An Analysis of hyperreality in John Fowles’s the magus and Paul Auster’s moon palace

Download

index.pdf

Date

2019

Author

Önal, Özlem

Metadata

Show full item record

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Item Usage Stats

614
views

251
downloads

Jean Baudrillard claims that the postmodern individual lives in “the desert of the real” (Simulacra 1) where there is no absolute reality anymore as the endless proliferation of simulacra marks the end of reality and truth, leading to the emergence of hyperreality. The aim of this thesis is to study the way hyperreality can be explored in two postmodern novels which are John Fowles’s The Magus: A Revised Version (1977) and Paul Auster’s Moon Palace (1989) and to state that an escape from hyperreality is probable. According to this study the absence of reality results from a distorted and fragmented concept of historicity, as the contemporary individual can no longer form any sort of bond with the past. The abyss of rootlessness; therefore, is tended to be filled by a superficial and copycat present resembling Andy Warhol style pop-art images. In such a universe, where there is no room for any kind of divergence, every postmodern subject ends up being just like the millions of others, but alone. Therefore, the mundane and prosaic condition of the contemporary world eventually creates the world of hyperreality, where everything seems to be more intriguing and less arid than the so-called ‘desert of the real’ outside. However, within the scope of this study it is claimed that the postmodern individual grows tired of the discernable artificiality of hyperreality and seeks to rediscover the real or to face the desert of meaning and truth left behind by the absence of the real.

Subject Keywords

Keywords: Hyperreality, simulacrum, Jean Baudrillard, John Fowles, Paul Auster.

URI

http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12624040/index.pdf
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/44885

Collections

Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis

Suggestions

OpenMETU
Core

A Sartrean reading of John Fowles’s the collector and the french lieuteant’s woman Karsli, Zehra; Korkut Naykı, Nil; Department of English Literature (2019) This thesis is an attempt to explore how John Fowles’s protagonists in his two novels The Collector and The French Lieutenant’s Woman experience Sartrean existentialism and their striving for freedom and authenticity. This study aims at the portrayal of these characters as inauthentic according to the themes and concepts of Sartrean existentialism along with Fowles’s view of the acclaimed ideology. The study purposes to draw the similarities and differences between Sartrean and Fowlesian understanding of fr...
The primacy of falsity deviant origins in Deleuze Shores, Corry Michael (2019-01-01) Deleuze's notion of the powers of the false is central to his philosophy of truth and becoming, but it is also one of his most complexly elaborated ideas, with its various diverging conceptual dimensions inviting further analysis and reconfiguration. One perplexing conception here is that falsity is more primary than truth, because it is what creates truths of the highest order. We examine the thinking behind this idea by proceeding through Deleuze's notions of the Devil and the sorcerer, Dupreelian consoli...
A critical assessment of John Rawls’s Theory of Justice as fairness Eryılmaz, Ene; İnam, Ahmet.; Department of Philosophy (2019) This dissertation is a critical analysis of John Rawls’s theory of justice in its historical and philosophical context. To that end, his works from A Theory of Justice (1971) to Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (2001) are examined. Not only Rawls’s theory of justice but also his approach to metaphysics and metaethics are also tackled to understand justice as fairness deeply. While setting out Rawls’s main arguments and theses, a critical approach is adopted with his foremost critics. This study thus searc...
Against Slagle's Reading of Eliminative Materialism on Self-Defeating Tümkaya, Serdal (2022-04-01) Jim Slagle claims that eliminative materialism (EM) denies some of the mind's self-evident properties, such as intentionality, qualia and the view that beliefs are real or veridical. I, herein, will argue that what EM denies is actually the folk psychological notion of belief, not belief as such. The Churchlands construe propositional belief as merely one kind of representation in the larger representational scheme. The point here is not to deny belief, but to construe it as one of the, and possibly a very ...
A study of the self in Nietzsche's fatalistic universe of eternal recurrence Canbolat, Argun Abrek; Parkan, Barış; Department of Philosophy (2009) The doctrine of eternal recurrence is not only an aspect of Nietzsche’s philosophy, but a notion that structures the base of his philosophy. The doctrine is analyzed by many interpreters in various ways. The cosmological and the ethical-existential approaches to the doctrine are at the very base wrong. The doctrine’s impact cannot be adequately understood in these terms. Besides, the doctrine of eternal recurrence has multiple problems within it, problems which can be solved if the doctrine is understood an...

Citation Formats

Ö. Önal, “An Analysis of hyperreality in John Fowles’s the magus and Paul Auster’s moon palace,” Thesis (M.S.) -- Graduate School of Social Sciences. English literature., Middle East Technical University, 2019.