Paul Auster’s "City of Glass" in the Tradition of Detective Fiction: a Psychoanalytical Analysis

Paul Auster’s Author: Oliver Strecker
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
ISBN: 3656319618
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 33

Get Book Here

Book Description
Bachelor Thesis from the year 2012 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0, University of Dusseldorf "Heinrich Heine" (Philosophische Fakultät), language: English, abstract: The topic of this paper is to examine the detective novel City of Glass, published by Paul Auster in 1985, from a psychoanalytical point of view. This analytic approach, combining both detective fiction and psychoanalysis, is more natural than might appear at first glance. After all, the modus operandi of the psychoanalyst and the detective are quite similar. A close contemplation of details, a search for hints and finally a development of a theory that unites the small signs in a big picture are crucial steps in both fields. Sigmund Freud laid out the common importance of details as following: And if you were a detective engaged in tracing a murder, would you expect to find that the murderer had left his photograph behind at the place of the crime, with his address attached? Or would you not necessarily have to be satisfied with comparatively slight and obscure traces of the person you were in search of? So do not let us underestimate small indications, by their help we may succeed in getting on the track of something bigger. Furthermore, Freud emphasized how psychoanalysts are practicing a kind of detective-work as well: “We have to uncover psychic material; and in order to do this we have invented a number of detective devices.” Due to those parallels, “psychological studies of mystery and detective narratives have a long and varied history.” Most of these approaches have analyzed traditional detective fiction. Auster’s very untraditional detective novel, however, plays with the conventions of the genre and creates its very own detective universe, a confusing play of constantly changing identities. This universe shows parallels to the world-view of the French psychoanalyst Jaques Lacan, as: Lacanian psychoanalysis offers a theory of the subject that does without concepts such as unity, origin, continuity. It goes from the assumption of a fundamentally split subject and thus comes up with a model of subjectivity that grounds itself on a constitutive lack rather that wholeness. These parallels are not a pure coincidence as Auster is familiar with Lacan’s work and quotes themes of Lacanian psychoanalysis. Also, Lacan himself applied his theories to detective fiction, such as The Purloined Letter by Edgar Allen Poe. In this work, the central question that shall be the focus of investigation is: From a psychoanalytical point of view − how does Paul Auster position his main character Daniel Quinn in the context of traditional detective novels?(...)

Paul Auster’s "City of Glass" in the Tradition of Detective Fiction: a Psychoanalytical Analysis

Paul Auster’s Author: Oliver Strecker
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
ISBN: 3656319618
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 33

Get Book Here

Book Description
Bachelor Thesis from the year 2012 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0, University of Dusseldorf "Heinrich Heine" (Philosophische Fakultät), language: English, abstract: The topic of this paper is to examine the detective novel City of Glass, published by Paul Auster in 1985, from a psychoanalytical point of view. This analytic approach, combining both detective fiction and psychoanalysis, is more natural than might appear at first glance. After all, the modus operandi of the psychoanalyst and the detective are quite similar. A close contemplation of details, a search for hints and finally a development of a theory that unites the small signs in a big picture are crucial steps in both fields. Sigmund Freud laid out the common importance of details as following: And if you were a detective engaged in tracing a murder, would you expect to find that the murderer had left his photograph behind at the place of the crime, with his address attached? Or would you not necessarily have to be satisfied with comparatively slight and obscure traces of the person you were in search of? So do not let us underestimate small indications, by their help we may succeed in getting on the track of something bigger. Furthermore, Freud emphasized how psychoanalysts are practicing a kind of detective-work as well: “We have to uncover psychic material; and in order to do this we have invented a number of detective devices.” Due to those parallels, “psychological studies of mystery and detective narratives have a long and varied history.” Most of these approaches have analyzed traditional detective fiction. Auster’s very untraditional detective novel, however, plays with the conventions of the genre and creates its very own detective universe, a confusing play of constantly changing identities. This universe shows parallels to the world-view of the French psychoanalyst Jaques Lacan, as: Lacanian psychoanalysis offers a theory of the subject that does without concepts such as unity, origin, continuity. It goes from the assumption of a fundamentally split subject and thus comes up with a model of subjectivity that grounds itself on a constitutive lack rather that wholeness. These parallels are not a pure coincidence as Auster is familiar with Lacan’s work and quotes themes of Lacanian psychoanalysis. Also, Lacan himself applied his theories to detective fiction, such as The Purloined Letter by Edgar Allen Poe. In this work, the central question that shall be the focus of investigation is: From a psychoanalytical point of view − how does Paul Auster position his main character Daniel Quinn in the context of traditional detective novels?(...)

Analysis of Paul Auster’s "City of Glass". A traditional detective novel

Analysis of Paul Auster’s Author:
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
ISBN: 3668501661
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 21

Get Book Here

Book Description
Seminar paper from the year 2016 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0, University of Frankfurt (Main), course: American Detective Fiction, language: English, abstract: In this term paper, Paul Auster’s “City of Glass” is going to be analyzed from a psychoanalytical point of view to explore the protagonist's development. The main question of this paper is: Is “City of Glass” a traditional detective novel? The term paper is divided into the Lacanian theory, the development of Daniel Quinn and the development of the detective novel. The paper will focus on the protagonist and analyze his behavior, his inner life, the process of his search for identity and identity formation. The emphasis lies in how Paul Auster places the protagonist, Daniel Quinn, in connection with a traditional detective novel. The question of identity and individuality is a significant subject in Paul Auster’s books. In each short story of the New York Trilogy, every protagonist represents the role of a detective. They are positioned in these specific situations which are inexplicable and beyond comprehension. To answer the question of identity, Jacques Lacan’s theory of psychoanalysis is used to analyze Daniel Quinn’s character. The first detective novel is credited to Edgar Allan Poe with his short story “The Murders in Rue Morgue”, written in 1841. Poe is the so-called father of the detective genre. He paved the way for the next century and the coming authors such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Charles Dickens, and Raymond Chandler.

City of Glass

City of Glass PDF Author: Paul Auster
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1429900032
Category : Comics & Graphic Novels
Languages : en
Pages : 148

Get Book Here

Book Description
A graphic novel classic with a new introduction by Art Spiegelman Quinn writes mysteries. The Washington Post has described him as a “post-existentialist private eye.” An unknown voice on the telephone is now begging for his help, drawing him into a world and a mystery far stranger than any he ever created in print. Adapted by Paul Karasik and David Mazzucchelli, with graphics by David Mazzucchelli, Paul Auster’s groundbreaking, Edgar Award-nominated masterwork has been astonishingly transformed into a new visual language.

City of Glass

City of Glass PDF Author: Paul Auster
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1786821710
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 137

Get Book Here

Book Description
When reclusive crime writer Daniel Quinn receives a mysterious call seeking a private detective in the middle of the night, he quickly and unwittingly becomes the protagonist in a thriller of his own. As the familiar territory of the noir detective genre gives way to something altogether more disturbing, Quinn becomes consumed by his mission, and begins to lose his grip on reality.

Eating Otherwise

Eating Otherwise PDF Author: Maria Christou
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108416829
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 217

Get Book Here

Book Description
'You are what you eat' is an adage taken seriously as this book uncovers connections between the alimentary and ontological.

Neon Lit:city of Glass

Neon Lit:city of Glass PDF Author: Bob Callahan
Publisher: Harper Perennial
ISBN: 9780380771080
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 129

Get Book Here

Book Description
A graphic, crime noir novel on a New York detective-cum-novelist who answers a wrong number. A double- barreled investigation, one from the perspective of the detective, the other from that of the novelist. Adapted from Paul Auster's City of Glass by the creators of Maus.

Paul Auster's Ghosts

Paul Auster's Ghosts PDF Author: María Laura Arce Álvarez
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1498561640
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 189

Get Book Here

Book Description
The following book explores the intertextual relationship between Paul Auster’s first and most remarkable work, The New York Trilogy (1987), and the works of certain American and European writers who shaped this novel and Auster’s future works. Auster’s The New York Trilogy is a novel formed by an intertextual dialogue which in some cases it is explicit, mentioning authors and books intentionally, and in others implicit, provoked by Auster’s admiration for authors such as Samuel Beckett or product of his role as a translator, as it occurs with Maurice Blanchot. These two different ways of intertextuality essentially show Auster’s influence of the American Renaissance, Samuel Beckett’s fiction and the work of the writer and critic Maurice Blanchot. In these terms, this book proposes an exhaustive analysis of City of Glass and Herman Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” Ghosts and Edgar Allan Poe’s “William Wilson” and The Locked Room and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Fanshawe. The two last chapters also offer a thorough analysis of the whole trilogy in comparison to Samuel Beckett’s trilogy Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnamable and finally introduces a study of the trilogy as a fictionalization of Maurice Blanchot’s literary theory.

Paul Auster's 'City of Glass' as a Postmodern Detective Novel

Paul Auster's 'City of Glass' as a Postmodern Detective Novel PDF Author: Toni Rudat
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
ISBN: 3638766233
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 42

Get Book Here

Book Description
Seminar paper from the year 2006 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,3, RWTH Aachen University, 13 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: PAUL AUSTER s novel ′City of Glass′ published in 1985 appeared during the period of the postmodern era.1 Although it is considerably discussed at what time the beginnings of the postmodern era is to be set, it is irrefutable that City of Glass belongs to postmodern literature. To analyse in how far PAUL AUSTER s City of Glass serves as a representative of the postmodern era and to show the reader in what way postmodern qualities are converted into the writings of that time, the main part of this paper will be divided up into two sections. The first section serves to define the coming up of this movement and the qualities it possesses within the genre of detective fiction. Furthermore some important idealistic features like the idea of reality and identity have to be taken into consideration. The short introduction of the two identity-constituting models by ERIKSON and MEAD will provide a better overview of the idea of identity formation. Within the second section the novel itself will be taken into consideration. Therefore it is necessary to take a close look at the main character Daniel Quinn and his character development the crisis of his identity in the course of the novel respectively. Besides another striking factor, namely the appearance of doublings and triplings of characters, has to be clarified as well as the role of the narrator. The conclusion at the end of the paper is supposed then to show to what extent City of Glass belongs to postmodern literature and which peculiarities of postmodern writings have been included in this novel. Since there are just a few recent publications on Paul Auster and his novels three of them namely, An Art of Desire: Reading Paul Auster by BERND HERZOGENRATH, Crisis: The Works of Paul Auster by CARSTEN SPRINGER and the pu

The New York Trilogy

The New York Trilogy PDF Author: Paul Auster
Publisher: Faber & Faber
ISBN: 0571246125
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 322

Get Book Here

Book Description
'One of the great American prose stylists of our time.' New York Times 'Auster really does possess the wand of the enchanter.' New York Review of Books The New York Trilogy is perhaps the most astonishing work by one of America's most consistently astonishing writers. The Trilogy is three cleverly interconnected novels that exploit the elements of standard detective fiction and achieve a new genre that is all the more gripping for its starkness. It is a riveting work of detective fiction worthy of Raymond Chandler, and at the same time a profound and unsettling existentialist enquiry in the tradition of Kafka or Borges. In each story the search for clues leads to remarkable coincidences in the universe as the simple act of trailing a man ultimately becomes a startling investigation of what it means to be human. The New York Trilogy is the modern novel at its finest: a truly bold and arresting work of fiction with something to transfix and astound every reader. 'Marks a new departure for the American novel.' Observer 'A shatteringly clever piece of work . . . Utterly gripping, written with an acid sharpness that leaves an indelible dent in the back of the mind.' Sunday Telegraph

Chronotopes of the Uncanny

Chronotopes of the Uncanny PDF Author: Petra Eckhard
Publisher: transcript Verlag
ISBN: 3839418410
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 207

Get Book Here

Book Description
Using the theoretical frameworks of Freud, Todorov, and Bahktin, this book explores how American writers of the late 20th century have translated the psychoanalytical concept of »the uncanny« into their novelistic discourses. The two texts under scrutiny - Paul Auster's »City of Glass« and Toni Morrison's »Jazz« - show that the uncanny has developed into a crucial trope to delineate personal and collective fears that are often grounded on the postmodern disruption of spatio-temporal continuities and coherences.