TRANSATLANTIC EXISTENTIALISMS: EXISTENTIALIST TRIANGULATIONS IN FRANCE, THE RIO DE LA PLATA, AND THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Open Access
- Author:
- Tubio, Maria Lujan
- Graduate Program:
- Comparative Literature
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- December 03, 2008
- Committee Members:
- Djelal Kadir, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Allan Inlow Stoekl, Committee Member
Julia Cuervo Hewitt, Committee Member
Jonathan Paul Eburne, Committee Member
Djelal Kadir, Committee Chair/Co-Chair - Keywords:
- existentialism
Inter-American literature
Surrealism
postmodernism
psychoanalysis
French literature
Argentine Literature
Uruguayan Literature
American Literature - Abstract:
- This project examines existentialism as a historically relevant and deep-rooted American phenomenon. By triangulating the three geographical points of France, the River Plate region (Argentina and Uruguay), and the U.S. through their literary treatment of existentialism, this study shows how existentialist theories are developed and contested in the work of a number of key writers in the Americas. When approaching existentialist concerns through literature, not only French authors but also U.S. and River Plate writers display distinct existentialist trends that span the entire twentieth century. In order to reveal why the American continents were in fact a natural locus for the development of existentialist thought, I examine a wide array of modernist, post-World-War-II, “post-boom,” and postmodern works that illustrate and challenge some of the shared characteristics that are specific to America as a hemisphere and as a discursive concept. In examining late twentieth-century permutations of existentialism, I also demonstrate how postmodern works sometimes subvert and build on Sartrean existentialist theories through parodic strategies and integrate apparently incompatible postmodern and existentialist insights, developing what we might call a “postmodern existentialism.” Such late twentieth-century transformations of existentialism, I argue, innovate this movement and further reveal the need to study American and postmodern literature as a part of the existentialist canon.