The Anti-eroticized Writing In Elfriede Jelinek's Works

Novelist and playwright Elfriede Jelinek(1946-) becomes the first Austrian Nobel Laureate of Literature in 2004 "for her musical flow of voices and counter-voices in novels and plays that with extraordinary zeal reveal the absurdity of society' s cliches and their subjugating power. " Controversies over her "voices and counter-voices" and her extraordinary revelation of social "absurdity" have always followed this German-language authoress, and the most vociferous outcry against her works is her bold description of sex and violence. Many critics brand her as an erotic writer and even regard her novels to be pornographic, despite her repeated defense that what she has written is "anti-eroticized writing. " This dissertation will take Jelinek' s claim as its point of departure and validate the anti-eroticized writing by close in-depth reading of her works, so that it hopes to initiate a ground-breaking reading of this much debated but not well-researched author. The dissertation comprises of six chapters. Chapter I introduces the main argument after outlining her writing career and reviewing the current scholarship on her. Chapter II puts Jelinek into a broader perspective, delineating her claim of anti-eroticized writing while comparing her writing with those of two French erotic writers Marquis de Sade and George Batailie, at the same time, analysinging the distinction of anti-eroticized writing different to the feminism literature. The following three chapters argue the three main aspects of the anti-eroticized writing through in-depth reading and detailed analysis of her work. Chapter III focuses on the first aspect of the gender politics, investigating her highlighted female narrative. Chapter IV expands on the second aspect of sexual politics, examining how her body narrative undermines the representations sex and eroticism. Chapter V centers on the aspect of textual politics, demonstrating how her stylistic language use and experimental narrative methods serve her purpose. Chapter VI highlights Jelinek' s artistic achievement and summarizes the implications and importance of her writing in the present times. The dissertation approximate amounts to 89,000 words.