Degree Year

2014

Document Type

Thesis - Open Access

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Comparative Literature

Advisor(s)

William Patrick Day

Committee Member(s)

John Harwood
Ann Sherif

Keywords

Martin Heidegger, Osamu Dazai, Iris Murdoch

Abstract

This paper advances a re-reading of psychoanalytic “anxiety” as it is constructed through the modern novel, invoking contemporary affect theory, and finding an origin in the Heideggerian notions of Stimmung, Unheimlich and Angst. Looking at two works at the margins of the period and genre of the 20th Century modern novel that both share a fascination with introspective male protagonists--a Japanese “I-novel” called No Longer Human (Ningen Shikkaku) by Dazai Osamu, and The Sea, The Sea, by British writer Iris Murdoch--reveals a peculiar aesthetic questioning of subject and object specific to these works’ varied usages of ekphrasis and fascination with seascape.

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