| Focusing on the concept of self as an ever-shifting "flow" in literature, this thesis attempts to link the modern/postmodern Western and the traditional Japanese views of human existence. The first chapter examines the value of non-existence that woman represents in William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, and Light in August , clarifying the difference between the feminine and masculine principles, existential "flux" and conceptual "solidity," respectively. The masculine self, which is trapped within an ideological frame, cannot fill its existential hollow, and its consummation requires the feminine flow, which can break through the illusory self-other boundary and liberate the self into the eternal life stream. Flannery O'Connor's short stories are used to elucidate the meaning of the "breakthrough."; The second chapter associates this feminine power of self-other communion with maternity, analyzing Virginia Woolf s To the Lighthouse and Yasunari Kawabata's "Kataude," Yukiguni, and Utsukushisa to Kanashimi to. Both writers emphasize that woman's maternal sacrifice produces an aesthetic value which endures beyond her individual life. The "maternal water" is the key to establishing Woolf s "androgynous" harmony, or the pre-Oedipal wholeness, which is the necessary condition for creation of life. By establishing a tie with "mother," therefore, one can achieve an eternal perspective of life wherein individual lives flow with the whole of humanity. This transcendent vision coincides with both postmodern feminist and traditional Japanese perceptions of selfhood.; The third chapter reveals the self-sufficient nature of woman's self, dealing with modern/postmodern Japanese female writers, including Fumiko Enchi, Yuko Tsushima, and Yumiko Kurahashi. In order to recover her original state, or "mother," woman explores her inner self, rather than the outer world controlled by man. However, establishing her ultimate self, which is free of conceptual definitions, virtually negates her existence. In order to avoid losing self in the void, woman needs to remain within the masculine conceptual structure. Thus sustaining the dual identities, the "female" mask and the unidentified face underneath, woman continues to dream of the moment of self-liberation when her suppressed "feminine water" finally breaks through the mask and creates an "androgynous" self in the boundless "nothingness."... |
