JOYCE CAROL OATES : LITERARY MARRIAGES

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER I
"The Sacred Marriage"—Prolegomena to Oates's Aesthetics

CHAPTER II
Intertextuality
Theories of Intertextuality
Oatsean Intertextuality
Titular Intertexts
Biographical Intertexts
Autobiographical Intertexts
Generic Intertexts

CHAPTER III
James Joyce's "The Dead" Resurrected and Reimagined by Joyce Carol Oates
Death
Woman and Writer
Love and Marriage
Epiphanal Endings
Autobiographical Elements
Conclusion

CHAPTER IV
"Useless as Moths' Wings"—Oates's Revision of Chekhov's "The Lady with the Pet Dog"
The Topic of Love
Chekov's Legacy
Oates's Transformation of "The Lady with the Pet Dog"
The Ending
The Title

CHAPTER V
Flaubert's "The Spiral"
La Spirale
Autobiographical Elements in La Spirale
La Spirale/The Spiral—A Comparison
Characters
Themes
Treatment of Time
Juxtaposition
Title

CHAPTER VI
Thoreau's Walden Revisited by Joyce Carol Oates

CHAPTER VII
"Humanity Peeled to its Essence"—Metamorphosis in Kafka and Oates
Background
Intertextual Vincula
Characters
Metamorphosis
Endings
Conclusion

CHAPTER VIII
Joyce Carol Oates and Henry James—"The Turn of the Screw" Times Three
Bournemouth, England: Oates's "The Turn of the Screw"
Ghoulish Elements
Biographical Elements
Eros
Thanatos
Ambiguity of Point of View
"The Accursed Inhabitants of the House of Bly"

CONCLUSION

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

Jacket Blurb

A series of intertextual short stories by Joyce Carol Oates, published in 1972, constitutes the subject-matter of the present work. Having entered into 'literary marriages' with beloved masters, such as Kafka, Joyce, Thoreau, Flaubert, James and Chekhov, Oates has 're-imagined' their classic masterpieces.

This study aims at finding out whether Oates remains 'faithful' to the original versions. What elements besides the titles are retained, or added? Why does a young American woman writer undertake a dialogue with deceased authors and their texts? Why the short story genre? What is Oates's relationship to intertextuality, literary tradition, or the very aesthetics of her own art?

Grounded in theories of intertextuality, comparative analyses show that Oates remains 'faithful' in some of her spiritual unions, while committing 'infidelities' in others. For a woman writer in the 1970s transgression was a necessity for survival; these stories thus belong to the revisionary movement. While assimilating and engendering a strongly Eurocentred male literary tradition, Oates manages to unlock energy from the original stories transforming them into expressions of her very own distinct literary voice.

It may indeed seem audacious for a young author to re-write classical masterpieces that for long have been regarded as nearly perfect art pieces. Joyce Carol Oates's series of literary marriages or re-imagined stories analyzed in this study was not merely a writing excercise as so much of her early work, but a necessary step in the process of appropriating the canon and the strongly Euro-centered literary tradition. Set in contemporary United States, all but one of her stories are Americanized versions of the masters' original work.

Based on her aesthetic beliefs Oates demonstrates in these short stories a firm wish to be a part of the ongoing development of western literature which she sees as a communal effort, thus refuting the idea of the isolated artist. Her project, even her duty, as she sees it is to describe the society and culture that she is part of. The power and sanctity of art are reflected in her special relationship/discipleship to her beloved literary masters who provide her with artistic nourishment.

Since Oates perceives of all art as originating in autobiography, these stories contain biographical material not only from her own life, as in"The Dead," but incorporated into her revisions there is also to be found biographical material inspired by her 'marriage' partners, especially from Henry James's, James Joyce's, Flaubert's and Kafka's lives.

These 'literary marriages' between the American woman writer at the point of establishing herself as a writer when barely aged 30, and this series of canonized male writers is in the present study seen as an example of the revisionary movement in the 1970s, when women writers and critics alike, felt a need to re-examine, re-interpret and even re-write what had been considered classical texts. Oates herself explains her series as a marriage of "the writer of male consciousness with the writer of female consciousness." Swedish artist Lena Cronqvist's painting on the cover of this study, "The Betrothal" (1974-75), is a perfect illustration of how a woman artist "marries" the old master's work (Jan van Eyck's "Betrothal," 1434), appropriates his title, contemporizes the setting making it Swedish and autobiographical by adding portraits of herself and Göran Tunström, her poet husband-to-be.

Such an intertextual undertaking consequently opens up a dialog between authors and texts with new interpretations as a result. This intertextual process has permitted Oates to select specific elements that she wishes to emphasize, or ignore as the case may be. In this manner she has chosen in some stories to bring forward features hitherto neglected, such as the affirmative aspects of the ending of Kakfa's "The Metamorphosis." Or she has chosen to focus on the women characters in her versions of "The Dead" and "The Lady with the Pet Dog." The breadwinning father rather than the son is a central character in her Americanized "Metamorphosis." Each author's trademark, such as Joyce's epiphany, Kafka's metamorphosis, Chekhov's open closure, Flaubert's dual levels and Thoreau's doubleness are recycled and reinterpreted.