Territory and Deterritorialization in Works of Thomas Pynchon: Space in the Post-Modern Novel

Doctoral Dissertation Vít Vaníček, 2012 ABSTRACT The present work takes Thomas Pynchon's work as a whole (oeuvre) in an interpretive literary analysis, arguing that there is a unifying pattern of the use of space in the narratives. This pattern is attested to by the development of tropes, motifs, and themes vested in literary space, literary space as a world of the characters, and spatial discourses informing the characters' epistemology. The present work claims that there is a recognizable common denominator in Pynchon's use of space: the authorial message emphasizing the growing urgency with which the ethical aspect of human being in the world is constitutive to social reality. The methodology of the present work combines interpretive reading based on reader's cooperation with the text and the use of terms from selected philosophical readings. The cooperation with the text is vested in restitutive (or open) interpretation that is delineated by what a text can and does support (Umberto Eco's concept of the text as a "lazy machine") and the concept of the "small world" of narrative (Lubomír Doležel). The philosophical inspiration relies on the tenet that human epistemology of being in the world is contingent on the physical existence in space (Maurice Merleau-Ponty). The work then negotiates Martin..