Confessions of a puzzled penis: A Foucauldian reading of Philip Roth's 'Portnoy's Complaint' and 'The Dying Animal'

This study investigates the significance of confession as an exploration of male subjectivity in two works by Philip Roth. The investigation of the sexual as a means of constructing identity is a new and exciting entry into to the body of criticism relating to Roth. This thesis centers on the examination Alexander Portnoy and David Kepesh's resistance to the repression of their sexuality, the ways in which they stress the sexual as a means of forestalling death, and their exertion of the creative or life affirming power of Eros over the destructive life force of Thanatos.