El Paroxismo del Agotamiento: Un Estudio de la novela de Will Self, Dorian: An Imitation (2002)

Rodríguez Doñate, Javier
Onega Jaén, Susana (dir.)

Universidad de Zaragoza, FFYL, 2017
Departamento de Filología Inglesa y Alemana, Área de Filología Inglesa

Máster Universitario en Estudios Avanzados de Literatura y Cine en Lengua Inglesa

Resumen: Will Self’s Dorian: An Imitation, first published in 2002, can be regarded as an extraordinarily accurate depiction of the process of decadence undergone by the postmodern paradigm which had prevailed since the 1960s. The date of publication of the novel justifies our contention that it heralds the death of postmodernism, since the most salient cultural trends that question the predominance of the postmodern paradigm originate a few years after the publication of the novel. By means of an ethical and an aesthetical reading of the text, the following essay aims to analyze the way in which this demise of the postmodern paradigm is foregrounded in Dorian: An Imitation through its deployment of major postmodern textual devices such as metafiction or intertextuality. To do so, the theoretical background to the analysis will rely on Linda Hutcheon’s and Patricia Waugh’s notions on these issues while Brian McHale’s and Roland Barthes’ insights into the issue of authorship will be essential for analysis, in the first section, of one of the most noticeable features of postmodernist fiction: the roles of author and reader. Further, the essay will focus on Baz Hallward’s work of art, Cathode Narcissus as the novel’s main postmodern artifact, characterized by mass-media elements that blur the ontological boundaries between reality and its representation. Finally, the essay will draw on the insights of philosophers of history such as Jean Baudrillard and Fredric Jameson for the analysis of the ideological stance of the novel. The aim of analyzing the novel from all these perspectives is to demonstrate that Will Self’s rewriting of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray problematizes the postmodern paradigm before it was generally contested and points towards the beginning of a new cultural paradigm emerging out of, and in reaction to the postmodern paradigm.

Tipo de Trabajo Académico: Trabajo Fin de Master