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ETD Abstract Container

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Strange Houses

DeBonis, Joseph Alex
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1154009239

Abstract Details

2006, PhD, University of Cincinnati, Arts and Sciences : English and Comparative Literature.
This dissertation, Strange Houses, is a collection of original short stories by the author, Joseph Alex DeBonis. The stories engage notions about home, family, estrangement, and alienation. Since many of the stories deal with family and marital relations, homes feature prominently in the action and as settings. Often characters are estranged or exiled, and their obsessions with having normal families and/or stable lives drive them to construct elaborate fantasies in which they are included, loved, and part of something enduring that is larger than themselves. The dissertation also includes a critical paper, “A Butterfly, a Cannonball, and a Sneeze: Notions of Chaos Theory in Cormac McCarthy’s All The Pretty Horses and Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49.” In this essay, I argue that the novel All The Pretty Horses grapples with a sense of freedom that is rife with ambiguity and demonstrates McCarthy’s engagement with chaos theory. The essay shows how Thomas Pynchon, in The Crying of Lot 49, exhibits similar concerns with the dynamic interaction of order and disorder. Though Horses has realistic details and does not appear to engage chaos theory in as obvious a way as The Crying of Lot 49 does, McCarthy’s novel can be profitably read through the lens of chaos theory.
Michael Griffith (Advisor)
237 p.
Literature, American
short fiction; chaos theory; narrative; American literature

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • DeBonis, J. A. (2006). Strange Houses [Doctoral dissertation, University of Cincinnati]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1154009239

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • DeBonis, Joseph. Strange Houses. 2006. University of Cincinnati, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1154009239.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • DeBonis, Joseph. "Strange Houses." Doctoral dissertation, University of Cincinnati, 2006. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1154009239

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

ucin1154009239
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© 2006, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by University of Cincinnati and OhioLINK.