Abstract

In this dissertation I explore the textuality of the self through the myth of Narcissus. The goal of my research is to examine how the self is "written" in psychoanalysis and fiction, and to see whether the self might be transformed by re-writing itself in the context of otherness. ;In the introductory chapter, I discuss narcissistic thinking in myth, psychoanalysis, literature, and philosophy, and show why these modes of discourse are active in the construction of a narcissistic culture. I also situate my writing in the space of poetry. ;Chapter Two is an explication of Sigmund Freud's work on the narcissistic subject. I focus on his essay, "On Narcissism," in which he attempts to understand the psychopathology as well as the "normal" course of the development of an object-choice for the cathexis of the libido. ;The third chapter interprets Jacques Lacan's understanding of the construction of subjectivity and its relationship to both writing and narcissism. As one aspect of this interpretation, I elaborate upon Lacan's images of the narcissist as phantom, statue, and automaton. ;In Chapter Four, I shift from psychoanalysis to the novel, and analyze the issue of personal identity and nothingness in Virginia Woolf's The Waves. Bernard, who wants to narrate his life as a story, serves as the interpretive pivot. But since he is constituted by language, his effort is bound to fail. ;Michel Tournier's The Ogre is the second novel that I analyze for the insight it affords into the narcissism. Abel Tiffauges, the protagonist, pathologically aggrandizes his individual experience and is therefore destroyed by the apocalyptic semiotic in which he becomes engulfed. ;In Chapter Six, I discuss John Fowles's Daniel Martin, in which the protagonist writes his own "authentic" history as a novel. As Daniel Martin constructs his new identity out of the ruins of his old, I suggest that art is narcissism that overcomes itself and opens up new structural possibilities. ;In the conclusion, I rehearse my previous arguments and return to the problem of Cartesianism. Finally, I contend that if he is to change, Narcissus must accept the otherness of a "third term" that links the subject and the object in an active generation of meaning