Joyce Cary's Trilogies: "Together in Feeling. But Alone in Mind"

Abstract

<p>Joyce Cary had a firm expansive moral philosophy to which readers have access through his two speculative works, Power in Men and Art and Reality, through his many essays and through the interviews he gave. While this thesis is primarily concerned with Cary's two trilogies, the first composed of Herself Surprised, To Be a Pilgrim and The Horse's Mouth and the second composed of Prisoner of Grace, Except the Lord and Not Honour More, it also sets out to examine the way in which one particular aspect of his philosophy, that we are "together in sympathy ... but alone in mind", dictates the form of each novel as well as each trilogy. The first chapter will deal with the individual books of the first trilogy and with the trilogy as a whole. It is an analysis of how Cary embeds his philosophy in his fiction. In effect, the first chapter lays the groundwork for an understanding of how this specific concern of Cary's, the conflict between thinking and feeling, is expressed in triple point-of-view. The second chapter will deal with the individual books of the second trilogy and, as it goes, the trilogy as a whole. Since the theme of thinking versus feeling is less obvious in the second trilogy, this chapter is an argument that such a preoccupation is as central to the second trilogy as it is to the first. This thesis also accounts for the distinctly different form each trilOgy takes.</p>