The Tragic in Selected Works by Eugene O’Neill and William Faulkner: Its Major Forms and Meanings
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Date
2017-01-07
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Université Mouloud Mammeri
Abstract
This research seeks to explore the forms and meanings that the Tragic/Heroic assumes in
selected works by Eugene O’Neill and William Faulkner. Methodologically it relies on a
cultural materialist and dialogic paradigms borrowed from Raymond Williams’s major works.
One major of its findings is that O’Neill’s and Faulkner’s works do not simply hold a
dialogue with previous and contemporary literatures and drama of their time, but they also
reflect a debate with classical and modern critical theories of tragedy. The second finding is
that tragedy is not dead as claimed by George Steiner but that its spirit remains alive even in
the modern world and that it is shaped differently. The third finding is that the Tragic/Heroic
is not developed only in the major classical literature but also in minor popular literatures of
our time such as in Faulkner’s Sanctuary. Its fourth finding relates to the deterriterrolisation
of the Tragic/Heroic from a modern myth to a Greek one. In fact, this Doctorate dissertation
has charted an historical evolution of the Tragic/Heroic by emphasizing thematic continuity
over strict chronological order; it has linked the texts discussed with ten correlating
theoretical perspectives, and it deduced its meanings and forms from the personal stances and
words of the forty nine Faulknerian and O’Neillian heroes and heroines it has analyzed.
Because of this ongoing interrogation whose legacy about the Tragic/Heroic is recognized,
this research contended to provide an answer to the following question: How has the
Tragic/Heroic evolved aesthetically and ethically in relation to some major issues like
Gender, Race, Class, Identity, Religion and Region since ancient Greek tragedians until the
mid-twentieth century? It demonstrated the transcendent literary significance of the
Tragic/Heroic throughout three different literary ages that it considers as periods at which
there has been a constellation of influences and circumstances that opened new opportunity to
question, reinvigorate, improve and give tangible form to new ethical and aesthetic meanings
about the Tragic/Heroic. It considered that tragedy cannot be outdated or rendered obsolete.
Seven novels by Faulkner and thirteen plays by O’Neill were analyzed because of the many
theoretical perspectives this research has appealed to, and because of the many influences
both authors underwent.
Methodologically and in accord with the afore-mentioned announcements, this Doctorate
dissertation argued that new aesthetic and ethical meanings about the Tragic/Heroic have been
conceived and crystallized out of three most essential historical, social and cultural
backgrounds. The first great age in this literary investigation is located from the rise of the
Greek tragic until Nietzsche, and it has been entitled: The Rise of the Classical Tragic from
Ethics to Aesthetics. The second great literary age is labeled as: The Tragic/Heroic between
the Cultural Hegemonic Wholeness and the New Alternatives of the Romantic Age. The third
designated great epoch of the Tragic/Heroic is located in between World War One and the
1970’s and it is entitled: The Tragic/Heroic Encounter of the Modern and Post-modern
‘Others’. On the whole, it has been shown that Faulkner and O’Neill experienced an
inevitable influence of all what is Greek [Aristotle], and that they were also affected by the
many aesthetic and philosophical thoughts about the Tragic/Heroic as developed by Friedrich
Nietzsche, G.W.F Hegel, August Strindberg, Henri Bergson, Berthold Brecht, Arthur Miller
and Carl Gustav Jung. It has also shown that this ongoing transformation of the Tragic/Heroic
can also be mediated throughout the application of postmodern theoretical notions as
developed by Raymond Williams, and Gilles Deleuze. In sum, this Doctorate thesis sought to
demonstrate the connectedness and the appropriateness of the Tragic/Heroic, under its various
forms, to the modern literary works of O’Neill and Faulkner. Multiple examples of heroes
[ranging from the classical and neo-classical to the narcissistic romantic, and to the solitary
modern and modern-postmodern] have been analyzed in relation to their magnificent but
impossible pursuit of identity uniqueness and comfort.
Description
318f.ill.;30cm.(+cd-Rom)
Keywords
Ethical meanings, Tragic/Heroic
Citation
Literature