The language of cosmogony: literary experimentalism and metaphor in Plato’s Timaeus and Augustine’s Confessions.

Literary critical discussions of cosmogony usually examine ideas and assumptions about authorship and poetic creation which are formed in light of inherited models of the world’s creation. Far less attention has been paid to actual representations of the world’s creation, the literary theory and practice of those discourses on cosmogony which influenced later philosophical and literary thought. This thesis contributes to the task of filling that critical gap by analysing two foundational Western discourses on cosmogony: Plato’s Timaeus, and Augustine’s Confessions. In analysing these two texts, the thesis makes two main arguments: first, that the problem of ineffability inherent to cosmogony prompts an author’s recourse to experimental literary methods, to new ways of deploying narrative, genre, and style; second, that the theory and practice of metaphor in these accounts bring into focus the constitutive role of language in “creating” rather than merely reflecting knowledge about this difficult subject. If classical and late antique works such as the Timaeus and the Confessions show a noticeable metalinguistic consciousness, then perhaps subsequent works which engage with a model of the creation show similar tendencies. The thesis pursues this idea by highlighting how the concept or myth of divine creation tends to demand, or is frequently invoked in, attempts to rethink or critique human creativity. I read Dante’s Commedia as an exemplary instance of this phenomenon. The continued importance of these foundational cosmogonies is evident in that a discourse of divine creation is deployed in modern discussions of liminal types of knowledge and the “limits” of human creativity.

Author dc:creator

• Carney, Guy

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Kerr, Heather Beviss
• Warner, Lawrence

• cosmogony; language; creativity; Pluto; Augustine

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/2440/64585

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:digital.library.adelaide.edu.au:2440/64585