Getting the Picture: An Analysis of Narrative in E. L. Doctorow’s The Book of Daniel

• Thesis title in Czech: Získání obrazu: Analýza příběhu v E. L. Doctorow's Book of Daniel
• Thesis title in English: Getting the Picture: An Analysis of Narrative in E. L. Doctorow’s The Book of Daniel
• Key words: E. L. Doctorow|The Book of Daniel|narrative|narrativity|history|fiction|epistemology|knowledge|legitimation|narrative techniques|metafiction|subjectivity|postmodernism|incredulity towards grand narratives|historiographic metafiction|textuality|intertextuality
• English key words: E. L. Doctorow|The Book of Daniel|naratív|narativita|história|fikcia|epistemológia|poznanie|legitimácia|naratívne techniky|metafikcia|subjektivita|postmodernizmus|nedôvera voči veľkým naratívom|historiografická metafikcia|textualita|intertextualita
• Academic year of topic announcement: 2019/2020
• Thesis type: Bachelor's thesis
• Thesis language: angličtina
• Department: Department of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures (21-UALK)
• Supervisor: Stephan Delbos, M.F.A., Ph.D.
• Author: hidden - assigned and confirmed by the Study Dept.
• Date of registration: 19.06.2020
• Date of assignment: 22.06.2020
• Administrator's approval: not processed yet
• Confirmed by Study dept. on: 10.08.2020
• Date and time of defence: 03.09.2020 00:00
• Date of electronic submission: 10.08.2020
• Date of proceeded defence: 03.09.2020
• Submitted/finalized: committed by student and finalized
• Opponents: doc. Erik Sherman Roraback, D.Phil.

Guidelines

"There is no fiction and nonfiction as we commonly understand the distinction: there is only narrative," stated American author E. L. Doctorow in his essay, "False Documents." Such way of thinking can also be clearly distinguished in one of Doctorow's best-known novels, The Book of Daniel. I would like to write my bachelor thesis on this very novel, precisely for its examination of the extent to which narratives underlie and shape our reality, as well as govern our relationship to it. In my thesis, I would like to focus on how the novel deconstructs and draws attention to the process of construing a narrative in an epistemological inquiry into the potential of literature as a way of knowing, problematizing this notion by exposing the artifice of every and any narrative stemming from the fact that it is always manipulated, consciously construed a certain way.
In terms of methodology, I would direct my attention to two main areas of interest. On one hand, it is the plotline of the novel concerning Daniel, the protagonist, writing "Daniel's Book", a deconstruction of "official" history in an attempt to find out what truth there is to be excavated about his parents' case. In searching for new possibilities of interpretation, the accepted, fixed view of history concerning the lives and trial of the protagonist's parents is revealed to be a myth, a narrative fashioned to serve a certain political purpose - in the same way the opposite, or alternative narratives are, raising the question of whether there is any complex, definitive truth to be found. On the other hand, the formal features of the novel mirror the investigation into the nature of history and narrative present in "Daniel's Book." The particular formal features in question mainly involve certain narrative techniques employed in The Book of Daniel, such as the constant shifts between a first-person and a third-person narrator, the fragmented, non-linear progression of the
narrative, as well as the text's self-reflexivity and the breach of the symbolic boundary between the narrator and the narratee, which all draw attention to the process of construing a narrative seemingly in real time, of it being consciously bent and ordered a certain way to produce a certain effect.
As for the reading I have done thus far, I have mainly concentrated on the primary text, The Book of Daniel, as well as a number of essays and book chapters discussing the novel and its treatment of the matters of interest for my potential BA thesis.

References

Bevilacqua, Winifred Farrant. “Narrating History: E.L. Doctorow's ‘The Book of Daniel.’” Revue Française D'études Américaines, no. 31, 1987, pp. 53–64. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/20871645.
Bloom, James D. The Literary Bent: In Search of High Art in Contemporary American Writing. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997.
Doctorow, E. L. “False Documents.” Essays and Conversations, ed. by Richard Trenner, New Jersey: Ontario Review Inc., 1983.
Doctorow, E. L. The Book of Daniel. London: Penguin Books, 2006.
Fowler, Douglas. Understanding E. L. Doctorow. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1992.
Geyh, Paula, Editor. The Cambridge Companion to Postmodern American Fiction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017.
Harpham, Geoffrey Galt. “E. L. Doctorow and the Technology of Narrative.” PMLA, vol. 100, no. 1 (1985): 81–95. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/462202.
Hutcheon, Linda. A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction. London: Routledge, 1988.
Jameson, Frederic. Postmodernism, Or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991.
Parks, John G. “The Politics of Polyphony: The Fiction of E. L. Doctorow.” Twentieth Century Literature, vol. 37, no. 4 (1991): 454–463. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/441658.
Reed, T. V. “Genealogy/Narrative/Power: Questions of Postmodernity in Doctorow's The Book of Daniel.” American Literary History, vol. 4, no. 2 (1992): 288–304. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/489989.
Whitebrook, Maureen. Identity, Narrative and Politics. London: Routledge, 2001.