Abstract

This dissertation has two aims: to elaborate Gilles Deleuze's ontology and to set Deleuze's philosophy in correspondence with literature. Each chapter elaborates Deleuze's ontology from a specific perspective. In the first chapter, I filter Deleuze's thought through the question of personal identity. Subsequent chapters exercise Deleuze's ontology through questions of Nietzsche's 'eternal return' and of spatiality and alienation. Besides developing Deleuze's thought in each chapter's particular form, I apply the resulting concepts to a variety of literary texts including Steve Erickson's Days Between Stations, Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus and Isabelle Eberhardt's writings.