| The dissertation attempts a critical history of the invention of “perspective” in early modern Europe and the effects that this trope has had on the elaboration of the modern concept of the subject/object dichotomy in literary and cultural theory. Its aim is to defamiliarize this now transparent trope in order to understand the effects it produces and to identify conceptual models that challenge its presuppositions. Perspective has functioned as a territorializing force in the visual arts, literature, philosophy, and literary theory.; Chapter one presents the basic elements of the construction of perspectival images. It then adumbrates the various historical factors that are believed to have played a part in the invention of artificial perspective. Next, it broaches the question of what perspective meant to early modern subjects. Finally, it analyzes more recent arguments for and against the mimetic status of artificial perspective and then takes its own position.; Chapter two extends the dissertation's arguments about early modern perceptions of perspective, but with an emphasis now on the literary reception and literary use of perspective. It analyzes early modern, Enlightenment, and Romantic associations of artificial perspective with duplicity, faithful mimesis , and the impossibility of knowledge.; Chapter three argues that much modern philosophy is territorialized by perspective as an image of thought. The main philosophers analyzed in this chapter are: Descartes, Kant, Leibniz, Nietzsche, and Lacan.; Chapter four argues that perspectivism is carried over from philosophical discourse into literary theory (especially narratology). The main theorists of narrative analyzed are: Henry James, Wayne Booth, Patrick O'Neill, and Gérard Genette. It then turns to the modern style of writing known as free indirect discourse (FID), arguing that it is particularly resistant to perspectivism.; Chapter five deploys the arguments of the previous four chapters in conjunction with a work of contemporary literature, Thomas Pynchon's Crying of Lot 49. Working through a close reading of the novel, it demonstrates how the novel subverts the perspective paradigm. |
