Abstract

My dissertation focuses on forms of divinity in modernist fiction. I suggest that modernist writing is torn in two competing directions---to surrender divine authority and to maintain it. On the one hand, modernist writers want to show that "God is dead," that no external power determines our truths and laws. On the other, they suffer anxiety over this new freedom and hesitate to surrender dependable, externally-granted 'truths.' The resulting texts are contradictory and often punishing: modernist texts simultaneously demand we 'know ourselves as free' and re-inscribe forms of order that are as unbudging as God's external order was. ;In my study, I focus on the modernists' style. In surrendering one form of metaphysical law and inventing another, the modernist writer assumes a voice that is abusive, contradictory, macho, and nostalgic. I study Hegel as the first distinct Modernist of this type and D. H. Lawrence and James Joyce as typical descendents. These writers insist on human independence while building obstacles to our freedom. They acknowledge the death of God but position themselves as the new lawgiver