Foreign Object

Date of Award

6-15-2024

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Organizational Unit

College of Arts Humanities and Social Sciences, English and Literary Arts

First Advisor

Joanna Howard

Second Advisor

Patrick Cottrell

Third Advisor

R. D. Perry

Fourth Advisor

Thomas Nail

Keywords

Novel, Speculative, Anthropocene

Abstract

Foreign Object comprises the first part of a novel series that seeks to complicate the concepts of the Anthropocene epoch in fiction through its investigations of form and narrative, as well as the invasive properties of a recursive society determined to ignore or normalise climate events. The narrative of Foreign Object focuses on John Salmon, a university professor who has been infected by an ancient spore, and the bizarre series of events that follow in his life. Foreign Object is also about Salmon’s attempts to write his own novel about the Anthropocene, and the maddening habits of thought and practice this instils within him. Foreign Object is a distressed novel about recursion and the text interacts with metatextual ideas on the page, which disrupt and commune with the mythology of whole narrative. This section, Accumulation, concerns Salmon’s growing alienation from the madness of real life. The critical introduction discusses the current state of the Anthropocene novel and the theoretical grounding these novels are concerned with.

Copyright Date

6-2024

Copyright Statement / License for Reuse

All Rights Reserved
All Rights Reserved.

Publication Statement

Copyright is held by the author. Permanently suppressed.

Rights Holder

David Whelan

Provenance

Received from author

File Format

application/pdf

Language

English (eng)

Extent

217 pgs

File Size

772 KB

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