THE NEVER-LAST WORD: PARODY, IDEOLOGY, AND THE OPEN WORK (BAKHTIN, PYNCHON, BARNES, O'BRIEN (IRELAND), BROPHY)

This study begins from the idea that parody frequently enables modern and postmodern novels to combine subversive questioning of established ideologies with effects of the "open work." My argument progresses through readings of four such open, parodic novels--Brigid Brophy's In Transit, Djuna Barnes's Ryder, Flann O'Brien's At Swim-Two-Birds, and Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow. I look at these texts primarily in relation to Mikhail Bakhtin, who situates parody within an impressive theory of language, ideology, and cultural process. Stressing the nature of parody as a means of showing limits of ideologies which pervade cultural discourses, Bakhtin particularly favors the oppositional but unresolved forms of parody which he associates with the premodern folk carnival. Bakhtin's failure to treat twentieth-century fiction, particularly the open, parodic, and carnivalesque novels which seem to fit his scheme, then marks a gap in his texts--a space for further work.; I have attempted to enter this space through readings of novels which reinforce, question, and extend Bakhtin's ideas. Hence, my reading of In Transit constructs a framework for the study, since this first chapter details the role of parody outlined by Bakhtin's theory of language, while at the same time questioning Bakhtin on the "author." The subsequent chapters work in a similar manner, with the chapter on Ryder providing a feminist revision of Bakhtin's carnivalesque mode, the chapter on At Swim-Two-Birds testing Bakhtin's idea of the text as a unique dialogic exchange, and the chapter on Gravity's Rainbow showing the relationship of Bakhtin's psychological theory to the social function of parody, as a mode of resistance to prevailing ideologies.; Reading these texts in relation to Bakhtin, this study will move toward ways in which the novels revise his idea that carnivalesque forms are tied to popular culture. For these modern parodic novels suggest that social and cultural changes--especially the development of mass media--have altered the nature of popular culture itself, eliciting a mutation of carnivalesque parody.