruente do protagonista, contudo, impedem que confiemos em suas palavras. Estas são as quatro faces que pretendo apresentar deste serial killer<br>The autodiegetic protagonist Patrick Bateman, in Bret Easton Elliss American Psycho (1991), is a troubling character, for he is highly-educated, wealthy and handsome as well as a torturer, a killer and a cannibal. This antagonistic behavior, nonetheless, does not make him a singular character. The four sides he presents throughout the novel are singular, though: (1) he consumes humans and commodities equally; (2) he competes for recognition and admiration; (3) his acts are horrific; and (4) his narration is unreliable. As a yuppie (a popular term from the 1980s used to define young urban U.S. professionals), Bateman is materialistic and hedonistic. As he lives off the excesses of a consumer society, he is incapable of distinguishing people from products. As a self-absorbed, narcissistic protagonist, he becomes a competitor struggling to get approval from his peers. Nevertheless, Bateman is a serial killer, and his detailed descriptions of tortures and murders are horrifying. Finally, we readers cannot rely on his narrative once we notice ambiguities and divergences. Zygmunt Bauman (2009) posits that an extremely capitalist society forces people to be commodified. Christopher Lasch (1991) asseverates that the old legendary Narcissus gave birth to a new one, paradoxical, dependent and less confident. Most of Batemans victims are socially-marginalized characters, members of minority groups, such as homeless people, homosexuals, immigrants, and prostitutes. As a matter of fact, Bateman may be regarded as having a predatory identity, as defined by Arjun Appadurai (2006). However, this autodiegetic narrator, together with his inconsistent narrative, cannot be entirely trusted. These are the points I want to debate regarding this fourfold serial killer
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von, Seth Oscar. "Psykopaten i garderoben : En queer läsning av Bret Easton Ellis American Psycho." Thesis, Södertörns högskola, Institutionen för kultur och lärande, 2013. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:sh:diva-21456.
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The novel American Psycho was first published in 1991. It recieved harsh criticism and was viewed as a work of heterosexism, misogyny and pointless violence. Despite the criticism, the protagonist, a wealthy serial killer yuppie namned Patrick Bateman, fascinated the readers. He hides his monstrosity behind a façade of heteronormativity, but this essay shows that the norms in American Psycho are fragile. Batemans relationships are shallow, his identity is constructed out of traditional masculinitynorms and even though he’s homophobic there’s a homoerotic undertone in the text, as well as gothic patterns that give the novel a fair amount of queerness too. This analysis shows that the fear of AIDS, imprinted in the text, works as a representation for Bateman’s discrepancy concerning his sexuality. It brings to light that Bateman’s feelings towards two of his collegues are charachterized by homoerotic yearnings, and that shallow readings, where the text is not interpreted, allows the brutal violence to divert attention from the novel’s queer meaning.<br>Romanen American Psycho publicerades 1991. Den fick hård kritik och sågs som ett heterosexistiskt, misogynt verk fullt av meningslöst våld. Trots kritiken fascinerade protagonisten, den förmögna seriemördaryuppien Patrick Bateman, läsarna. Bateman döljer sin monstrositet bakom en heteronormativ fasad men den här uppsatsen visar att textens heteronorm är bräcklig. Batemans relationer är ytliga, identiteten är konstruerad från traditionella maskulinitetsnormer, han är homofobisk, även då gotiska, homoerotiska undertoner präglar texten. Analysen visar att AIDS-skräcken som präglar boken är synonym med Batemans sexualitetsdiskrepans, att hans känslor för två av hans kollegor är av homoerotisk karaktär, samt att i ytliga läsningar av romanen, där texten inte tolkas, gör det explicita våldet att läsarens uppmärksamhet avleds från romanens queera innebörd.
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Simon, Alaina R. "Satire and Sympathy in American Psycho." University of Toledo Honors Theses / OhioLINK, 2012. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=uthonors1355508133.
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Andersson, Jim. "Psykopatfabriken : Maskulinitetskonstruktioner i Iain Banks The Wasp Factory och Bret Easton Ellis American Psycho." Thesis, Uppsala universitet, Litteraturvetenskapliga institutionen, 2016. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-302290.
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Fredriksson, Sophia. "Abandon All Hope : An Analysis of American Psycho." Thesis, Högskolan Dalarna, Engelska, 2011. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:du-6391.
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Alt, Constanze. "Zeitdiagnosen im Roman der Gegenwart Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho, Michel Houellebecqs Elementarteilchen und die deutsche Gegenwartsliteratur." Berlin Trafo, 2009. http://d-nb.info/992353327/04.
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Wadström, Simon. "Anteckningar från en skyskrapa : En studie av Fjodor Dostojevskijs Anteckningar från ett källarhål och Bret Easton Ellis American Psycho." Thesis, Uppsala universitet, Litteraturvetenskapliga institutionen, 2010. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-150993.
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Ghita, Cristina. "Pastiche and Abjection in American Psycho." Thesis, Malmö högskola, Fakulteten för kultur och samhälle (KS), 2014. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-23314.
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Rymajdo, Kamila. "Why is everyone not falling in love? : love and sex in the neoliberal era as seen through the lens of Bret Easton Ellis' 'Less Than Zero', 'The Rules of Attraction', 'The Informers' and 'American Psycho'." Thesis, Kingston University, 2016. http://eprints.kingston.ac.uk/37788/.
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Notions of love and sex are rewritten by every era but this essay concerns itself with the period of 1980s and 90s neoliberalism, as seen through the texts that make up the early oeuvre of Bret Easton Ellis, namely 'Less Than Zero', 'The Rules of Attraction', 'The Informers', 'American Psycho' and their film adaptations. I began my research by examining various notions of love, from Plato all the way to the 90s pop culture classic 'Clueless' (dir. Amy Heckerling, 1995), and eventually narrowed my focus to three distinct and opposing theories, which I will describe as romantic love, love as use of erotic capital and sex as liberation, which I found in Alain Badiou's 'In Praise of Love', Catherine Hakim's 'Honey Money' and Wilhelm Reich's 'The Sexual Revolution'. These frameworks were chosen in accordance with my decision to examine love under the specific conditions of neoliberalism, following the study of such theorists as the already mentioned Slavoj Žižek, as well as David Harvey, Renata Salecl and others. It is from this juncture that I began to write a novel that explores love and sex through a layered approach, where meaning is accumulated through structural and stylistic choices as well as plot and character development. It soon became apparent that a writer who examines love in the throes of disintegration as a result of the assault of neoliberalism and whose emphatic use of style to critique this system I drew on most closely was Bret Easton Ellis.
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Weissenberg, Clare. "This is not an exit : reading Bret Easton Ellis." Thesis, University of Essex, 1997. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.361020.
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Nystrand, Alexander. "Patrick Bateman, Violence and Consumption: Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho." Thesis, Södertörns högskola, Institutionen för kultur och kommunikation, 2010. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:sh:diva-7875.
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This essay investigates how Bret Easton Ellis portrays Patrick Bateman as a projection of American society, in order to criticize consumerism and capitalism in his novel American Psycho. By applying Marxist theory, this essay examines Bateman's consumption patterns and class-consciousness using key Marxist terms. This essay investigates the relationship between Bateman and his commodities, through the Marxist concept of value. Furthermore, this essay suggests that Bateman's consumption pattern creates his identity and that Bateman's lust for consumption has no boundaries. Bateman quenches his thirst for consumption by consuming humans of low status on the social hierarchy, by acts of violence, rape or cannibalism.
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Stone, Ben. "Royal palms: Exploring 1980s neoliberal characterisation through Foucauldian power and discourse." Thesis, Queensland University of Technology, 2019. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/132603/1/Benjamin_Stone_Thesis.pdf.
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This practice-led novel and exegesis explores the characterisation of an anecdotal 1980s Wall Street junket on Queensland's Gold Coast in terms of Foucauldian power and discourse. Problematising the subject's decentred ontology implied by the life sciences, Foucault's theories are adapted to illustrate characterisation as a site of discursive interpellation and contest in neoliberal fiction. Decentred, the subject as a scape of discursive practice reveals the struggle between 'personal discourse' and the organisational power of corporations. This has implications not only for character intentionality and artificial subjects, but provides a framework where humanism and organisational agency can be approached as an ontology of the self.
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Annesley, James. "Blank fiction : culture, consumption and the contemporary American novel." Thesis, University of Sussex, 1997. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.321347.
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Lundberg, Robin. "Unreliable narration in Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho and Jeff Lindsay's Darkly Dreaming Dexter." Thesis, Karlstads universitet, Institutionen för språk, litteratur och interkultur, 2015. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kau:diva-34929.
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This essay focuses on the character Patrick Bateman in American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis and his unreliability as a narrator and compares it to the unreliable narration of the character Dexter Morgan in Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay. These characters' respective unreliability is analyzed from the perspective of six types of unreliability suggested by James Phelan and Mary Patricia Martin: misreporting, misreading, misregarding, underreporting, underreading and underregarding. The result of the analysis is that while Patrick shows proof of being an unreliable narrator with respect to each one of the six types except underreporting and underregarding, Dexter can be connected to three of them (misreading, underreading and underregarding). Even if this might seem like an insignificant difference, the amount and the clarity in the examples of unreliability adhering to Patrick suggests that he is a much more unreliable narrator than Dexter is. This result indicates that characters can be at opposing ends of a spectrum of unreliability, on which Patrick according to this analysis is placed at the highly unreliable end of the spectrum and Dexter somewhere at the low end.<br>Denna uppsats fokuserar på karaktären Patrick Bateman i American Psycho skriven av Bret Easton Ellis, med tanke på denna karaktärs opålitlighet som berättare. Detta jämförs med karaktären Dexter Morgan från Darkly Dreaming Dexter skriven av Jeff Lindsay och denna karaktärs opålitlighet som berättare. Detta opålitliga berättande analyseras utifrån en modell som består av sex kategorier vilka James Phelan och Mary Patricia Martin har formulerat. Dessa kategorier kallas: ”misreporting”, ”misreading”, ”misregarding”, ”underreporting”, ”underreading” och ”underregarding”. Resultatet av analysen visar på att Patricks berättande kan placeras in i fyra av dessa kategorier (”misreporting”, ”misreading”, ”misregarding” och ”underreading”). Detta i jämförelse med Dexters berättande som kan placeras in i tre av dem (”misreading”, ”underreading” och ”underregarding”). Även fast denna skillnad kan verka obetydlig är det ändå så att de exampel på opålitlighet som Patrick visar upp står att finna i fler och tydligare exempel än hos Dexter vilket innebär att Patrick kan ses som en mer opålitlig berättare än Dexter. Resultatet av analysen indikerar att olika karaktärers berättande kan återfinnas i olika ändar av ett opålitlighetsspektrum. På detta spektrum kan Patrick då placeras in som en mer opålitlig berättare än Dexter som hamnar i den mer pålitliga delen av spektrumet.
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Hardie, Michael L. "Using Hamlet and Peter Pan: Family Issues, Ghosts, and Memory in Bret Easton Ellis's Lunar Park." ScholarWorks@UNO, 2016. http://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/2233.
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Lutton, Alison Mary. "Authorship and the production of literary value, 1982-2012 : Bret Easton Ellis, Paul Auster, J.T. LeRoy, and Tucker Max." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2014. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:3aa64675-73a2-42a8-be24-cb75f034e9de.
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Definitions of celebrity authorship and material textuality at the turn of the twenty-first century have predominantly emphasised the implicitly negative aspects of contemporary developments in the literary marketplace. Particularly prominent are arguments that the practice of authorship has become subject to homogenisation by the matrix of celebrity in which successful writers are now expected to function; and, further, that the changing nature of texts themselves and the ways in which they are marketed is eroding the implicitly superior position traditionally held by literature in the cultural marketplace. This thesis views such readings as pessimistic, and offers an alternative, seeking to formulate a new critical approach to literary value in the contemporary sphere which would appreciate notions of celebrity, populism, and digital mediation as integral and productive aspects of how literary value is formed today. Through in-depth focus on the cases of a number of unconventional contemporary American authors whose work demonstrates differing, innovative approaches to the process of authorship, this thesis exposes the ways in which contemporary, atypically ‘literary’ instances of writing can and do work within and develop beyond traditional conceptualisations of authorship and literary value. Bret Easton Ellis and Jay McInerney, largely critically considered prototypical ‘celebrity’ authors, are in the first chapter reconsidered as writers whose understanding of their position within the literary marketplace affords them a self-conscious, critical perspective on the notion of celebrity in their work and public personae. The productively self-conscious author-figure is reconsidered in the second chapter, which reads the individual and joint works of author Paul Auster and visual artist Sophie Calle as foregrounding the process of creative collaboration as uniquely illuminating and transformative within the contemporary literary sphere. The notion of dual authorship is revisited and reconceptualised in the third chapter, which considers JT LeRoy and the practice of hoax authorship, outlining how this process forces the reformulation of literary value, particularly in a contemporary setting in which authors are accountable for their work in newer, more visible ways. The final chapter expands these previously-introduced themes to consider bloggers-turned-authors, particularly Tucker Max and Julie Powell, and the impact of the merging of old and new textualities on both the orientation of the figure of the writer and the way in which value is attached to his texts by readers. Ultimately, the unconventional nature of these examples is shown to belie the universality of the representations of value they enact, contributing to a full and salient account of how literary value is determined at the beginning of the twenty-first century.
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Eigeartaigh, Aoileann N. "'I shop, therefore I am' : consumerism and the mass media in the novels of Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, Bret Easton Ellis and Douglas Coupland." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2001. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/1790.
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This thesis argues that consumerism and the mass media wield an unparalleled influence over contemporary North American society, and that these forces constitute the primary means through which identity is constituted. The historical and theoretical developments that have led to the foregrounding of these forces are outlined in the introduction - developments, it is argued, that are intrinsically connected to the social upheava1 that characterized America in the late 1960's and early 1970's, while their presence in and effects on the fiction of four contemporary North American writers - Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, Bret Easton Ellis and Douglas Coupland - are examined in the main body of the thesis. Chapter I focuses on Pynchon whose novels, it is argued, are the product of a uniquely post-1960's America, which mourns the sacrifice of traditional ideals to the corporate mindset which has been prevalent since ths 1980's Pynchon's dominant metaphor for the direction in which he believes American society to be moving is the thermodynamic concept of entropy, which stipulates that all prqress is towards death. His novels abound with characters who disintegrate due to the information overload fostered by their media-based world. However, he retains his faith that a return to historical values and traditions will stem and even reverse the entropic tide DeLillo, a close contemporary of Pynchon's, draws on a different aspect of the legacy of the 1960's, for his writing is overshadowed by the 1963 assassination of President Kennedy and the years of turbulence that ensued. His novels are ultimately more pessimistic because his characters do not succeed in escaping from the repressive narratives of consumerism and the mass media in order to reassert their own personalities. One reason for this failure, it is argued, is that DeLillo's characters represent a metaphorical dramatization of the dichotomy between the modernist desire for structure and the postmodernist embrace of fluidity and uncertainty. The fictional characters of the younger authors, Ellis and Coupland, inhabit this postmodern world where all experience has been rendered depthless and traditional ontological and epistemological certainties have been collapsed Ellis' characters fluctuate between the extremes of apathy and violence as they search for a way of preventing their psyches from disintegrating amidst the surrounding chaos. Neither one of these options brings - any relief. Coupland is more optimistic about the ability of his characters to survive and even prosper in the contemporary world. He arms them with the linguistic and technological skills necessary to adapt to the rapid social and technological changes. Most importantly of all, he draws on the sense of objectivity fostered by his own background as a Canadian in order to provide them with an alternative and a sense of escape from the media-saturated environment of the American West Coast. What is perhaps most remarkable about these four authors as a group is that in spite of their obvious insight into the nature of the contemporary postmodern world, they are unwilling - or perhaps even unable - to fully relinquish their hold on a number of traditional metanarratives, most notably the ideal of the stable, supportive family unit. This implies a degree of uncertainty and perhaps even of fear on their parts about fully committing to the fluidity of contemporary culture.
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Chan, Suet Ni. "In the periphery of the margin: white masculinity in contemporary American fiction /Chan Suet Ni." HKBU Institutional Repository, 2017. https://repository.hkbu.edu.hk/etd_oa/351.
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My thesis discusses male identity in contemporary culture in relation to work by Bret Easton Ellis and Chuck Palahniuk. Such work reflects the problems, anxieties, and dilemmas of the masculine subject in American culture. The characters in my six selected texts, namely, Ellis' Less Than Zero, American Psycho, and Glamorama, and Palahniuk's Fight Club, Survivor, and Choke, symbolize a generation with no discernible future. Each male protagonist finds himself in a place of no time and no meaning because image and illusion have supplanted essence. These characters combat culture-prevalent emptiness in the sense that each ironically re-asserts his so-called individuality against the dogmas of the establishment. Each, furthermore, is aware that his existence is not subject to a higher order or preset goal: traditional morality thereby has no meaning. My selected texts feature masculine subjects struggling with their own contingencies once stripped of given privileges (gender, class, race, and otherwise). To examine the notion of masculinity, I emphasize the role of power relations in gender construction. Bret Easton Ellis characterizes a world of appearance defined by particular styles. Chuck Palahniuk's males are empty--they do not have any definitive meaning. Judith Butler challenges the proposition of a fixed identity, or an essential permanent masculinity or femininity as structured and reified by social norms. Therefore, we should not view masculinity as a cohesive and homogeneous category. Following Foucault, I examine the relationship between masculine subjects and social practices. At stake here, is how the performative articulation of proper masculinity disempowers and imprisons the masculine subject in a material form over which he has no control. The body becomes the object of desire and thus the vehicle/preserve of the sense of powerlessness that the masculine subject experiences daily within a hegemonic culture. Power is exercised through a dominant presence. This presence structures as a binary classification serving to underscore differences and ensure particular privileged social positioning. The proposition of a fixed identity, or an essential permanent masculinity or femininity, is structured and reified by social norms. Masculinity as a cohesive and homogeneous category is historically represented as an unstable center from which all other identities are defined.
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Grivas, Steven. "Invasive cultures: American culture in Bret Easton Ellis' American psycho." 1999. http://repository.unimelb.edu.au/10187/7130.
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"Invasive cultures: American culture in Bret Easton Ellis’ American psycho” proposes that Ellis' small body of fictional works can be read as active critiques of American culture, detailing the ways in which this culture informs the current condition of American society in recent times. The larger intent of this thesis is to delineate and examine the relays between American culture, the forces of capitalism that underlie them, and their significant bearing on the social behaviour, personal expression and psychology of Ellis’ characters, who often directly assimilate and embody its characteristics, whether physically or mentally. Ellis presents his characters as deeply informed by their contact with the cultural realm.<br>Ellis' preoccupations with popular and consumer cultures, with the increasingly invasive mass media, and with a visually oriented society obsessed with surfaces, are all examined in the light of how these cultures are radically entangled with the consciousness and behaviour of his characters. In Ellis' fiction, the banal and the sensational are lucrative fixtures of a culture that functions as a commercial industry, driven by profit like any other, that exploits the desires and expectations of its consumers. Moreover, these common representations and modes of expression are presented as contagious, seeping into personal modes of self-expression. Just as Ellis instances how culture rigorously shapes the body and lifestyle, he also demonstrates through the stylized consciousness of his characters the media's powerful influence on their subjectivity and behaviour. This thesis focuses on American psycho (1991) but also discusses Ellis' other novels Less than zero (1984), The rules of attraction (1987), and The informers (1994).
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Messier, Vartan P. "Canons of transgression : shock, scandal, and subversion from Matthew Lewis' The Monk to Bret Easton Ellis' American psycho /." 2004. http://grad.uprm.edu/tesis/messiervartan.pdf.
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Kuon, Ludwig [Verfasser]. "René Girard und die Wahrheit des Romans : der mimetische Konflikt als Handlungsschema in den Romanen von Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho (1991), Michel Houellebecq, Elementarteilchen (1996), und Vladimir Sorokin, Der himmelblaue Speck (1999) / vorgelegt von Kuon, Ludwig." 2006. http://d-nb.info/980698979/34.
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Sheikh, Nabeela. "Missing-in-action : the American cipher in Bret Easton Ellis and Douglas Coupland." Thèse, 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/1866/17581.
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Pereira, Cristina Santos. "Raymond Carver e Bret Easton Ellis : paisagens ficcionais emergentes de um “newly envisioned world"." Master's thesis, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/10400.2/551.
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Dissertação de Mestrado em Estudos Americanos apresentada à Universidade Aberta<br>Assistimos a uma multiplicidade de desafios lançada por esta nova era de finais do século XX: a inconsistência de uma sociedade mediatizada, os instantes fragmentários, a alienação individual, a coexistência constante com a ambiguidade, a ausência da melhor solução, em soma, os próprios questionamentos existenciais e sociais.
A leitura da ficção de Raymond Carver e Bret Easton Ellis implica a veiculação do seu newly envisioned world, no qual os fragmentos do real são combinados enquanto construto consensual da experiência empírica. Ambos forjam um sentido diferente da identidade americana, produzindo uma variedade de perspectivas sobre o quadro contemporâneo através dos vários possíveis minimalismos que remetem para uma qualidade ou modo de experiência.
Carver procura o sentido das palavras e das coisas no espaço doméstico, reflectindo o género do conto uma condição essencial da nossa era moderna, do nosso sentido de marginalidade no mundo e da nossa percepção, frequentemente ténue, de nós próprios.
Por sua vez, Ellis oferece uma visão de um mundo subjugado por uma cultura cada vez mais comodificada, reencontrando-se capaz de reconhecer as jactâncias e as contradições desta nova era, dando lugar a uma reavaliação das lógicas desse quotidiano<br>On assiste à une multiplicité de défis lancée par cette nouvelle ère de la fin du XXème siècle: l´inconsistance d´une société médiatisée, les instants fragmentaires, l´aliénation individuelle, la coexistence constante avec l´ambiguïté, l´absence de la meilleure solution, en somme, les propres questionnements existentiels et sociaux.
La lecture de la fiction de Raymond Carver et Bret Easton Ellis implique le véhicule de leur newly envisioned world, dont les fragments du réel sont combinés en tant que construction consensuelle de l´expérience empirique. Tous deux forgent un sens différent de l´identité américaine, produisant une variété de perspectives concernant le cadre contemporain à travers des divers possibles minimalismes qui renvoient à une qualité ou mode d´expérience.
Carver cherche le sens des mots et des choses dans l´espace domestique, reflétant le genre du conte une condition essentielle de notre ère moderne, de notre sens de marginalité dans le monde et de notre perception, fréquemment ténue, de nous-mêmes.
De son côté, Ellis offre une vision d´un monde soumis à une culture où rien n´est gratuit, se rencontrant capable de reconnaître les jactances et les contradictions de cette nouvelle ère, donnant lieu à une réévaluation des logiques de ce quotidien<br>Abstract - At present, we attend a multiplicity of challenges made by the late 20th century era: an inconsistency of a media society, fragmentary moments, the individual’s alienation, a constant coexistence with ambiguity, the absence of the best solution, to sum up, the very existential and social questionings.
The reading of Raymond Carver’s and Ellis’s fiction implies the consideration of their newly envisioned world. Here the fragments of the real are combined, building up a consensual picture of the empiric experience. Both shape a different American identity, putting forward a variety of perspectives about the contemporary scene through the different possible minimalisms which are linked to a quality or mode of experience.
Carver looks for the meaning of the words and things in the domestic sphere. In his case, the short story mirrors an essential condition of our time, of our sense of marginality in the world and of our quite often tenuous perception of ourselves.
Ellis, on his turn, offers the vision of a world subdued by a more and more comodified culture, being able to recognise the display and contradictions of this new era, opening up a reassessment of its logic
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Knight, Mary Leslie. "Sympathy for the Devil: Volatile Masculinities in Recent German and American Literatures." Diss., 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10161/3830.
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<p>This study investigates how an ambivalence surrounding men and masculinity has been expressed and exploited in Pop literature since the late 1980s, focusing on works by German-speaking authors Christian Kracht and Benjamin Lebert and American author Bret Easton Ellis. I compare works from the United States with German and Swiss novels in order to reveal the scope - as well as the national particularities - of these troubled gender identities and what it means in the context of recent debates about a "crisis" in masculinity in Western societies. My comparative work will also highlight the ways in which these particular literatures and cultures intersect, invade, and influence each other. </p><p> In this examination, I demonstrate the complexity and success of the critical projects subsumed in the works of three authors too often underestimated by intellectual communities. At the same time, I reveal the very structure and language of these critical projects as a safe haven for "male fantasies" of gender difference and identity formation long relegated to the distant past, fantasies that continue to lurk within our cultural currencies.</p><br>Dissertation
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Loughran, Colin. "American Impotence: Narratives of National Manhood in Postwar U.S. Literature." Thesis, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/1807/42531.
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“American Impotence” investigates a continuity between literary representations of masculinity and considerations of national identity in the works of five postwar novelists. In particular, I illustrate the manner in which Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, John Updike’s Couples, Robert Coover’s The Public Burning, Joan Didion’s Democracy and The Last Thing He Wanted, and Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho challenge the patterns of daily life through which a single figure is imagined to be the essential agent of American polity: namely, the self-made individualist, characterized by manly virtues like dominance, aggression, ambition, mastery, vitality, and virility. More specifically, this project examines the manner in which the iconicity of men helps sustain a narrative of “imperilled masculinity” that at once privileges an impossible identity, situated in the representative nucleus of postwar democracy, and forecloses other modalities of political life. Observing the full meaning of the word “potency,” I elucidate the interrelationships between narrative forms, masculine norms, and democratic practice. Ellison’s work ties the maturation of African American boys to the impossibility of full participation in civic life, for instance, while in Updike’s Couples the contradictions of virile manhood manifest in the form of a fatalism that threatens to undo the carefully cultivated social boundaries of early sixties bohemianism; in a variety of ways, The Public Burning and American Psycho represent the iconic nature of masculinity as a psychic threat to those men closest to it, while Didion’s female protagonists find themselves flirting with the promises of a secret agency linked to imperial adventures in Southeast Asia and Central America. In the cultural context of the Cold War, these novelists demonstrate how intensified participation in national fantasies of potency and virility is inevitably disempowering; as an alternative, this dissertation seeks to consider impotence as dissensus detached from the mandates of hegemonic masculinity.
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Personn, Tim. "Fictions of proximity: the Wallace Nexus in contemporary literature." Thesis, 2018. https://dspace.library.uvic.ca//handle/1828/9886.
Full textAbstract:
This dissertation studies a group of contemporary Anglo-American novelists who contribute to the development of a new humanism after the postmodern critique of Euro-American culture. As such, these writers respond to positions in twentieth-century philosophy that converge in a call for silence which has an ontological as well as ethical valence: as a way of rigorously thinking the ‘outside’ to language, it avoids charges of metaphysical inauthenticity; as an ethical stance in the wake of the Shoah, it eschews a complicity with the reifications of modern culture. How to reconcile this post-metaphysical promise with the politico-aesthetic inadequacy of speechlessness is the central question for this nexus of novelists—David Markson, Bret Easton Ellis, David Foster Wallace, and Zadie Smith—at the center of which the study locates Wallace as a key figure of contemporary literature. By reconstructing the conversation among these authors, this dissertation argues that the nexus writers turn to indirect means of representation that do justice to the demand for silence in matters of metaphysics, but also gesture past it in the development of a neo-romantic aesthetics that invites the humanist category of the self back onto the scene after its dismissal by late postmodernism. The key to such indirection lies in an aporetic method that inspires explorations of metaphysical assumptions by seducing readers to an ambiguous site of aesthetic wonder; in conversation with a range of contemporary philosophers, the dissertation defines this affective site as a place of proximity, rather than absorption or detachment, which balances out the need for metaphysical distance with the productive desire for a fullness of experience. Such proximate aesthetic experiences continue the work of ‘doing metaphysics’ in post-metaphysical times by engaging our habitual responsiveness to the categories involved. Hence the novels discussed here stage limit cases of reason such as the unknowable world, the unreachable other, the absence of the self, and the unstable hierarchy between irony and sincerity: Markson’s Wittgenstein’s Mistress imagines skepticism as literal abandonment and reminds us of our metaphysical indebtedness to a desired object/world; Ellis’s American Psycho shows the breakdown of communication due to a similarly skeptical vision of human interaction and presents a violence that tries to force a response from the desired subject/person; Wallace’s Infinite Jest creates a large canvas on which episodes of metaphysical and literal ‘stuckness’ afford possibilities for becoming human; Smith’s The Autograph Man, finally, pays attention to gestural language at the breaking point of materialism and theology, nature and culture, tragedy and comedy.<br>Graduate<br>2020-08-01