Textual solipsism in J.M. Coetzee's Dusklands

Master Thesis

2006

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http://hdl.handle.net/11427/8090
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thesis_hum_2006_powers_d (1).pdf (5.21 MB)
Authors
Powers, Donald
Supervisors
Knox-Shaw, Peter
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University of Cape Town

Department
Department of English Language and Literature
Faculty
Faculty of Humanities
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Abstract
In this dissertation I examine through a close reading of J.M. Coetzee's Dusklands (1974) the textual dymamic that impels the two narrator-protagonists toward the solipsist position - the ground of the true Cartesian. I show how Eugene Dawn and Jacobus Coetzee are presented as products of Western print culture and children of René Descartes: literate and acutely self-conscious. I note how each conceives himself according to Descartes' mind-body dualism as primarily a thinking thing. I argue that this self-conception is reinforced by their paradoxical presence-as-absence as figures in a fiction.
Description

Includes bibliographical references.

Keywords
English Literature

Reference:

Powers, D. 2006. Textual solipsism in J.M. Coetzee's Dusklands. University of Cape Town.

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