The Art Of Defamiliarization In Voss

Patrick White is one of the best-known writers in the English-speaking world, and the only Australian writer yet to have won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Winning such a great honor in 1973 did spread his fame in foreign regions and stimulated the native critics to attach due attention on the writer who had always been censured and criticized as one who only achieved in structuring obscure themes out of obscure sentences.Voss is a representative work of White. In this thesis, based on the former criticism on Voss, an attempt will be made to elaborate how the theory "defamiliarization" is realized in Voss.The theory "defamiliarization", as a principal concept contributed by the Russian Formalist movement in the second decade of the twentieth century, was first put forward by the Russian Formalist Victor Shklovsky in his essay Art as Technique in 1917. Victor Shklovsky advocates that art should be taken as a special technique to "make objects unfamiliar, to make form difficult, to increase the difficulty and the length of perception because the process of perception is an aesthetic end and must be prolonged. Art is a way of experiencing the artfulness of an object; the object is not important."According to Shklovsky, irony is a device of defamiliarization to deconstruct the banal notions. And irony is an important defamiliarization technique for White to make a deconstructive treatment of the familiar event. The tragic fate of Voss and his expedition team is a big irony to his subjective will as a "Superman". Ironic tone also penetrates through the relationship between the characters in the novel. The structure and description of the novel also embodies a sense of ironic tone. White also tends to express his ideas through some vague, indirect and ambiguous symbols. He frequently uses Voss, Laura, Palfreyman, the ranch of Sanderson and Jildra, the desert, the Holy Communion Ceremony, etc. as symbols. In addition, his unique language produces a defamiliarized effect.White's defamiliarization emphasizing the unreason through the presentation of eccentricity is not only found in his writing styles but also reflected in the characters of this novel. Different authors are inclined to portray characters in different aspects. And characters chosen by Patrick White tend to be abnormal, particular, and even exclusive. Such figures with deformed souls are portrayed to reflect human's alienation phenomenon in the sick modern capitalist society. They are usually not accepted by the secular life, and abandon the urban temptation to live aloof and search for a new value as their guideline in the face of those decayed traditional values and morals. Many characters such as Voss, Laura, Harry, Frank Le Mesurier, Palfreyman and Judd with their unique and alienated nature will be discussed in turn.With the technique of defamiliarization, White's innovation contributes profusely and grandly to the development of Australian literature. This is the significance of the thesis.