The Poetics Of Anti-Logocentrism In Wise Children

"After Sharlotte Bronte and Doris Lessing, Angela Carter is the third classic female writer of Britain. She shaped the writing of the British novel after1945." She has written9novels until her death, with her last novel epitomizing the thought of her life and the peak of her creative writing. This dissertation mainly focuses on her last novel Wise Children to analyze what Carter insisted all her life in terms of her unique poetic principle and how she insisted it.It is well known that Carter has strong stylistic innovation, and she is full of enthusiasm about various styles of comedies and keen on rewriting of different genres between novels, stories, dramas and radio plays. It is well-known that she has created a new style of rewriting of the fairy tale. Therefore, it is reasonable that Carter’s novel uses the genre of Ancient Greek comedy (Old Comedy), typified by Aristophanes.Through a thorough investigation of the poetics of Carter’s last novel in my thesis, I have disclosed point by point how the distinctive writing strategies in Carter’s Wise Children follows the same serio-comic genre as those used in ancient Greek comedies of Aristophanes. Carter uses seven characteristics of the serio-comic genre, which are quite similar to Aristophanes’comedies. They are pastiche, bold usage of vulgar language, grotesque juxtaposition of young and old body images, combination of contrast and oxymoron, dual voices of characters, imagism, characters impersonating other characters or replacing each other in the play. In this way, the spirit of anti-logocentrism of Wise Children has been formed under the influence of the ironic position of Old Comedy.Thus, this paper explores the poetics of Wise Children and reveals the relationship between the poetics of "anti-logocentrism" and serio-comic genre of Aristophanes’Old Comedy, as well as its uniqueness.This dissertation is divided into three parts which are the introduction, body section and conclusion. The introduction brings forth the argumentation and background. It first explains the idea of "logos" in the history of the Western philosophy with Aristophanes’assertion to add "the subjectivity of man" or "practical reason" to the dimension of "reason" in contrast to the essence of the Western traditional philosophy-——"logocentrism", pointing out that humanism is the core of practical rationality of Old Comedy. The old comedy exposes the paradoxical sides through the serio-comic genre, and intends to subvert the rational order and eliminate the delimitation of authority.Angela Carter’s thought of "anti-logocentrism" is closely connected with her time of "Modernity". The essence of the spirit of "Modernity" is "rationalism", whose mode of vertical control changes into authoritarian rule after entering the realistic ethic level. When making the existence of man conceptual and logical, it ignores the existence of man which remains forever in an ever-generated uncertainty. Carter opposes the mechanical manipulation of "logoscentralism", which is a standing against Thatcher’s nationalism, illegal delimitation, or blood-centered hierarchy. As a unique postmodernism novelist, Carter uses the serio-comic genre of Aristophanes’Old Comedy to subvert and break the stable cultural structure, which has "logocentrism" as its fulcrum, and rebuild a new pluralistic ethics. Therefore, Carter’s Wise Children is the reflection of serio-comic genre and its spiritual features.Then the introduction presents the research reviews and the reasons of the selected topic by analyzing the four major research areas of Wise Children in the past, as well as five major topics in the traditional study. This part argues that through the characteristics of Old Comedy used by Carter, it illustrates effectively multi-faceted features of poetics in the text; and points out that the serio-comic genre is an expression of worldview as well as rhetoric, which is the core idea of Cater’s last novel, embodying her opposition to British Imperial hegemonic policy and family ethic of blood kinship based on her idea of "anti-logocentrism".The body section is divided into four chapters.The first chapter is devoted to the formation of Carter’s spirit of anti-logos. Carter stands against the mechanical control of rationalism on the ever-generated man, which is demonstrated under the framework of the worldview of Old Comedy, and thus constitues its rebellious spirit of blood-centered hegemony and national hegemonic policy based on the fulcrum of "anti-logocentrism".Aristophanes’Old Comedy revolts against "logos" from its origin——rhetoric of sophistry, and breaks the "logos" through the implied puns in character names and pastiche of sacred styles. Carter inherits the expressional form from the ancient Greek comedy and develops her own "anti-logos" tone based on her revolt against the blood-centered hegemony and national hegemonic policy with "anti-logocentrism" as its fulcrum, from the fabulosity of puns of characters’names and the pastiche of upper class and elegant culture.Secondly, one of the important characteristics of old comedy is to interweave the controversial social issues into the text. Aristophanes chooses Athens’public politics as his aesthetic subjects and expresses his rebellion against the aspects of "the world we live" or "practical reason". While accordingly, Carter’s text also formes a close relationship of intertextuality between anti-logos and political reality, which alludes to current politics in the text through many metaphors, and deconstructs the power of repression in the reality through mockery.The second chapter analyzes the formation of Cater’s worldview of Old Comedy, and discusses the specific generating mechanism of the Old Comedy. First, it points out that the transcendence of and rebellion against the"logos" in Wise Children descends not only from the "dionysian" spirit which forms an ever-generating and changing worldview, but also from the Aristophanes’worldview of anti-"narrowness". Aristophanes’"find the other half" myth and "hiccups" fable are the embodiments of his worldview of opposition to "narrowness" and the pursuit of "integrity". Secondly, Carter also expresses the transcendental nature of characters’"subjectivity" through the real "comedy", and resists "logo-centrism" in the context of modernism, and thus forms her spirit of "anti-logocentrism". Finally, the characteristics of "Modernity" in Carter’s time, the condition of nationalism hegemony in the U.S. pursued by the Thatcher government, and her peculiar interest in comedy all help shape the process of her worldview of Old Comedy.The third chapter——Deconstruction of the Ethic of Blood Kinship:"A New Ethic of Family Kinship"——exposes the "anti-logocentric" theme. The discussion involves the new ethics with the opposition of blood hegemony and illegal demarcation of blood-relation-centered world. First of all, Carter’s ethics is the result of her own unique life experience; Secondly, her ethics is formed within the particular framework of Western traditional biological ethics, which has its historical cultural context to be depended on. There exists the paradox in the concept of blood-ralation ethics in Western tradition, and at the same time it is also a kind of abstract deduction of the whole European social reality, that is, on the one hand, the blood-kinship family is growing apart, on the other hand, the blood ties severely fettered the multiple possibilities of people’s spiritual freedom. In the ideal construction of the new type of non-blood family kinship, Carter describes a family combination with real affection based on the non-blood kinship, through the description of the relationship of parents and children of Hazard family, such as the complicated and reversed dislocation relations between characters, which are legitimate but no kinship, kinship but not blood relationship, illegitimate and kinship, or blood-kinship but not kinship, all of which dissolves the legitimate and illegitimate delimitation of the marriage system, and creates an ex-legal but more in line with Carter’s own spiritual ideal of non-blood kinship family.The fourth chapter argues Carter’s law of "friendship" and new mode of love ethics. Cater’s rebellion against existing family ethic of blood-kinship is shown from demolishing the love and marriage foundation of the old family system. Further, the worldview of love which is treated as a game in the context of postmodern consumption culture, is also negated by Carter. Carter has her own unique ethical interpretation of love, marriage and family. For her, the best emotion is based on the warm "friendship"(Aristotle’s term), rather than on idealized romantic love. The establishment of worldview of "friendship" directly constructs the new family ethics system advocated by Cater. That is, Cater advocates kinship, but its firm foundation is not on blood relationship, but on Aristotle’s "friendship" in communication.The fifth chapter continues to explore the theme of family ethics of non-marriage kinship. The family system based on the marriage has already been challenged in the process of historical development. In essence, the construction of new-kinship family is the respect for human nature and the laws of nature, whose ethical foundation is based on postmodern new ethics, namely, the moral of justice and the legal ethics based on exchange of ideas. This results in a kind of "community" full of vibrancy and revealing the real demands of humanist ethics.The sixth chapter analyzes the rhetorical features of "anti-logocentrism" in Wise Children, and puts emphasis on the two forms of serio-comic genre and imagism.The serio-comic genre is a typical carnival literary form, which has its double characteristics. One is its spontaneousness, quite different from the routine of everyday life; the other is its subversion, which is the temporary abeyance of the law and taboo and which constitutes the life out of carnival. This kind of expression goes throughout the entire text of Wise Children, and ultimately attributes to Cater’s own worldview of Old Comedy. Wise Children as a serio-comic genre has five characteristics, namely,①pastiche,②vulgar language and poetic language,③grotesque juxtaposition of young and old body images,④combination of contrast and oxymoron,⑤dual voices of characters:The functions of these characteristics are the mockery of the sacred with the mundane, the subversion of.order with banter, and the alternative pluralism with authoritarian rule. Therefore, on the whole, the novel forms a "reverse opposing structure", and arrives at a new constructive rhetorical feature.In addition, the novel destroys all the established stable constructions and makes them unfinished and open through the use of aesthetic technique of illusion; it completely changes its characters by her specific use of "imagism", impersonation and inversion, which thoroughly turns upside-down the superficial closed and stable system, and finally constructs a kind of unfinished, open-ended and ever-supplementing new type of structure.The last chapter summarizes Carter’s philosophical worldview. By exploring Aristophanes’ worldview, and distinguishing it from Bakhtin’s Carnivalization. This dissertation probes the deep reasons why Cater rejectes comparisons to Bakhtin’s Carnivalization, which plays a significant role in understanding Carter’s philosophical standpoint. Anyhow, the serio-comic genre of carnivalization was not Carter’s purpose, but she merely employes it as a tool to fully demonstrate her idea of anti-logocentrism. Meanhile, her worldview of Old Comedy is the philosophical stance embodied in her poetic principles.