Date of Award
Summer 8-12-2014
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
English
First Advisor
Dr. Calvin Thomas
Second Advisor
Dr. Christopher Kocela
Third Advisor
Dr. Paul Schmidt
Abstract
Scholarship on David Foster Wallace understandably tends to focus on addiction in his novel Infinite Jest, as well as on his stated desire for a literary movement that transcends the recursive, ironic loop of the postmodern. This essay, however, explores issues of trauma and perversion in Wallace's fiction – primarily beginning with Infinite Jest, chronologically speaking – demonstrating Wallace's concern with the freedom of choice. A palpable friction exists between conservatism and sexual taboos, and this friction characterizes much, if not most, of Wallace's fictional oeuvre. A principally psychoanalytic reading of the sexual elements at play in Infinite Jest, as well as in several stories from Brief Interviews with Hideous Men and Oblivion, cultivates a more thorough understanding of the addiction theme present in his work.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.57709/5653008
Recommended Citation
Cofer, Erik, "Pleasure as Pathology: Trauma and Perversion in the Fiction of David Foster Wallace." Thesis, Georgia State University, 2014.
doi: https://doi.org/10.57709/5653008