| This dissertation consists of readings of three novels---Conrad's Lord Jim, Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man , and Ha Jin's Waiting. Although the settings, characters and plots of these novels are vastly different, they may all be said to share a concern with ideology and the formation of the subject. By using the words "ideology" and "subject," I am, of course, drawing on Althusser's notion of interpellation in "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses." Yet I also employ a number of other theorists in these readings, notably Foucault, Butler, De Man, and Miller. My primary focus is on language. I am interested in how the subject is created within language---the ways in which various discourses operate to define identity. I am also interested in how speech acts such as promises, oaths and lies determine relationships between subjects and help constitute social reality. Lastly, I am interested in strategies of narration and how omniscience, indirect discourse and irony relate to the problem of the subject within the conventions of the novel form. |
