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Repository DOI
Publication Date
2024-11-11
Type
doctoral thesis
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Abstract
This doctoral dissertation examines the narrative configuration of the impossible domain as manifestations of the fantastic in selected prose writings by Edward Plunkett, Lord Dunsany (1878-1957). This examination elucidates that there is a consistent presence of ontological tension, implicit or explicit, which disrupts the internal coherence coding the text as mimetic or as fantasy, thereby interrogating the instability of both domains (the possible and the impossible). The analysis conducted in this thesis demonstrates that the configuration of Dunsany’s fiction forces the reader to assess the discourses challenged by diegetic tension, thereby highlighting the erosion of truth and reality, the dissolution of nature, the construction of the other, and the non-human in modernity. This critical reappraisal disputes previous interpretations of Dunsany’s work that posit the manifestations of the impossible in his texts as fantasy, stable within its self-standing ontology; or alternatively, as the product of uncomplicated orientalism or escapism. Instead, this thesis demonstrates that Dunsany’s work exhibits a fluctuation in ontological dominance from text to text, regardless of genre, yet maintains a consistent, self-conscious ontological instability that situates it firmly within the field of the fantastic. Extended scholarly analyses of his work through the lens of its narrative configuration, leveraging theories of the fantastic and metafiction, have not been explored in a sustained critical manner heretofore. This research contributes to the fields of the fantastic and metafiction, offering a revised theorization of the fantastic. The fantastic, as posited here, is not a restrictive model based on epistemological instability or specific configurations reliant on dominance of the domain of the possible, but a mode of narration based on an ontological tension or problematization—it is an intrinsically self-conscious narrative mode in that it appeals to the reader to consider the notions of possibility, impossibility, the limits of language and the concept of the “real” itself. My approach critically repositions Dunsany more firmly within the modern Irish literary canon, challenging the frequent reception of his work as an isolated phenomenon. I also advance the conceptualization of the fantastic as a narrative mode within the field of Irish Studies, the significance of which necessitates further theoretical concretization, investigating it as transgressive and destabilizing to established discourses and paradigms of reality and possibility.
Publisher
University of Galway
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Rights
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International