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http://hdl.handle.net/1843/ECAP-7QUHPK
Type: | Dissertação de Mestrado |
Title: | Body and space in J.G. Ballard´s "Concrete island" and "High rise" |
Authors: | Pedro Henrique dos Santos Groppo |
First Advisor: | Julio Jeha |
First Referee: | Julio Cesar Machado Pinto |
Second Referee: | Thomas La Borie Burns |
Abstract: | xxx |
Abstract: | The fiction of J. G. Ballard is unusually concerned with spaces, both internal and exterior. Influenced by Surrealism and Freudian psychoanalysis, Ballard's texts explore the thin divide between mind and body. Two of his novels of the 1970s, namely Concrete Island (1974) and High-Rise (1975), depict with detail his preoccupation with how the modern, urban world pushes man to the point where an escape to inner world is the solution to the tacit and oppressive forces of the external world. This escape is characterized by a suspension of conventional morality, with characters expressing atavistic tendencies, an effective return of the repressed. The present thesis poses a reading of these two novels, aided by analyses of some of Ballard's short stories, with a focus on the relation between bodies and spaces and how they project and introject into one another. Such a reading is grounded on theories of the uncanny as described by Freud and highlights Ballard's kinship to Gothic fiction. It presents Ballard's fiction as highly complex and ambiguous, affirming the power of external space to shape and control the human psyche, creating dangerously deterministic scenarios, but at the same time attesting the power of the human mind and imagination to ultimately transcend this oppression and even death |
Subject: | Surrealismo (Literatura) Psicanálise e literatura Ballard, J G, 1930-2009 Concrete island Crítica e interpretação Espaço pessoal Ballard, J G, 1930-2009 High-rise Crítica e interpretação Corpo humano Aspectos psicológicos Ficção cientifica inglesa |
language: | Inglês |
Publisher: | Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais |
Publisher Initials: | UFMG |
Rights: | Acesso Aberto |
URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/1843/ECAP-7QUHPK |
Issue Date: | 3-Apr-2009 |
Appears in Collections: | Dissertações de Mestrado |
Files in This Item:
File | Description | Size | Format | |
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diss_newrev_apr2009mai2009.pdf | 318.08 kB | Adobe PDF | View/Open |
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