Paul Auster S City Of Glass In The Tradition Of Detective Fiction A Psychoanalytical Analysis

Author : Oliver Strecker
Publisher : GRIN Verlag
Page : 33 pages
File Size : 45,9 Mb
Release : 2012-11-26
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9783656319610

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

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?(...)

Author : Anonym
Publisher : Grin Publishing
Page : 24 pages
File Size : 44,5 Mb
Release : 2017-08-21
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 366850167X

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Analysis of Paul Auster's City of Glass. a Traditional Detective Novel by Anonym Pdf

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.

Author : Toni Rudat
Publisher : GRIN Verlag
Page : 42 pages
File Size : 54,6 Mb
Release : 2007-11
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 9783638766234

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Paul Auster's 'City of Glass' as a Postmodern Detective Novel by Toni Rudat Pdf

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

Author : Bernd Herzogenrath
Publisher : Rodopi Bv Editions
Page : 245 pages
File Size : 48,6 Mb
Release : 1999
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9042004533

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An Art of Desire by Bernd Herzogenrath Pdf

An Art of Desire. Reading Paul Auster is the first book-length study solely devoted to the novels of Paul Auster. From the vantage-point of poststructuralist theory, especially Lacanian psychoanalysis and Derridean deconstruction, this book explores the relation of Auster's novels City of Glass, In the Country of Last Things, Moon Palace, and The Music of Chance to the rewriting and deconstruction of genre conventions; their connections to concepts such as catastrophe theory, the sublime, Freud's notion of the 'death drive; ' as well as the philosophical underpinnings of his work. At the focus of this study, however, is the concept of desire, an important concept in the writings of both Auster and Lacan, and the various manifestations of this concept in Auster's novels. Auster's novels always emphasize a kind of outside of the text (chance, the real, the unsayable), a kind of hope for a 'transparent language, ' a hope, however, that is exactly posited as impossible to fulfill. The relation of Daniel Quinn, Anna Blume, Marco Fogg and Jim Nashe to this lack is the motor of their desire, the driving force for the subject that has always already left the real and has been inscribed into the representational system called 'reality.' It is here, in its relation to the signifier, that the subject's desire is played out, that its experience is ordered, interpreted, and articulated. It is their ability to make connections, to proliferate, to 'affirm free-play, ' their ability 'not to bemoan the absence of the centre' that ultimately decides over success or failure of Auster's subjects - whether they partake in the 'joyous errance of the sign, ' or whether their fate is that of the 'unfortunatetraveler.'

Author : Jeanette Gonsior
Publisher : GRIN Verlag
Page : 27 pages
File Size : 46,7 Mb
Release : 2009-02-16
Category : Literary Collections
ISBN : 9783640268931

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Walking Through Paul Auster’s "City of Glass": "Flânerie" in his Novel by Jeanette Gonsior Pdf

Seminar paper from the year 2006 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0, Humboldt-University of Berlin (Department of English and American Studies), course: The Flaneur and the Visual Culture of the City, 30 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: “To stroll is a science, it is the gastronomy of the eye. To walk is to vegetate, to stroll is to live.” (Balzac, "Physiologie du Mariage") 'City of Glass' is Paul Auster’s first novel, published in 1985, after being rejected by several publishers. The first part of 'The New York Trilogy' has been translated into 17 languages so far, a fact that pleads for the novel’s commercial success nowadays. An indication for the literary importance of 'City of Glass' is the continually growing number of essays, anthologies and monographs all over the world. It is undeniable that its selling success is related to the general fascination for the cosmopolitan city of New York and for detective stories, as — at first sight — Auster’s novel follows the tradition of Edgar Allan Poe. However, he follows the tradition “as creator of ‘the lost ones’”, as — on closer inspection — the reader has to realize that the real mystery is one of confused character identities and realities. 'City of Glass' does not meet the reader’s expectations about a typical New York ‘city novel’: Auster created an adequate text for a modified, postmodern cityscape where all objects of the city seem like linguistic codes that need to be deciphered. The risks of the city result from the confusion of language and perception. The fear of an identity collapse comes along with the apparent collapse of the cityscape. Auster picks out the loss of stability and security in the city as central theme. He describes a world begging for order and interpretation where “nothing is real except chance”. (...) Auster's character Quinn is a deconstructed character of postmodernism, he acts like a 'flâneur', but does not feel comfortable while walking through the city, he seems lost. New York is the ‘nowhere’ Quinn has built around himself. Professor Stillman also seems to stroll like a 'flâneur', but he has to fulfill an operation (in contrast to the “classical” 'flâneur' who has no aim). Auster deconstructs the postmodern figure of the flâneur as he deconstructs the classical detective novel. Ironically, these very deconstructions help to shape the novel. Quinn can be read as flâneur adapted to a postmodern world, I argue. In the following, I will explore the relations between Auster’s 'City of Glass' and concepts of 'flânerie', strolling urban observing. In order to discuss 'flânerie' in Auster’s work, it is essential to take a closer look on the term first. (...)

Author : Matthias Kugler
Publisher : diplom.de
Page : 164 pages
File Size : 51,8 Mb
Release : 1999-10-28
Category : Literary Collections
ISBN : 9783832418526

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Paul Auster's "The New York Trilogy" as Postmodern Detective Fiction by Matthias Kugler Pdf

Inhaltsangabe:Abstract: Paul Auster's New York Trilogy, published in one volume for the first time in England in 1988 and in the U.S. in 1990 has been widely categorised as detective fiction among literary scholars and critics. There is, however, a striking diversity and lack of consensus regarding the classification of the trilogy within the existing genre forms of the detective novel. Among others, Auster's stories are described as: metaanti-detective-fiction; mysteries about mysteries; a strangely humorous working of the detective novel; very soft-boiled; a metamystery; glassy little jigsaws; a mixture between the detective story and the nouveau roman; a metaphysical detective story; a deconstruction of the detective novel; antidetective-fiction; a late example of the anti-detective genre; and being related to 'hard-boiled' novels by authors like Hammett and Chandler. Such a striking lack of agreement within the secondary literature has inspired me to write this paper. It does not, however, elaborate further an this diversity of viewpoints although they all seem to have a certain validity and underline the richness and diversity of Auster's detective trilogy; neither do I intend to coin a new term for Auster's detective fiction. I would rather place The New York Trilogy within a more general and open literary form, namely postmodern detective fiction. This classifies Paul Auster as an American writer who is part of the generation that immediately followed the 'classical literary movement' of American postmodernism' of the 60s and 70s. His writing demonstrates that he has been influenced by the revolutionary and innovative postmodern concepts, characterised by the notion of 'anything goes an a planet of multiplicity' as well as by French poststructuralism. He may, however, be distinguished from a 'traditional' postmodern writer through a certain coherence in the narrative discourse, a neo-realistic approach and by showing a certain responsibility for social and moral aspects going beyond mere metafictional and subversive elements. Many of the ideas of postmodernism were formulated in theoretical literary texts of the 60s and 70s and based an formal experiments include the attempt of subverting the ability of language to refer truthfully to the world, and a radical turning away from coherent narrative discourse and plot. These ideas seem to have been intemalized by the new generation of postmodern writers of the 80s to such [...]

Author : Jeanette Gonsior
Publisher : GRIN Verlag
Page : 66 pages
File Size : 55,8 Mb
Release : 2009-02
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 9783640268160

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Walking Through Paul Auster's "City of Glass": "Flânerie" in His Novel by Jeanette Gonsior Pdf

Seminar paper from the year 2006 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0, Humboldt-University of Berlin (Department of English and American Studies), course: The Flaneur and the Visual Culture of the City, 30 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: "To stroll is a science, it is the gastronomy of the eye. To walk is to vegetate, to stroll is to live." (Balzac, "Physiologie du Mariage") 'City of Glass' is Paul Auster's first novel, published in 1985, after being rejected by several publishers. The first part of 'The New York Trilogy' has been translated into 17 languages so far, a fact that pleads for the novel's commercial success nowadays. An indication for the literary importance of 'City of Glass' is the continually growing number of essays, anthologies and monographs all over the world. It is undeniable that its selling success is related to the general fascination for the cosmopolitan city of New York and for detective stories, as - at first sight - Auster's novel follows the tradition of Edgar Allan Poe. However, he follows the tradition "as creator of 'the lost ones'", as - on closer inspection - the reader has to realize that the real mystery is one of confused character identities and realities. 'City of Glass' does not meet the reader's expectations about a typical New York 'city novel': Auster created an adequate text for a modified, postmodern cityscape where all objects of the city seem like linguistic codes that need to be deciphered. The risks of the city result from the confusion of language and perception. The fear of an identity collapse comes along with the apparent collapse of the cityscape. Auster picks out the loss of stability and security in the city as central theme. He describes a world begging for order and interpretation where "nothing is real except chance". (...) Auster's character Quinn is a deconstructed character of postmodernism, he acts like a 'fl neur', but does not feel comfortable while walkin

Author : Alisa Westermann
Publisher : GRIN Verlag
Page : 20 pages
File Size : 45,8 Mb
Release : 2011-06-10
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9783640935307

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Graphic adaptation of Paul Auster’s "City of Glass" – Visual language and symbolism by Alisa Westermann Pdf

Seminar paper from the year 2009 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,3, University of Münster (Englisches Seminar), course: Graphic Novels, language: English, abstract: It was a wrong number that started it, the telephone ringing three times in the dead of night, and the voice on the other end asking for someone he was not. (Auster, 1985; 3) Paul Auster’s anti-detective novel City of Glass is the story of a man, whose life accidentally angles off. More and more, he blunders into the complexity of a criminal case in search of the significant principle. Obsessively, he adapts his action to the stranger until he finally loses hisself. Although Auster’s novel, which is based on the nature and the function of language, is rather non-visual, Paul Karasik and David Mazzucchelli succeeded in adopting it into a graphic novel that is more than just a translation from one genre into another. They managed to create a visual language full of metaphors, symbols and icons that add a new layer of meaning to the story. This is the reason why I decided to pick City of Glass: The graphic novel as the basis of my term paper. This thesis will argue that a graphic adaptation of a literary work can be more than just an illustrated copy of a superior novel and worth an analysis on its own. Furthermore, I will take a deeper look at the visual language, specifically, the visual metaphors and symbols, which build up the graphic novel and how these finding can be adapted into learning situations. First of all, I will give a summary of City of Glass: the novel followed by a definition of the anti-detective genre with the intention to point out, that the visual language of City of Glass: the graphic novel reflects this genre. Afterwards, a survey of the graphic novel as well as an analysis of its structure and composition and its visual language and symbolism is given. A brief outline of how these findings can be useful in teaching and learning situations will precede the conclusion.

Author : Franziska Schüppel
Publisher : GRIN Verlag
Page : 14 pages
File Size : 52,7 Mb
Release : 2012-12-25
Category : Literary Collections
ISBN : 9783656340676

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The Symbolic and Metaphoric Potential of Paul Auster’s "City of Glass" by Franziska Schüppel Pdf

Seminar paper from the year 2008 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,3, University of Leipzig, language: English, abstract: Lewis Jones once wrote in the Telegraph about Paul Auster that “his novels are labyrinths of enigmas, mysteries and riddles, thrillers with no endings, detective stories as told by Samuel Beckett, their premises endlessly shifting, in which the only knowledge is that nothing is, or can be, known.”. These qualities are also represented in his New York Trilogy published in 1987, that consists of the three detective stories City of Glass, Ghosts, and The Locked Room, which are set in New York. All of them deal with the nature of identity and attach value to these mysteries and riddles typical of Paul Auster, for example by using symbols and metaphors# to cause certain reactions in the reader. Especially the postmodern novel City of Glass from 1985 makes use of numerous symbols and metaphors that can be found throughout the whole novel. In this way, many passages or even single sentences can be interpreted differently and consequently it is sometimes difficult for the reader not to be confused. By using the single symbols and metaphors of the title, of glass as symbol of pairs and look-alikes, the crisis of identity, and the Tower of Babel in his novel City of Glass, Paul Auster influences the reader and causes different effects, such as catching his interest, confusing him, or giving him a reason for thinking. In the following I am going to analyze the single symbols and metaphors and try to interpret the effects on the reader and the author‘s intentions.

Author : Sebastian Bohl
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 28 pages
File Size : 44,6 Mb
Release : 2013-05
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 3656417075

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Reading the City by Sebastian Bohl Pdf

Seminar paper from the year 2008 in the subject English - Literature, Works, grade: 2, University of Constance, course: Hauptseminar - History, Theory, Practise of Reading," language: English, abstract: Hunger, chance, disappearance and solitude are the central themes of Auster's fiction.1 Sometimes these themes are easy to detect but in their core more complex as they seem to be on first sight. With the New York Trilogy Paul Auster has created a powerful and deep going tripartite work which made him popular all over the world. In 1989, he received the Prix France Culture de Litterature Etrangere for this, his first novella and many other prices followed for other works he has published until now. City of Glass2 deals with reality and coincidence - failure and identity in the frame of a detective story. "It was a wrong number that started it"3 is the first sentence the reader detects when one begins to read the novel. A story about a writer named Quinn that used to be a quite talented writer. After he had lost his wife and son, he publishes detective stories under the pseudonym William Wilson. Isolated from his fellow humans Quinn gets involved into a sequence of events marked by chance and solitude. He accepts to work on a case as a detective after he had received a strange phone call asking for Paul Auster the famous detective. Quinn accepts the case and from now on works under the name of Paul Auster. Him and the caller Peter Stillman meet and Quinn gets to know the details of his work - he is to protect Peter from his father Mr. Stillman senior who as Peter's wife thinks is planning to kill his son. This marks the beginning of Quinn's long journey through New York City. [...] 1 Dennis Barone: Beyond the Red Notebook, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia 1995, S.2 2 Auster, Paul: The New York Trilogy, Faber and Faber Limited, London 1987 3 Zit. Auster, Paul: The New York Trilogy, Faber and Faber Limited, London 1987 S.3

Author : Anne M. Holzapfel
Publisher : Peter Lang Publishing
Page : 136 pages
File Size : 45,6 Mb
Release : 1996
Category : City and town life in literature
ISBN : STANFORD:36105020317298

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The New York Trilogy by Anne M. Holzapfel Pdf

Author : Bob Callahan
Publisher : Harper Perennial
Page : 129 pages
File Size : 42,6 Mb
Release : 1994-08-01
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 038077108X

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Neon Lit:city of Glass by Bob Callahan Pdf

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.

Author : Paul Auster
Publisher : Penguin Books
Page : 214 pages
File Size : 44,9 Mb
Release : 1987-04-07
Category : Fiction
ISBN : UCSC:32106015919761

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City of Glass by Paul Auster Pdf

A late-night phone call from a stranger involves Quinn, a mystery writer, in a baffling murder case stranger than his novels.

Author : María Laura Arce Álvarez
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 189 pages
File Size : 53,7 Mb
Release : 2018-06-13
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781498561648

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Paul Auster's Ghosts by María Laura Arce Álvarez Pdf

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.

Author : M. Cook
Publisher : Springer
Page : 210 pages
File Size : 54,5 Mb
Release : 2011-10-12
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780230313736

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Narratives of Enclosure in Detective Fiction by M. Cook Pdf

The locked room mystery is one of the iconic creations of popular fiction. Michael Cook's critical study reveals how this archetypal form of the puzzle story has had a significant effect in shaping the immensely popular genre of detective fiction. The book includes analysis of texts from Poe to the present day.