Escaping From One Unreal To Another:A Lacanian Reading Of Brideshead Revisited

Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966) is one of the most prominent novelists after the Second World War in Britain. Published in1928, Decline and Fall established him as a first-rate satirist. Brisdeshead Revisited, published in1945after the war, signifies his change of style. In this novel, an unexpected revisit to Brideshead sets off Charles, the protagonist and narrator’s retracing of his story with Brideshead and its people. The recount is diffused with a nostalgic tone, and all major characters end up Catholics.The most discussed and noticeable themes in Brideshead Revisted have always been Catholicism and nostalgia for the glorious past of the British aristocracy. In this thesis, building on what previous scholars have done, the author shall pick up another theme, love, which has not been paid much attention to. Through employing Lacan’s psychoanalytical theory, the thesis shall demonstrate the imaginary nature of the love and faith of the two major characters, Charles and Sebastian. By doing so, this thesis attempts to explicate the logic of their conversion from passionate lovers to believers.Through Zizek’s development, Lacan’s theory has been widely applied to ideological criticism. Zizek’s dialectical interpretation of the relationship between the Real and the Imaginary sheds light on what the thesis shall discuss and therefore becomes the perfect tool to achieve the end of this thesis.The Introduction shall be a review of previous literature done on this novel; the first chapter deals with terms central to Lacan’s psychoanalyticaltheory and this thesis, which are the castrated subject, the Imaginary, the Symbolic and the Real orders, and desire; the second chapter shows how Charles falsely transcend his imaginary love only to succumb to another imaginary relationship between the believer and God; the third chapter is about Sebastian’s conversion after failed attempt to maintain imaginary relationship with his lovers; the conclusion is a recapitulation of what the thesis deals with in the previous part.