An Aesthetics of Vulnerability: The Sentimentum and the Novels of Graham Swift"This is a Ph.D. dissertation. Arguing against the view that postmodernism is marked by ""the waning of affect,"" this book investigates the fate of sentimentality in postmodernist fiction. The investigation focuses on the novels of the British author, Graham Swift, tracing in them the emergence of a blending of representations of sentimentality with a postmodernist aesthetics and a postmodern ethico-spiritual imagination - a blending resulting in what is designated by the shorthand ""the sentimentum."" The expression of the sentimentum is further shown to rely on Swift's move toward the fulfillment of an aesthetic of vulnerability, which neutralizes the opposition between irony and sentimentality, and which also corresponds to an ethics of vulnerability that has found its formulation in the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas. Through close readings of Swift's novels, from The Sweet Shop Owner to Last Orders, it is shown how both the aesthetics and the ethics of vulnerability are gradually more pronounced and affirmed through each successive installment in Swift's oeuvre. Ultimately, though, the ambition of the book is to bring attention to an aesthetic and thematic configuration that may be found in a number of postmodernist novels. Hence, the study is concluded by comparative and complementary readings of novels by Julian Barnes, Penelope Lively and Jeanette Winterson that illustrate the wider relevance of the concepts of the sentimentum and of aesthetics of vulnerability." |
Contents
Acknowledgements | 1 |
Postmodernism and the Sentimentum | 33 |
Toward a Voicing of Sentimentality | 73 |
Copyright | |
4 other sections not shown
Common terms and phrases
aesthetics of vulnerability affect ALVAR ELLEGÅRD argues Barthes Baudrillard Bertens Braithwaite chapter characters Claudia concept critical culture Dad's death Derrida discourse discussion double coding emotion English ethics father feeling Flaubert Flaubert's Parrot Gibson Graham Swift Harry Hassan historiographic metafiction human hyperreal Ihab Hassan imagination instance intertextual Irene irony Jack Jeanette Winterson Julian Barnes kind language Last Orders Levinas Levinas's Levinasian literary literature live London Lyotard Marian Martin Amis McHale melodramatic metafiction mode modern modernist Moon Tiger narrative narrator never notes notion photograph postmodern postmodernist aesthetics postmodernist fiction precisely Prentis Prentis's question Quinn radical reader reading realism reality relation representation sense sensibility sentimental literature sentimentality sentimentum Shuttlecock simulacrum Sophie spiritual story suffering suggests Sweet Shop Owner Swift's fictions Swift's novels T.S. Eliot t]he things Tom's Trans truth turn Unwin vigilance Waterland wife Willy Willy's words writing