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A Study On Cosmopolis From The Perspective Of Space

Posted on:2015-06-23Degree:MasterType:Thesis
Country:ChinaCandidate:X M WangFull Text:PDF
GTID:2285330431460337Subject:English Language and Literature
Abstract/Summary:PDF Full Text Request
Don DeLillo, winner of the National Book Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Jerusalem Prize among others, is not only a remarkable postmodern novelist in America, but also a leading candidate of the Nobel Prize in Literature. He is outstanding in combining satirical techniques with acute insight, sketching Ukiyoe, pictures of the postmodern world, and showing concern about the survival crisis of humankind.Cosmopolis has been acclaimed as one of the best novels soon after its publication in2003. It is a depiction of an entire life in one day. The protagonist is Eric Packer, a28-year-old Wall Street billionaire, who pursues freedom in self-destruction regardless of the collapse of the global financial system. Like a kaleidoscope of postmodernism, the story pulses with alienation and paranoia, art and commerce, reality and representation, sex and death, the global market and terrorism.Most present studies on Cosmopolis focus on its postmodernity, intertextuality in pragmatics and eco-criticism but ignore the apocalypse suffusing DeLillo’s oeuvre, which offers the thesis an opportunity to fill the vacancy. Particularly, Space theory is a better entry point since the plot unfolds according to space in Cosmopolis. Accordingly, this thesis probes into the metaphorical narration of the capitalism crisis from three angles based on the Third Space presented by Edward Soja. The virtual space witnesses alienation; the spiritual space reflects motivation; the spatial allegory reveals the theme, which can serve as theoretical enlightenment to subsequent researches on Don DeLillo and Postmodernism.
Keywords/Search Tags:Don DeLillo, Cosmopolis, Virtual Space, Spiritual Space, SpatialAllegory
PDF Full Text Request
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