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http://hdl.handle.net/11375/12944
Title: | Once Upon A Time...Or So The Story Goes: Myth, Storytelling, And Identity Formation In Utopia |
Authors: | Di, Tecco John |
Advisor: | Silcox, Mary |
Department: | English |
Keywords: | English Language and Literature;English Language and Literature |
Publication Date: | May-2002 |
Abstract: | <p>This thesis explores the relationship between myth, mythmaking, storytelling, and identity formation within utopia and utopian literature. Specifically, it will explore the plight of the individual and whether or not the individual can truly 'exist' within utopia. All major surveys of utopian literature liken utopia to myth and the mythmaking process; however, no critic has specifically investigated how myth, mythmaking and storytelling inform both utopian literature and the utopian societies which they present. In the utopias investigated in this thesis, those in power use and manipulate myths and stories in order to negate selfhood and individual thought, as individual thought is seen as threatening to the social fabric. However, the story and the written word also become the key mechanism by which the protagonists attempt to resist the constraints put on them by those in power and, in doing so, attempt to assert an authentic self.</p> <p>This thesis is divided into three chapters. Using George Orwell's dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, the first chapter explores the inherent danger of the utopian ideal which the anti-utopianists set out to expose, Specifically, the chapter investigates how the governing elite use and manipulate myths, stories, and the written word in order to exert an ontological stranglehold on the inhabitants of Oceania to maintain their vision. The protagonist, Winston Smith, is destroyed because he attempts to use the written word in order to stand against the governing party. The final two chapters of this thesis then explore how critical utopianists, namely Sheni Tepper in her work The Gate to Women's Country and Russell Hoban with Riddley Walker, challenge the notion that it is impossible for true individual selfuood to exist within a utopian state. As in Nineteen Eight-Four, it is through the written word, as well as the interpretation and subsequent manipulation of stories, that the respective protagonists Stavia and Riddley attempt to stand against, and more importantly, within their given societies as individuals. Only Riddley, however, is truly able to assert and define an authentic self, as he is the only protagonist in the three novels studied who is able tell his own story.</p> |
URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/11375/12944 |
Identifier: | opendissertations/7787 8883 4137634 |
Appears in Collections: | Open Access Dissertations and Theses |
Files in This Item:
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fulltext.pdf | 5.45 MB | Adobe PDF | View/Open |
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