VERSIONS OF THE THING: THE EXTENDED PARODY IN THE CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN NOVEL

This study is an analysis of the increasing instances of structural parodies in the post-World War II American novel. It demonstrates that these fictions are self-conscious imitations of older literary forms and represent a unique sub-genre of the modern American novel. By examining eight representative works, the dissertation establishes shared philosophical attitudes among many contemporary authors and illustrates the ways in which these figures create meaning and art in a period of presumed intellectual and artistic exhaustion.;The second chapter discusses John Hawkes' The Beetle Leg and John Seelye's The Kid as examples of parodic Westerns. The discussion centers around these authors' ironic manipulations of the most characteristic conventions of a highly formulaic structure and illustrates the failure in both works of the promise of civilization. In dealing with John Hawkes' The Lime Twig and Thomas Berger's Who is Teddy Villanova?, the third chapter considers parodies of another highly formulaic fictional form: the detective story. By examining imitations of the story of ratiocination and the hard-boiled novel, the chapter demonstrates the inability of rational, deductive thinking to restore order to a world violated by crime.;The fourth chapter considers Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita and Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint as parodic confessionals. Although these are parodies of a much looser fictional structure, they do imitate numerous specific conventions and present rejections of the notion of a unified personality which can reveal itself honestly and completely. The fifth chapter also deals with another loose fictional form, here the picaresque, as it is imitated in John Barth's The Sot-Weed Factor and J. P. Donleavy's The Ginger Man. Each of these works ultimately questions an individual's capacity to shape and control his world and destiny. Each of the last four chapters begins by examining the traditional formal conventions as they appear in a specific model; thus Owen Wister's The Virginian, Edgar Allan Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," Raymond Chandler's Farewell, My Lovely, Fyodor Dostoevsky's Notes from the Underground and Tobias Smollett's The Adventures of Roderick Random are discussed.;The sixth chapter is a conclusion which begins by mentioning a number of other significant or prominant parodies which do not fall within the scope of this study but deserve mention. The chapter re-emphasizes the connections between parody and aspects of existential thought and indicates ways in which this fictional practice signifies not only a prevalent strain in the contemporary American novel, but longstanding attitudes which have continually characterized American fiction.;The dissertation is divided into six chapters, the first of which is an introduction to and overview of previous criticism on the subject of parody. This material falls into roughly three categories (early scholarship from the Russian Formalist school, scholarship by critics of comparative literature, and work by critics of contemporary American literature) and is developed in terms of its applicability to the notion of sustained or extended parodies of other fictional forms. This chapter also provides a discussion of numerous existential themes and apprehensions which inform, whether intentionally or unintentionally, the various novels selected.