Type
Text
Type
Thesis
Advisor
Newman, Andrew | Huffman, Clifford C
Date
2013-12-01
Keywords
American literature | grief, implied author, magical thinking, memoir, narrative
Department
Department of English.
Language
en_US
Source
This work is sponsored by the Stony Brook University Graduate School in compliance with the requirements for completion of degree.
Identifier
http://hdl.handle.net/11401/77564
Publisher
The Graduate School, Stony Brook University: Stony Brook, NY.
Format
application/pdf
Abstract
This project examines how the narrative structure of Joan Didion's two most recent works, The Year of Magical Thinking and Blue Nights, may be used to gain a better understanding of the author herself. Didion's use of the term " magical thinking" is accepted as a reasonable response to the grief she experiences following the deaths of her husband and daughter. An examination of her larger body of work indicates that magical thinking is a tactic of literary invention Didion has relied upon since childhood to restore order to her life when it becomes chaotic and unmanageable. Using Wayne Booth's Rhetoric of Fiction as a starting point for discussion, this project answers the following questions: How can one discern Didion the narrator from Didion the protagonist? How does knowledge of Booth's " implied author" illuminate the fictional format Didion works with in these two memoirs? And finally, how does the separation of Didion's identity into character and narrator create a rich description of Didion's grief?,36 pages
Recommended Citation
Johnston Boecherer, Victoria, "A Lifetime of Magical Thinking" (2013). Stony Brook Theses and Dissertations Collection, 2006-2020 (closed to submissions). 3364.
https://commons.library.stonybrook.edu/stony-brook-theses-and-dissertations-collection/3364