| This thesis discusses the family as both a fictional topic and a theoretical conceit. The family romance, as Freud called it, is the intimate social process by which identity is formed and authority established. In fiction the family is depicted in many ways and, as a consequence, so are the patterns of identity formation and hierarchies of authority. The works about the family that have been canonized by literary critics reveal a value system that is persistent in the academy. That system, this thesis argues, is based on the patterns of identity and authority in the patriarchal family models provided by Christian theology and Freudian psychology.; The first chapter discusses the dynamics of both Christian and Freudian family romances, and their parallels to the historic formation of academic authority. The next two chapters analyze fictional and critical uses of the family as a model of patriarchal identity and authority. The authors and critics discussed include William Faulkner, Eugene O'Neill, John Barth, and Roland Barthes; and T. S. Eliot, Northrop Frye, Harold Bloom, and Stanley Fish. In Chapter Two, which focuses on the first four authors mentioned above, the problems caused for both male and female members of a family with rigidly patriarchal expectations and values are investigated. In Chapter Three, four critics whose works influence each other are discussed in terms of their adherence to familial metaphors and the definitions of literary and academic identity and authority inherent in those metaphors.; The final two chapters analyze alternative family models provided by women authors and feminist critics. These authors and critics include Anne Tyler, Marilynne Robinson, and Alice Walker; and Virginia Woolf, Nina Auerbach, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, and Janice Radway. In these chapters, the ways in which models of the family are revised and the consequent effect on patterns of identity and particularly authority are analyzed. The academic critics discussed in the final chapter are compared to their critical counterparts of Chapter Three in order to show how critical traditions can be both sustained and revised in order to alter the hierarchy of authority inherent in the academy. |
