Description
- Abstract:
- I examine Javier Marías's later novels' temporal structures and narrative techniques, relating them to Henri Bergson's and Martin Heidegger's thought. This interdisciplinary approach aims to achieve two objectives of equal importance: firstly, to present Javier Marías as a universal writer and literary thinker, and secondly, to bridge the separation between the fields of literature and philosophy. Bergson's and Heidegger's views on time and being allow me to elucidate Marías's particular narrative style, relating form and content. At the same time, I propose a close rereading of well and lesser-known works of both philosophers, with the intention to underscore their relevance in the present reexamination of thought, ethics, and the artistic creation, at our turn of the century. The first chapter of my dissertation deals with Marías's coming into his own as a writer, while also placing him into a Spanish context within the development of postfranco fiction. Marías started out as a member of the novísimos group, primarily concerned with aesthetics, renovation, and a marked desire to open the Spanish novel to foreign influences. I am considering El monarca del tiempo, a novel mostly ignored by critics, as the true starting point for Marías's career as a "literary thinker", as well as a work of transition, which exhibits Marías's philosophical, aesthetic as well as ethical concerns. The two ensuing chapters focus on Marías as a philosophical, universal writer. Bergson's thought on the complexity of memory and the perception of time, and Heidegger's views on truth as un-concealment and art as a path to knowledge, allow me to demonstrate the importance of language as a philosophical construct in Marías's novels. Furthermore, I show how being and time, as well as logos and being, are recurrent themes in his Oxford Cycle, and how they forge the author's particular narrative style, thus revealing his preoccupation with the power and limits of language within a post-metaphysical world.
- Notes:
- Thesis (Ph.D.) -- Brown University (2009)
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Citation
Scharm, Heike,
"El tiempo y el ser en el Ciclo de Oxford de Javier Marías"
(2009).
Hispanic Studies Theses and Dissertations.
Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library.
https://doi.org/10.7301/Z0R20ZM7
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Hispanic Studies Theses and Dissertations
Theses and Dissertations for the Hispanic Studies department....