A Re-reading Of The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter-In The Light Of Michel Foucault's Thought Of Discontinuity

This study in the light of Michel Foucault's(1926-1984) thinking of discontinuity, aims to offer one more interpretation of Carson McCullers's "spiritual isolation and loneliness" represented in her novel The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by placing the motif under the complicated contexts of western humanity,philosophy and literary tradition. This approach to the theme is ultimately meant to disclose the cause of "spiritual isolation and loneliness" haunting people in Carson McCullers's small Southern town from a distinct stand to which the fore-researchers of McCullers have paid little or no attention.Carson McCullers is one of the significant Southern women writers in the twentieth-century American literary history.In 1940 when she was only 23 years old, she published her maiden novel The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter which created a literary sensation.From the 1950s,critics began to explore such a great work from various angles and with different approaches.To some extent,McCullers studies over the past fifty years or so mostly represent diverse critical efforts to resolve her myth of "spiritual isolation and loneliness" - the recurring theme of McCullers's works.However,most critical attention mainly falls on its sociohistorical and political causes and neglects things about human heart.The author of this paper maintains that McCullers's presentation of "spiritual isolation and loneliness" in this novel can be ascribed to the epistemic issue.Since the highlight of"heart" lies at the core of this novel,only through the adoption of the epistemological approach can the enquiry and grasp of the descriptions on "heart" be made possible.The choice of other vantage points such as searching for the external factors of "spiritual isolation and loneliness" runs the risk of misleading which makes the deploy of the epistemological approach a necessity.So this study ventures to adopt the epistemological approach to examine the cause of "spiritual isolation and loneliness".Michel Foucault's study on the archaeology of episteme corresponds to this examination.The main body of this thesis falls into four parts.In Chapter One,the author of this thesis states the motivation for adopting this approach and gives a brief introduction to Carson McCullers's life,literary career,and her novel The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter and a literature review of this novel,and presents the subject,approach and structure of this study.Chapter Two briefly reviews the important French discontinuity theorists before Michel Foucault with the intention of providing readers with information concerning the theoretical background in which Michel Foucault's thinking of discontinuity takes shape. It elaborates upon the theoretical basis of the whole thesis:Michel Foucault's thought of "discontinuity",establishing an affinity between it and Thomas Samuel Kuhn's (1922-1996) thesis of "incommensurability",and Ferdinand de Saussure's(1857-1913) exposition of"difference" in linguistics to enrich the implication of Foucault's thinking of "discontinuity".Based on the above analysis,the author of this paper points out that they are identical in essence,and that discontinuity,incommensurability or difference has become a key word of scientific fields.The author's extension,rendition,and modification of Foucault's thought of "discontinuity" are also presented in this chapter, with the purpose of extending it into an "anti-language" structure according to the author's reading of the novel.Chapter Three interprets the "anti-language structure" as reflected in The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter in the light of Michel Foucault's thought of "discontinuity".The "anti-language structure" is manifested in the novel in two forms.One is represented by the mutual relationships among the five main characters who form the "spoke-and-hub" group.The other is represented by each character's obsession with their own dreams or thoughts and caring for nothing about other's troubles.So this chapter will be devoted to a detailed analysis of the two demonstrations.In Chapter Four the author of this thesis gives a summary of the foregoing discussion and points out the contribution of this reading,meanwhile,the author comments on the inadequacies of this analysis and introduces the related subject which deserves further study.