Thomas Wolfe and the genre question: Beyond the "charge of autobiography"

The North Carolinian author Thomas Wolfe (1900‐1938) has long suffered under the “charge of autobiography,” which lingers to this day in critical assessments of his work. Criticism of Wolfe is frequently concerned with questions of generic classification, but since the 1950s, re‐assessments of Wolfe’s work have suggested that Wolfe’s “autobiographical fiction” exhibits a complexity that merits further investigation. Strides in autobiographical and narrative theory have prompted reconsiderations of texts that defy the artificial boundaries of autobiography and fiction. Wolfe has been somewhat neglected in the canon of American fiction of his era, but deserves to be reconsidered in terms of how he engages with the challenges and contradictions of writing about or around the self. This thesis investigates why Wolfe’s work has been the source of considerable critical discomfort and confusion with regard to the relationship between Wolfe’s life and his writing. It explores this issue through an examination of elements of Wolfe’s work that problematise categorisation. Firstly, it investigates the concept of Wolfe as “storyteller.” It explores the motivations and philosophies that underpin Wolfe’s work and his concept of himself as a teller of tales, and examines aspects of Wolfe’s writing process that have their roots in medieval traditions of the memorisation and recitation of tales. The thesis then conducts a detailed examination of how Wolfe describes the process of transforming his memory into narrative through writing. The latter half of the thesis examines narrative techniques used by Wolfe, firstly analysing his extensive use of the iterative and pseudo‐iterative modes, and then his unusual deployment of narrators and focalization. This project sheds light on elements of Wolfe’s approach to writing and narrative strategies that he employs that have previously been overlooked, and that have created considerable critical confusion with regard to the supposedly “autobiographical” genesis of his work.

“Something isn’t right here”: American exceptionalism and the creative nonfiction of the Vietnam War

In this thesis, I argue that few attempts were as effective in correcting the exceptionalist ethos of the United States than the creative nonfiction written by the veterans and journalists of the Vietnam War. Using critical works on creative nonfiction, I identify the characteristics of the genre that allowed Paul John Eakin to call it ‘a special kind of fiction.’ I summarise a brief history of creative nonfiction to demonstrate how it became a distinctly American form despite its Old World origins. I then claim that it was the genre most suited to the kind of ideological transformation that many hoped to instigate in U.S. society in the aftermath of Vietnam. Following this, the study explores how this “new” myth-making process occurred. I use Tim O’Brien’s If I Die in a Combat Zone and Philip Caputo’s A Rumor of War to illustrate how autobiography/memoir was able to demonstrate the detrimental effect that America’s exceptionalist ideology was having on its population. Utilising narrative and autobiographical theory, I contend that these accounts represented a collective voice which spoke for all Americans in the years after Vietnam. Using Neil Sheehan’s A Bright Shining Lie and C.D.B. Bryan’s Friendly Fire, I illustrate how literary journalism highlighted the hubris of the American government. I contend that while poiesis is an integral attribute of creative nonfiction, by the inclusion of extraneous bibliographic material, authors of the genre could also be seen as creating a literary context predisposing the reader towards an empirical interpretation of the events documented within. Finally, I claim that oral histories were in their essence a synthesis of “everyman” experiences very much in keeping with the American zeitgeist of the early Eighties. Focussing solely on Al Santoli’s Everything We Had, I demonstrate how such polyphonic narratives personalised the history of the Vietnam War.

Eleanor Roosevelt: supporting Zion, denying Palestine

Eleanor Roosevelt, as a renowned humanitarian, portrayed an inconsistency by supporting Zionist ambitions for a national homeland in Palestine while simultaneously ignoring the rights of the indigenous Palestinians. Because of this dichotomy, this dissertation explores her attitudes, her disposition and her position in light of the conflict in the region. It conveys how her particular character traits interplayed with the cultural influences prevalent in mid-century America and encouraged her empathy with the plight of European Jews after the Holocaust. As she evolved politically, initially under the tutelage of Franklin Roosevelt and latterly as a UN delegate, she outgrew the anti-Semitism of the period to become a committed Zionist. Judging the Palestinians as ‘primitives’ incapable of self-government and heartened by Jewish development, she supported the partition of Palestine in November 1947. After the 1948 Arab-Israeli war the 800,000 Palestinian refugees encamped in neighbouring Arab states threatened to destabilise the region. Her solution was to discourage repatriation and to re-settle them in Iraq – a plan that directly contravened the principles of the December 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaimed by the UN committee she had chaired. No detailed work has been conducted on these aspects of Eleanor Roosevelt’s life; this dissertation reveals a complex person rather than a model of ‘humanitarianism’, and one whose activities cannot be so simply categorised. In the eight chapters that follow, her own thoughts are disclosed through her ‘My Day’ newspaper column, through letters to friends and to members of the public that petitioned her, through a scrutiny of her articles, books and autobiography. This information was attained as a result of archival research in the US and in The Netherlands and was considered against an extensive range of secondary literature. During the Cold War, to offset Soviet incursion, Eleanor Roosevelt promoted Jewish usurpation of Palestinian lands with equanimity in order that an industrious Western-style democracy would bring stability to the region. These events facilitated the exposure of a latent Orientalism and an imperialistic lien that fostered paternalism in a woman new to the nuances of international diplomacy.

Frederick Douglass and Ireland, 1845: The "Vertiginous Twist[s]" of an Irish Encounter

Frederick Douglas was a reader of and writer on the nineteenth-century political and social texts and contexts of oppression, which he experienced at home and witnesed while in Ireland and Britain, 1845-47. This thesis is unique in its identification of several surprising lacunae in the research and critical evaluation of Frederick Douglass’ activities of reading and writing and the texts and contexts that supported these activities. This thesis takes Douglass’ relationship with Ireland and the Irish as its starting point, and offers several moments in the transnational space engendered by Douglass’ readerly and writerly experience of the transatlantic axes of Ireland, Britain and America. This thesis draws upon archival research to recover information regarding Douglass’ trip and subjects his reading and writing on Ireland and the Irish to the critical rigours of narratolgical, cultural and discourse analysis. One lacuna is Douglass’ favourite and neglected school primer, the Columbian Orator, which Douglass signified upon across his autobiographical project. The speech by the Irish patriot and exile, Arthur O’Connor, included in the Orator, is crucial to Douglass’ understanding and expression of justice and equality. Genette’s narratological analysis gives theoretical traction to the ways in which, in his autobiographical representations of his British trip, Douglass recalibrates his autobiographies to reflect his changing perspectives on his life and work. Contrary to popular assumptions, Douglass did, in two letters to Garrison address and comment on Irish poverty. This thesis interrogates the strategic anglophilia of these letters. While the World’s Temperance Convention (WTC) refused to discuss African- American slavery, analysis of Douglass’ speech in Covent Garden and of the paratextual apparatus of the published proceedings of the WTC demonstrates the impossibility of separating these closely interrelated reform causes. When a newly discovered poem from Waterford that admonished the city for its disregard for Douglass’ message is juxtaposed with an uncomfortable moment in Cork, we understand that Douglass became a pawn to bolster sectarian rivalries between nationalist and establishment factions. Though Douglass believed imperial politics was the best vehicle for modernity, he recognised that it had failed Ireland: consequently, in Thoughts and Recollections of a Trip to Ireland (1886), he advocates for Home Rule for Ireland.