TY - JOUR
T1 - Suffering fiction in The Unnamable
AU - Stewart, Paul
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© Copyright 2014 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.
PY - 2014
Y1 - 2014
N2 - The fictions of The Unnamable are examined through the works of Arthur Schopenhauer and Otto Rank. It is argued that embodied suffering is inevitably generated through "aesthetic reproduction," thus challenging Rank's contention that art can offer a means of overcoming the trauma of birth and Schopenhauer's assertion that the will can be momentarily escaped through aesthetic means. The Unnamable, rather than adhering to any identification predicated on such suffering, attempts to assert his difference by refusing embodiment and remaining within the voice, yet such an aesthetic and ethical purity is seen to be an impossibility within the novel as the voice - and fiction itself - inevitably generates embodied suffering.
AB - The fictions of The Unnamable are examined through the works of Arthur Schopenhauer and Otto Rank. It is argued that embodied suffering is inevitably generated through "aesthetic reproduction," thus challenging Rank's contention that art can offer a means of overcoming the trauma of birth and Schopenhauer's assertion that the will can be momentarily escaped through aesthetic means. The Unnamable, rather than adhering to any identification predicated on such suffering, attempts to assert his difference by refusing embodiment and remaining within the voice, yet such an aesthetic and ethical purity is seen to be an impossibility within the novel as the voice - and fiction itself - inevitably generates embodied suffering.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84941360169&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1163/9789401211635_013
DO - 10.1163/9789401211635_013
M3 - Review article
AN - SCOPUS:84941360169
SN - 0927-3131
VL - 26
SP - 165
EP - 177
JO - Samuel Beckett Today - Aujourd'hui
JF - Samuel Beckett Today - Aujourd'hui
IS - 1
ER -