Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item:
http://hdl.handle.net/11375/16779
Title: | Walking toward the Call of Beauty: Beauty and Affect in Badami |
Authors: | Apong, Andrew |
Advisor: | Chakraborty, Chandrima Goellnicht, Donald Hyman, Roger |
Department: | English and Cultural Studies |
Keywords: | Anita Rau Badami;Beauty;Affect;Diaspora;Value;Ethics;Elaine Scarry |
Publication Date: | 2015 |
Abstract: | This thesis provides a reading of Anita Rau Badami’s novels The Hero’s Walk and Can You Hear the Nightbird Call? The interpretive frame constructs a theory of affect to explore the human experience of beauty through a reading of Badami’s texts. This work’s approach to beauty is derived largely from Elaine Scarry’s On Beauty and Being Just and from musings on beauty by Simone Weil. Following Weil, I understand beauty as the ascription of value or worth to various things, actions, or ideas, and I position beauty as an undergirding affective experience that is always present in the human encounter of the world. This thesis examines how Badami’s novels depict the ways in which a Weilian sense of beauty leads characters to develop affectual attachments to various ideologies and discourses represented in the diasporic landscape of the texts. Through a critical consideration of the depicted effects of such attachments on Badami’s characters’ lives, this study also locates potential instances of what Lauren Berlant calls cruel optimism. I contend that the novels often portray instances of cruel optimism to critique traditional practices and perspectives while ever working towards building their own pronouncement of what constitutes a more genuine, higher sense of the beautiful. |
URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/11375/16779 |
Appears in Collections: | Open Access Dissertations and Theses |
Files in This Item:
File | Description | Size | Format | |
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Apong_Andrew_E_FinalSubmission2015Feb_MA.pdf | Main Article | 670.3 kB | Adobe PDF | View/Open |
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