ENG328Y1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 29: Lonelyhearts, Messiah Complex, Ironism
Poignancy of the genuine pain and suffering of the letters vs. the contrived
advice of Miss. Lonelyhearts
•
Advice columnists as a substitute for religion
•
Miss Lonelyhearts as a failed Nosis
Admits to his Christ complex
○
•
In his dream, he has to crush the lamb's head and leave it to the flies around
the altar
Comforts Doyle who ends up accidentally killing him
○
•
Auden perceives the nihilistic view of the novel but denounces it for just this
reason
•
Boredom and resentment are common themes
•
Day of the Locust (177)
•
West is a global hypochondriac
•
Literally no humanitarian afterthought
•
Given a kind of authority through his column
Unrelenting and inescapable misery of his world
○
Religion becomes an afterthought as a result
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Or it self-destructs
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Perceives human misery with Christ-like incongruity but is incapable of
integrating Christian love in his life
○
•
After the awakening, he does see his column as a vehicle for love
But just as he's about to, he dies for Doyle's lack of faith
○
•
Also aspects of a failed literary figure
•
Phallic images of castration in there too
•
Victim of his writerly occupation
•
Churns out sentimental garbage that do nothing to redeem the misery of his
reader's lives
Truly the loneliest of the lonelyhearts
○
•
Emasculated in his job
Rather than embracing this, he rebels again it
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Just as he rebels against Christ (preventer of decay)
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•
Depression novel
Sun also rises, Gatsby, Lonelyhearts
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•
Column invented as a circulation stunt
Says he shouldn’t council suicide as it hurts circulation
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Examines dreams of those around him and is usually depressed by them•
Betty as redemptive??
We're never seeing her objectively, we're seeing her through a
delusional, narcissistic viewpoint
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•
He never confronts the Shrike in him•
Marxist view of capitalist emptiness in novel
Saturated with the language of commercial hype
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Expose of the deterioration of literature
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Systematic mass production and commodification
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Like Benjamin's analysis of mass consumerism
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Impersonal nature which frustrates any attempt to achieve authenticity
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•
Dark comedy of black humour
More of a parodist than an ironist
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No moral motivation behind his comedy
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"stable form of irony" - Wayne Booth
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Reconstructing true values in a stable irony
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But in an unstable irony there really is nothing to be done
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Aristotelian rhythm breaks down
Action to suffering to knowledge
§
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Irony here is unstable
○
•
Nosis and nihilism
Consists of episodes
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Novel in the form of a comic strip
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Novel goes forward, up and down and sideways like a picture
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Material world is a hive of evil infused with radical people
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Grotesque status of his existence
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Refusal to embrace the grotesque society
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Rejects it without fully acknowledging it
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Resists the Shrike which resides within his psyche just like Jekyll rejects
Hyde
○
This world acts as an incessant stumbling block to his doomed
messianic mission
○
•
Linked to grotesque realism (Bakhtin)
Carnivalesque
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Safety valve for letting out anarchistic things
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Opposition to all high art and literature
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Function of degradation
Coming down to earth
§
To degrade is to bury, to sow and to kill all at once to bring forth
something new and better
§
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Devoid of the regenerative aspect of degradation
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The lowering of all that is high, spiritual, ideal, abstract, to the material
level
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Everything Shrike is about basically
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Agent of rebirth
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But in the world of the novel, degradation begets more degradation
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Shrike exists in the world of the carnival and the grotesque
Despises and parodies religion persistently, loud, crude
§
Obsessed with sex and bodily hedonism
§
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While Miss L tries to exist in the realm of the spiritual
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Unspeakably holy vs. unspeakably corrupt
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•
Shrike is a metonymic displacement of Miss L
Miss L behaves with average morality at best
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•
Sacred and grotesque do battle within Miss L himself
Gives in to the overwhelming crush of carnival
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But continues his battle to be Christ-like
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Only to become a victim of misguided revenge
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Carnival is supposed to be temporary licensed saturnalia
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Product of a dysfunctional carnival
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Which becomes a permanent source of personal and societal chaos
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Imagines that by becoming a refuge for those that are lame in body and
spirit that he can arrest entropy
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Paradox - ferocious opponent of participant in the grotesque reality
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Equally as desperate as they are to be pried from the clutches of the
world
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Degradation culminates in destruction
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•
Seems no transcendence is possible
Tropism for disorder in the world
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•
Lecture 29
Monday, January 30, 2017
2:11 PM
Document Summary
Poignancy of the genuine pain and suffering of the letters vs. the contrived advice of miss. In his dream, he has to crush the lamb"s head and leave it to the flies around the altar. Comforts doyle who ends up accidentally killing him. Auden perceives the nihilistic view of the novel but denounces it for just this reason. Given a kind of authority through his column. Perceives human misery with christ-like incongruity but is incapable of integrating christian love in his life. After the awakening, he does see his column as a vehicle for love. But just as he"s about to, he dies for doyle"s lack of faith. Churns out sentimental garbage that do nothing to redeem the misery of his reader"s lives. Rather than embracing this, he rebels again it. Just as he rebels against christ (preventer of decay) Says he shouldn"t council suicide as it hurts circulation.
