Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'White, Patrick, 1912-1990. Voss'

This study represents an exploration of White's concept of transcendence in The Tree of Man and Voss by means of a detailed account of some of the key patterns of imagery deployed in these novels. White's imagery is a key mode of expression in his work, not simply manifesting in overarching religious symbols and framing structures but figuring in constantly modulated tropes continuous with the narrative, as well as in minor, but no less significant images occasionally susceptible to etymological or onomastic reading. While no attempt is made to provide an exhaustive exploration of the tropes at work in these novels, a sufficient range of material is covered, and its metaphoric density adequately penetrated, to highlight and explore a fundamental concern in White's work with a paradoxical unity underlying the dualities inherent in temporal existence. A useful way of approaching his fiction is to view the perpetual modulations of his imagery as the dramatisation of an enantiodromia or play of opposites, in which the conflicts of duality are elaborated and paradoxically - though typically only momentarily - resolved. This resolution or coincidence of opposites is a significant feature of his notion of transcendence as well as his depictions of illuminatory experience, and in this respect White's metaphysics share an essential characteristic, not only of Christianity, but a range of religious and mythological systems concerned with expressing a transcendent reality. Despite these analogies, however, the novels at hand are not so tightly bound to Christian, or any other, meaning-making systems so as to constitute sustained allegories, and hence this study does not aim to chart a series of correspondences between White's images and biblical or mythological symbols. Indeed, a criticism often levelled at White - with The Tree of Man and Voss typically figuring in support of this claim - is that he too rigidly imposes religious frameworks on his work. An extension of this view is formulated in the Jungian critique of White's corpus offered by David Tacey, who argues that White's conception of transcendence is consistently challenged by the archetypal significance of the images he employs, which point to a contrary process of psycho-spiritual regression in his protagonists. In a fundamentally text-based approach, this study explores White's use of imagery while taking biblical resonances and archetypal interpretations into account, and suggests that, though White's images are highly allusive, they are not merely agents of imported Christian, or other traditional symbolic values. Nor do they undermine the authenticity of his depiction of the spirituality of his protagonists, or obtrude on the fabric of the narrative. Instead, the range of his images are - though often ambivalent - integral to a network of mercurial tropes which articulate and constantly evaluate a notion of transcendence through inflections and oscillations rather than equations of meaning.

La thèse évalue la réussite de l'ambition affichée par l'écrivain australien Patrick White (1912-1990) de réaliser un roman épique australien digne de fonder la littérature d'une nation nouvelle. Le travail étudie plus particulièrement The Tree of Man (1955), Voss (1957) et Riders in the Chariot (1961), romans qui lui ont valu le Prix Nobel en 1973. La thèse étudie les caractéristiques du personnage épique dans le roman whitien, en rapport avec la tradition de l'épopée classique mais aussi avec le roman nationaliste australien. Puis elle s'intéresse aux caractéristiques de l'action et de sa conduite dans le cadre du roman, mais aussi dans une logique mystique qui définit un rapport spécifique à la nature et à la psychologie nationale. Enfin, elle étudie des procédés stylistiques liés à la tradition rhétorique épique, ainsi que des effets de sublime, mais aussi l'ironie critique qui est à la fois l'héritage d'une tradition romanesque moderne et la base d'un discours épique novateur
The Australian writer and Nobel Prize winner Patrick White (191. 2-1990) had the avowed ambition, in the 1950s, to write the Crreat Australian Novel which would found the literature of a new nation. This thesis sets out to assess the success of this undertaking by looking at The Tree of Man (1955), Voss (1957) and Ridera in the Chariot (1961) in particular. The first part studies the characteristics of the epic hero in White's novels, with regard to the classic epic tradition, as well as the Australian nationalist novel. The second part deals with plot, showing how events are ordered according to a quest pattern on both a realistic and a mystical level, establishing a specific relation to Nature and defining a specifically Australian world-view. The third part attempts to show how White's use of stylistic devices belonging to the epic rhetorical tradition, of the sublime, but also of an irony specific to the novel form, ail contribute to the ground-breaking status of his epic writing

Marqué par sa participation à la dernière guerre au Moyen-Orient et en Grèce, marqué par la résistance culturelle et géographique de l'Australie à la colonisation européenne, Patrick White (1912-1990, Prix Nobel de littérature en 1973) saisit le prétexte d'une exploration avortée de la plus grande île du monde et l'érige en symbole d'introspection identitaire impliquant l'homme, le pays (ville, Bush, désert : Outback) et le rapport à la femme. Voss (1957) est l'histoire de l'impossible vécu homme-femme confiné dans le fantasme, l'ère du Rêve aborigène, l'osmose spirituelle, mais capable de transcender les clivages sociaux. Dans cette œuvre épique, White montre que l'identité doit passer par la terre, que l'avenir des Australiens doit résider dans la fusion du Dreamtime et de l'histoire judéo-chrétienne. Il faut parcourir des étendues désertes de sable sur une terre inconnue (Leichhardt l'explorateur) ou sillonner des mers dangereuses (Voss le navigateur) pour découvrir son moi intérieur et se réconcilier avec ses origines. Il faut hausser le ciel toujours plus haut pour mieux étreindre la terre, le tenir à distance, ne pas sombrer dans les entrailles chthoniennes, en un mot : devenir homme arborescent
Inspired by his experience of the battlefields of Greece and the Middle East during World War II and the cultural and geographical resistance of Australia to European civilization, Patrick White (1912-1990, Nobel Prize for Literature in 1973), enlarges on an abortive exploration of the biggest island in the world to build it up into a symbol of introspection, thus broaching upon the themes of human identity, country (town, bush and outback) and love. Voss (1957) unfolds the story of a man and a woman which can only fulfil itself in fantasy, blending at times with the Aboriginal Dreamtime and transcending social classes. In this epic masterpiece, White delivers the message that identity depends on land and that Judeo-Christian traditions must come to terms with Aboriginal mores. Man has to acknowledge his wilderness - Leichhardt as a land explorer, Voss as a circumnavigator - to find out where he belongs, prop up the sky in order to embrace the land, keep both of them at bay, and, tree-like, grow!

L'objet de cette thèse est d'interroger l'affirmation selon laquelle le roman à partir du XXe siècle est résolument " spatial ", en s'appuyant sur trois romans qui encadrent et traversent la période moderniste : Heart of Darkness de Joseph Conrad, Under the Volcano de Malcolm Lowry et Voss de Patrick White. Après un premier chapitre consacré à un tour d'horizon de la notion d'écriture spatiale dans la critique depuis les thèses de Joseph Frank et en passant par les analyses de Bakhtine, Todorov, Barthes et Ricoeur, deux positions critiques se dégagent : soit définir les œuvres " spatiales " comme des romans qui s'éloignent d'un modèle logico-temporel tel qu'on peut l'observer dans nombre de romans au XIXe, inspiré d'une esthétique à visée référentielle et mimétique, soit les définir par leurs caractéristiques propres qui sont celles d'œuvres dont la cohérence et la structure reflètent une logique interne et non externe. La première position est étudiée au deuxième chapitre qui porte par conséquent sur tous les avatars de la ligne logico-temporelle et leur remise en cause dans ces trois romans : la ligne logique et narrative, la ligne des origines ou téléologique, la ligne herméneutique et enfin la ligne organique. Dans le troisième chapitre, il s'agit de voir dans quelle mesure on peut parler d'une structuration à dominante spatiale dans Heart of Darkness, Under the Volcano et Voss et cette fois-ci de manière " positive " et non plus à contrario. Le paradigme de la ligne se voit remplacé par celui de l'étoilement des points de vue, des voix et des mots. Brouillage de la perspective, polyphonie et étoilement du signifiant redonnent du volume à la structuration linéaire héritée du XIXe. En dernier lieu se pose alors la question de la position du sujet (Personnage, narrateur, auteur, lecteur) dans ses rapports avec les autres, le monde, les mots et selon trois figures spatiales principales : la faille, l'entre-deux et une prédilection pour la surface.

This thesis argues that Patrick White’s Voss, Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient and David Malouf’s An Imaginary Life depict landscape in a manner that reveals the inadequacies of imperial epistemological discourses and the rationalist model of subjectivity which enables them. The study demonstrates that these novels all emphasise the instabilities inherent in imperial epistemology. White, Ondaatje and Malouf chart their protagonists’ inability to comprehend and document the landscapes they encounter, and the ways in which this failure calls into question their subjectivity and the epistemologies that underpin it. One of the principal contentions of the study, then, is that the novels under consideration deploy a postmodern aesthetic of the sublime to undermine colonial discourses. The first chapter of the thesis outlines the postcolonial and poststructural theory that informs the readings in the later chapters. Chapter Two analyses White’s representation of subjectivity, imperial discourse and the Outback in Voss. The third chapter examines Ondaatje’s depiction of the Sahara Desert in The English Patient, and focuses on his concern with the ways in which language and cartographic discourse influence the subject’s perception of the natural world. Chapter Four investigates the representation of landscape, language and subjectivity in Malouf’s An Imaginary Life. Finally, then, this study argues that literature’s unique ability to acknowledge alterity enables it to serve as an effective tool for critiquing colonial discourses.

The texts in this study interrogate the dominant myths which have affected the constructs of identity and history in the white Australian socio-historical context. These myths are exposed by White as ideologically determined and as operating by processes of exclusion, repression and marginalisation. White challenges the autonomy of both European and Australian cultures, reveals the ideological complicity between them and adopts a critical approach to all Western cultural assumptions. As a post-colonial writer, White shares the need of both post-colonising and post-colonised groups for an identity established not in terms of the colonial power but in terms of themselves. As a dissident white male, he is a privileged member of the post- colonising group but one who rejects the dominant discourses as illegitimate and unlegitimating. He offers a re-writing of the myths underpinning colonial and post-colonising discourses which privileges their suppressed and repressed elements. His re-writings affect aboriginal men and women, white women and the 'privileged' white male whose subjection to social control is masked as unproblematic freedom. White's re-writing of myth enbraces the post-modern as well as the post- colonial. He not only deconstructs and demystifies the phallogocentric/ethnocentric order of things; he also attempts to avoid totalization by privileging indeterminacy, fragmentation, hybridization and those liminary states which defy articulation: the ecstatic, the abject, the unspeakable. He himself is denied authority in that his re-writings are presented as mere acts in the always provisional process of making interpretations. White acknowledges the problematics of both presentation and re-presentation - an unresolved tension between the post-colonial desire for self-definition and the post-modern decentring of all meaning and interpretation permeates his discourse. The close readings of the texts attempt, accordingly, to reflect varying oppositional strategies: those which seek to overturn hierarchies and expose power-relations and those which seek an idiom in which contemporary Australia may find its least distorted reflexion. Within this ideological context, the Lacanian thematics of the subject, and their re-writing by Kristeva, are linked with dialectical criticism in an attempt to reflect a strictly provisional process of (re) construction

White met en exergue de son avant-dernier roman un passage de David Malouf, extrait de An imaginary life, qui pourrait ouvrir un recueil de ses oeuvres, tant il éclaire avec justesse la vision existentielle au coeur de sa création romanesque : « what else should our lives be but a series of beginnings, of painful settings out into the unknown, pushing off from the edges of consciousness into the mystery of what we have not yet become ». Les termes « unknown » et « mystery of what we have not yet become » prennent une importance toute particulière quand ils sont appliqués à l'univers de White. Si le romancier incite avec force son lecteur à s'engager, à la suite des personnages, dans une exploration de son monde intérieur, il ne lui donne aucune réponse définitive et s'emploie au contraire, avec des moyens de plus en plus variés, complexes et maitrisés, à déjouer tous les modes conventionnels d'interprétation, à démonter les systèmes idéologiques et philosophiques, comme le prouvent les points de vue contradictoires adoptés par les critiques de ses oeuvres
Patrick White's preoccupation is with the process of self-discovery, of setting out into the unknown territory of the mind. His novels are exploratory. What matters is the quest for meaning, more than definite answers. For him, truth is a matter of interrogation, it is unattainable and inexpressible. Only through intuition is it possible to apprehend it, beyond words and systems. The various assertions of silence in the novels offer a supplementary space, inviting a dynamic and inventive reading of a text that is unfinished but calling for completion

Patrick white, prix nobel australien, auteur d'une oeuvre romanesque considerable et proteiforme, s'est aussi employe a souligner l'incapacite du langage verbal a dire l'essentiel. C'est peut-etre ce constat qui justifie l'interet perceptible de bout en bout dans sa fiction pour d'autres formes d'expression artistique, pour l'intertextualite heterosemiotique, pour le dialogisme trans-artistique ou l'utilisation de differents "langages" croises (litterature, musique, danse, chant, peinture). Apres avoir execute plusieurs portraits d'artistes inaboutis dans the aunt's story, the tree of man, voss et the solid mandala, l'ecrivian se focalise sur la peinture, mode artistique qu'il privilegie, peut-etre parce qu'elle est plus universelle et plus immediate dans sa perception que l'ecriture. White ecrit avec l'oeil du peintre, convoque tableaux ou peintres sous forme de citations, represente des personnages peintres dont la creation est mise en parallele avec celle du roman qui les cree. Il se livre a l'exploration systematisee de la peinture dans the vivisector, roman qui met en scene une figure d'artiste visionnaire, qui est aussi artiste-vivisecteur, dont la production est tant le produit de l'imagination et de l'esprit que du corps, et dont la quete picturale est aussi quete du sacre (l'identification est totale dans riders in the chariot). Mais dans toute l'oeuvre romanesque, en meme temps que l7ecriture cherche a produire des visions epiphaniques qui s'accompagnent de la creatons de figures de la totalite (mandala, lustre-chandelier. . . ), la voix auctoriale fait la part belle a l'ironie qui tourne souvent a tragique, patrick white
Patrick white, australian winner of the nobel prize and author of a considerable number of protean novels, has emphasized the inability of verbal language to convey what is essential. This perceived inability explains the interest throughout his work in toher forms of artistic expression, in nonliterary intertextuality, in transartistic dialogue or in the use of different cross- "langues" (literature, music, dancing, singing, painting). After drawing several portraits of frustrated of failed artists in the aunt's story, the tree man, voss and the solid mandala, white focuses on painting, an art form for which he shows a marked preference, perhaps because it is more universally and immedialtely perceivable than writing. White writes with the painter's eye; he quotes paintings and painters, and he portrays painters whose creation is paralleled by the novel which creates them. The systematically explores painting in the vivisector, a novel about a visionary artist, a vivisector-artist, whose painting is as much the product of the imagination and the mind as of the body, and whose pictural quest is also a quest for the sacred (in riders in the chariot, the two quests are one). But, throughout the novels and their attempt to reach epiphanic visions with the accompaying creation of figures of totality such as the mandala or the chandelier, the auctorial voice is more than tinged with ironic - even tragic - overtones, and patrick white thus achieves a

The focus of this thesis has been to engage in a hermeneutic dialogue with Patrick White's novel The solid mandala, to provide an explication of the dual nature of narcissistic wounding. To this end a brief review of Patrick White's novels is given, which traces a thematic development of the hero's strivings to attain wholeness and merger with an idealized image. This struggle is understood to reflect man's strivings to return to a state of omnipotent fusion with the maternal image, be it God, nature, the idealized other, or the self. Literature which reflects the dual nature of narcissistic wounding is reviewed, and the concept of narcissism is traced from the historical roots of Freud, to current understandings of the function and experience of narcissism. Emphasis is given to understanding the experiential nature of narcissistic wounding. As such it is implied that narcissism is a normal developmental component which requires the facilitation of containment and reflection for its transformation into appropriate adult functioning. The importance of the maternal environment is discussed, together with the various theoretical conceptualizations of the consequences of failure of the environment. The hermeneutic dialogue with the novel's description of the experiences of the twins, Waldo and Arthur provides the basis for an amplification of the experience of narcissistic wounding. This amplification is used as clinical material from which a number of psychoanalytic formulations are drawn. These formulations are supported by a number of clinical examples from the researcher's own practice. There appears to be evidence for the value of focusing on the dual nature of the experience of narcissistic wounding. This focus reveals two aspects of experience, a damaged, positive, libidinal aspect and a defensive, pathological destructive aspect. Amplification of these two aspects of experience contribute to further the understanding of the conflictual experience of narcissistic wounding, and suggest the necessity for such an understanding for effective therapeutic intervention

"Still Life" argues that Patrick White's fiction reveals objects in surprising, unexpected attitudes so as to challenge the process by which the mind usually connects with the world around it. In particular, White's novels disrupt readers' tacit assumptions about the lethargic nature of substance; this thesis traces how his fiction reaches beyond familiar linguistic and stylistic forms in order to reinvent humanity's generally passive perception of reality. The first chapter outlines the historical context of ideas about the "object," tracing their development from the Bible through literary movements such as romanticism, symbolism, surrealism and modernism. Further, the chapter considers the nature of language and the relation of object to word in order to distinguish between the usual symbolic use made of objects in literature and White's treatment of things as discrete, palpable entities. The second chapter focuses on White's first three published novels—Happy Valley (1939), The Living and the Dead (1941) and The Aunt's Story (1948)--as steps in his novelistic growth. Chapters Three, Four and Five examine respectively The Tree of Man (1955), The Solid Mandala (1966) and The Eye of the Storm (1973); these novels represent successive stages of White's career and exemplify his different formal and stylistic techniques. White's innovations demand a new manner of reading; therefore, each novel is discussed in terms of objects which reflect the shapes of the works themselves: "tree" defines the structure and style of Tree of Man "house" inspires Solid Mandala and "body" shapes Eye of the Storm. Reading White's novels in terms of structural analogues not only illuminates his methodology, but also clarifies his distinction between objective and subjective ways of understanding the world. Further, these chapters also refute critics' arguments that White's objects are merely victims of his overambitious use of personification and pathetic fallacy, or that they are the result of his dabbling in mysticism. "Still Life" concludes by showing how Patrick White's novels sequentially break down assumptions about reality and appearance until the reality of language itself falters. The author restores mystery to things by relocating the possibility of the extraordinary within the narrow, prescribed confines of the ordinary. White succeeds in changing readers' notions about the nature of reality by disrupting the habitual process by which they apprehend the world of things.
Arts, Faculty of
English, Department of
Graduate

Le monde imaginaire de patrick white se fonde sur l'idee du monde dechu et la nature divisee de l'homme. Pour palier cet etat de schize dans l'individu, white examine la possibilite d'une plenitude a travers l'union physique ou spirituelle, et meme l'union mystique et mysterieuse de l'ame en dieu
The fallen world and the consequent divided self form the basis of patrick white's imaginary universe. Attempts to regain a lost harmony and plenitude may involve physical and spiritual union between human beings, however the ultimate union desired by man is the mystic and mysterious communion of the soul with god

Cette thèse se propose de réévaluer la spécificité des quatre dernières œuvres de fiction de Patrick White. En effet, la tendance de la critique fut de ramener l’intégralité de l’œuvre de White aux romans de la période médiane (dont plusieurs appartiennent indéniablement au canon de la littérature australienne), ce qui ne fait pas justice à la spécificité des différents textes et à l’évolution perceptible au sein de l’œuvre. Dans cette perspective, c’est le motif religieux qui fait figure de clef de voûte de l’univers whitien, l’union au divin s’offrant comme solution au questionnement identitaire des personnages, qui y trouvent une forme d’unité. Or, précisément, dans les quatre dernières œuvres fictionnelles, le divin disparaît au fur et à mesure que le sujet émerge, comme en témoigne notamment l’affirmation progressive du récit à la première personne. Cette évolution thématique et esthétique entraîne une révision radicale de la quête d’identité des personnages et de son point d’aboutissement. À la lumière des concepts de moi et de sujet, hérités de Freud et réinterprétés par Lacan, nous proposons de voir comment s’opère une subversion de l’identité entendue comme « mêmeté » (Ricœur), qui aboutit à une redéfinition de l’unité et de la vérité de soi. Cette subversion de l’identité va de pair avec la remise en cause de l’identité littéraire de l’écrivain, dont l’œuvre fictionnelle ultime devient plus ludique, le jeu avec le lecteur participant de la construction d’une vérité à multiples facettes
The purpose of this thesis is to reassess the specificity of Patrick White’s last four long fictional works. Critics have indeed tended to interpret the whole of White’s literary production through the prism of the novels of the middle period – several of which undeniably rank high in Australian literary heritage – thus missing the specific character of the various texts or the perceptible evolution within White’s work. This perspective presents the religious motif as the keystone of the Whitian universe, where uniting with the divine is seen as a solution to the characters’ quest for identity. In White’s last fictional works however, the divine element gradually disappears as a divided subject emerges, this being particularly noticeable in the progressive assertion of the first person narrative. This thematic and aesthetic evolution brings about a radical change in the characters’ quest for identity and its conclusion. Freudian concepts of the self and the subject reinterpreted by Lacan allow the subversion of identity – understood as “sameness” (Ricoeur) – to be presented in terms of a redefinition of the self’s unity and truth. This subversion of identity also means questioning the writer’s literary identity: White’s last fictional works become more of a game involving the reader in the process of building up a multi-faceted truth

Patrick white, ecrivain australien qui s'est senti deracine toute sa vie, a utilise le continent australien comme catalyseur d'une experience spirituelle. La presentation topographique et ethnographique laisse des lors rapidement la place a une sision plus personnelle, y compris la satire du comportement de ses compatriotes trop materialiste selon lui, et des intellectuels. Desireux de trouver un monde harmonieux, il ne sert de se cinq sens et de symboles communs a diverses cultures, diverses religions, et qui font partie de ce que c. G. Jung appelais "l'inconscient collectif". Citions par exemple les quatre elements les mysteres orphiques ou encore la religion et sa signification profonde. En effet, white se detacle de la religion etablie pour se consacrer a la necessite de la souffrance pour arriver a la redemption. Nombreux sont les personnages de ses romans qui, apres maintes epreuves, quittent leur "ecorce" intellectuelle pour prendre compte l'humanite dans son ensemble. L'infini est le but de white : comment l'apprehender, si ce n'est, nous suggere-t-il, par l'humilite, par la sensualite et un gout pour la vie, l'art aussi, emanation dy pouvoir spirituel de l'homme
Patrick white, an australian writer who felt he was uprooted, used the australian continent as the catalyst of a spiritual experience. The geographic and ethnographe discriptions soon give way to a more personnel vision, including the satire of his fellow citiezns who were materialistic according to him, and also the criticism of the intellectuals. Eager as he was to find harmony in this world, he used his five senses and symbols common to different cultures ans religions, and which are part of what c. C. Jung names "the collective unconscious". We shall quote for instance the four elements, orphic mysteries or religion and its profond significance. Indeed, white quickly turned away from all official religions and emphasized the necessity of suffering in order to know redemption. There are numeros characters in his novels who, having passed through quite a few ordeals, relinquish their intellectual "skin" and consider humanity as a whole. The infinite is white's aim : he suggests that one can only grasp it through an attitude of humility, through sensuousness and a willingness to live, through art also, which is a product of man's

This study is concerned with an evaluation of the suffering and self of the elected characters in the novels of Patrick White. The suffering these elected characters endure, apart from the uncomprehending antagonism of society, takes place mainly in the country of the mind - "that solitary land of the individual experience, in which no fellow footfall is ever heard" (Epigraph to The Aunt's Story) - and is a form of catharsis in preparatory to a reunion with God as the Source of all Being. The suffering, whether of a psychic or physical nature - or both - is complicated by the duality between the esoteric and exoteric selves of the characters involved. The nature of the suffering is always solitary. The wisdom eventually gained from the suffering cannot be shared. Contact with fellow elect is brief and without consequence except for mutual recongnition of "outsidership". It is clear that the elected character has no apparent control of what happens to him in life. The reader gains the impression that the elected characters in White's novels are the involuntary victims of some "malign" life-force that, paradoxically, brings about a state of grace. White touches on, but wisely prefers not to examine, the problems of predestination and euthanasia. The elected characters are all outsiders in the sense that they are, in some psychic or physical manner, different from the members of the society in which they find themselves. In the earlier novels the elected characters' alienism is characterised by their intuitive awareness of another, nonphysical, transcendent plane of being - "There is another world, but it is in this one" (Epigraph to The Solid Mandala) . Progressive reading of White's novels reveals that his conception of suffering, despite disavowal, is in line with the Biblical concept of suffering as described in Paul's letter to the Romans. The non-elected members of society with whom the elect come into conflict either do not understand or are unwilling to admit their intuitive awareness that there is another world within the familiar one, a concept White frequently refers to in his image of boxes and boxes within boxes. The secret knowledge the elect seem to have antagonises the other members of society because of the sense of loss they experience. White's later novels reveal a concern with sexually aberrated suffering which is closely aligned to his own unhappiness. The sexual duality that is an essential aspect of Theodora Goodman's (The Aunt's Story) dilemma gains progressively more of White's attention and is eventually exposed in his biography of Eddie Twyborn (The Twyborn Affair). White's concern with abnormal sexuality is related to his disquiet with the mystery of the soul baing "housed” in a body not only unsuitable, but also contrary to the nature of the psyche which is either predominantly male or female. White is clearly angry that this mystery should be the profound result of momentary lust. Although so many of White's elect labour under spiritually destructive burdens of guilt, the parents who are considered the root cause of all suffering in a post-lapsarian state, feel little of any compunction because they are too concerned with their own suffering, real or imagined. God as Source or God as the "One" is an all-pervading, if unacknowledged force in White's corpus and in the lives of his elect. The elect turn to God only when they have suffered and acknowledged their dependence on Him. It is sad that White should, in the end not find himself in "the boundless garden" with Stan Parker (The Tree of Man). He seems to share the fates of Theodora Goodman (The Aunt's Story) and Arthur Brown (The Solid Mandala).
Thesis (DLitt)--UOVS, 1989

By comparing the novels of William Faulkner and Patrick White, this thesis reconsiders modernism's elitism and solipsism by revealing within them a critical interest in liberating minority perspective. Theoretical debates which continue to insist on modernism's inherent distance from the identity politics which front the postmodernist movement are overlooking modernism's deeply embedded evaluative mechanisms which work to expose and criticize the activity of psychic and social co-optation. Faulkner and White are both engaged in fictionally tracing the complexities of a failing patriarchy which can no longer substantiate its primary subjects — the white, upper class male. As representatives of modernism we can see that Faulkner and White, perhaps unwittingly, initiate the awareness that the 'failure' of their chosen subjects is in large measure due to processes of marginalization which both created the authoritative power structures within which they are constructed and helped serve to collapse them. The classic isolation of the modernist subject can be looked at not simply as an isolation predicated on endless self-referentiality, but rather on a desperate social outreaching for which he or she is not psychically equipped. By following the trajectory and perspective of specific novels and characters it becomes clear that it is precisely this handicap which clears the textual space for diversity of representation, just as it overturns the notion of modernism's functioning separatism. Chapter one concentrates on the double-edged representation of the female subject constructed as always-already 'guilty' within the psychologically, emotionally and physically repressive terms of the dominant male power structures within the context of Faulkner's Requiem for a Nun and White's A Fringe of Leaves. Chapter two investigates the psychological parameters of the morally disenfranchised modern subject whose disillusionment results from prejudicial social practices promoted by virulent racial anxiety as exemplified in Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! and White's Voss. The third and final chapter discusses Light in August and Riders in the Chariot with attention to modernism's own investigation of the exclusion of minority voices from collective social imagining. The thesis posits that literary modernism is interested less with reconciling its literary subjects within a self-contained totalizing project than it is with invoking new social and psychological paradigms that stress the necessity of external, not internal, represented multiplicity, and that what has been (mis)recognized as modernism's self-closure is, in fact, the key not only to its own continuing relevance, but to the contemporaneous literary injunction to let all voices be heard.