Patrick White : The Narcissistic Quest for Self

概要

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Nobel Laureate and social misfit, Patrick White repeatedly claimed that he invested aspects of his own often unattractive and complex nature in the lives and characters of his fictional subjects. The obvious temptation is therefore to ask the question, "Exactly what in him finds its way onto the page in his fiction?" An answer to this question takes a reader to that area of literary endeavor shunned in recent years: biographical criticism. This paper is unashamedly speculative as it presents the hypothesis that White's personal psychological problems were the consequence of a narcissistic personality disorder, and that disorder strongly influenced the content of his fiction. Voss, for example, while ostensibly about exploration of a continent, is used by White to explore and ritualistically resolve his own pathological inner world. This paper also argues that speculation, though not quite critically respectable, carries a set of interests and values of its own.