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On the Alienated Body in George Saunders’ >Tenth of December<, Master thesis, English Language and Literature, Huazhong Normal University, Wuhan, Hubei, China 2022 [application of Fromm's theories to art].

  • Contemporary American writer George Saunders was recognized as >the writer for our time<. He was the winner of the 2017 Man Booker Prize for his novel >Lincoln in the Bardo<. Saunders is good at writing short fictions, with >CivilWarLand in Bad Decline<, >Pastoralia<, >In Persuasion Nation< and >Tenth of December< as his representative works. His short story collection >Tenth of December<, published in 2013, keeps Saunders’ terse, humorous and ironic writing style, describing the alienated body under the context of consumer culture. The current research on >Tenth of December< mainly focuses on one to two short stories in the collection. Most of the studies are conducted from the perspective of post-colonialism, feminism, ethics and consumption in cultural studies. Topics of the research cover trauma, ethics, alienation etc. However, body as an important research object has not been discussed yet. In light of it, the paper focuses on the alienated body caused by the consumer society and aims at exploring its nature and its social and cultural roots, as well as the writing intention and the social value of the collection. There are five chapters altogether. The first chapter gives brief introduction to George Saunders and >Tenth of December<. Besides, after sorting out the previous and the current studies on Saunders’ works, this chapter points out the significance of the study and expounds the researching approach.– The second chapter defines >the alienated body< by means of sociology and Erich Fromm’s theory of alienation, and sorts out the phenomenon of alienation in body and its subsequent consequence.– The third chapter, based on Jean Baudrillard’s theory of the consumer society and Max Horkheimer’s critique of instrumental reason, is committed to interpreting the phenomenon of the alienation of the body and exploring the social roots for it, including the re-appropriation of the body by capital, the toiling of body by sign-value consumption as well as the impairment of body by instrumental reason. Based on the former two chapters, the fourth chapter is devoted to exploring the palpable ways out of the dilemma. Individuals whose bodies are alienated should, first of all, become an independent subject to regain subjectivity. Secondly, death also serves as a solution to the alienation of the body. Last but not least, individuals can turn to the power of the humanist communities to realize salvation.– The last chapter is the concluding part, summarizing the main idea of the paper and pointing out the social values embodied in the novella as well. Through textual analysis, a conclusion can be drawn that the alienated body is the product of the consumer society. By revealing the alienation of the body, the story collection aims at speaking for the marginalized people whose bodies have been utilized as an operational capital by revealing the alienation of the body and appeals for the renaissance of humanistic spirit in the consumer society. On top of that, the problem that happened to the body is also associated with the future of humankind. [www.cnki.net, 1/2023]

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Metadaten
Author:Anping Hu
Document Type:Dissertations
Language:Chinese
Year of first Publication:2022
Release Date:2024/04/04
Format:no download and copy possible
IdNo:Hu_Anping_2022
Writings about Erich Fromm (Secondary Literature):Dissertations / Dissertationen
Erich Fromm's Library and Erich Fromm Archive:Dissertations / Dissertationen
Licence (German):
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