Alex Morden Osborne
Having studied my BA in English and Related Literature and MA in Modern and Contemporary Literature and Culture at the University of York, I am now an Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funded PhD student at the University of Bristol.
My thesis examines anxiety in contemporary American literature from 1990-present, particularly in the work of Paul Auster, Siri Hustvedt, Junot Díaz and David Foster Wallace. Taking a psychosocial and phenomenological approach to these authors' work, I am interested in interpreting anxiety as a form of psychological pain.
Supervisors: Andrew Blades and Ulrika Maude
My thesis examines anxiety in contemporary American literature from 1990-present, particularly in the work of Paul Auster, Siri Hustvedt, Junot Díaz and David Foster Wallace. Taking a psychosocial and phenomenological approach to these authors' work, I am interested in interpreting anxiety as a form of psychological pain.
Supervisors: Andrew Blades and Ulrika Maude
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“Your body broke down and did the grieving for you.” These are Auster’s words following a violent panic attack, which forces him into a state of fight or flight wherein his bodily and narrative frames are rendered necessarily subject to change. This paper will consider Auster’s second-person narration as an act of reassurance and a means of reiterating his memories, in order to re-assert the vibrancy of his life and quell his anxieties about death through autobiographical writing.
Contrary to Elaine Scarry’s seminal statement that there are only two metaphors to describe pain, this paper argues that Auster appropriates metaphors of pain and panic through writing as a means of cathartic self-preservation. Furthermore, writing offers Auster the opportunity to regain a sense of control and agency that is denied during panic attacks.
“Your body broke down and did the grieving for you.” These are Auster’s words following a violent panic attack, which forces him into a state of fight or flight wherein his bodily and narrative frames are rendered necessarily subject to change. This paper will consider Auster’s second-person narration as an act of reassurance and a means of reiterating his memories, in order to re-assert the vibrancy of his life and quell his anxieties about death through autobiographical writing.
Contrary to Elaine Scarry’s seminal statement that there are only two metaphors to describe pain, this paper argues that Auster appropriates metaphors of pain and panic through writing as a means of cathartic self-preservation. Furthermore, writing offers Auster the opportunity to regain a sense of control and agency that is denied during panic attacks.