'Moon Overhead, Nothing Moving' + 'Fragment, Lyric, Essay: An exegetical reflection on essaying and fragmentation'
Files
(Library staff access only.)
(Library staff access only.)
Date
2023
Authors
Parker, Gemma
Editors
Advisors
Flanery, Patrick
Tonkin, Maggie
Tonkin, Maggie
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Type:
Thesis
Citation
Statement of Responsibility
Conference Name
Abstract
The creative component of my thesis is a collection of eleven separate fragmentary and essaying pieces that come together to form a hybrid, prose-poetic memoir titled ‘Moon Overhead, Nothing Moving’. The memoir is in dialogue with the deliberately unsystematic and fragmented works of Friedrich Nietzsche, and engages with the philosopher’s theories of nihilism, revaluation, and meaning. The work as a whole grapples with the question of whether art, literature, and poetry offer the greatest possible resistance to nihilism, and demonstrates an attempt (essai) to commit to art and artistry in spite of inhospitable conditions. The work engages in reparative readings of texts by famously nihilist writers Samuel Beckett and Albert Camus, as well as texts by Martin Heidegger, Luce Irigaray, Elena Ferrante, and Jhumpa Lahiri, among others. It employs aspects of quotation, literary criticism, biography, poetry, and narrative to explore themes of lack, desire, the domestic vs. the foreign, motherhood, impasse, compromise, interruption, escape, longing, creative danger, movement, and failure. In the exegesis, ‘Fragment, Lyric, Essay: An exegetical reflection on essaying and fragmentation’, I justify my use of fragmentation, lyricism, and essaying as being particularly suited to working in dialogue with the works of Friedrich Nietzsche, Samuel Beckett, and Albert Camus. Given my use of quotation and engagement with other voices and sources, in the first section, ‘Analysis’, I analyse the use of explicit referencing to refer to other sources and voices in the personal essay genre and describe the techniques they use to demonstrate mastery in integrating other sources to enhance and perform their themes. In the second section, ‘Explanation’, I consider the forms of essay and fragment, the historical status of the fragment and the relationship between fragment and failure, including how my work performs features of fragmentation (discard, attempts, failure). I address Maggie Nelson’s ideas regarding what it means to “lean against” the works of others, and how I “lean against” the work of Friedrich Nietzsche. I explore tensions in Nietzsche’s work between the fragmentary nature of his writing and his celebration of oneness, unity, or “the whole”. I position my work as an ongoing “will to cohesion”, and consider the idea of art as reparative. The exegesis is composed in the style of the personal essay genre, maintaining a conversational, sometimes discursive, manner.
School/Discipline
School of Humanities : English, Creative Writing and Film
Dissertation Note
Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Humanities, 2023
Provenance
This thesis is currently under embargo and not available.
Description
Vol. 1 "Moon Overhead, Nothing Moving" : Creative Artefact -- Vol. 2 Fragment, Lyric, Essay: An exegetical reflection on essaying and fragmentation : Exegesis