Textual solipsism in J.M. Coetzee's Dusklands
type: CreativeWork
description: In this dissertation I examine through a close reading of J.M. Coetzee's Dusklands (1974) the textual dymamic that impels the two narrator-protagonists toward the solipsist position - the ground of the true Cartesian. I show how Eugene Dawn and Jacobus Coetzee are presented as products of Western print culture and children of RenÃ© Descartes: literate and acutely self-conscious. I note how each conceives himself according to Descartes' mind-body dualism as primarily a thinking thing. I argue that this self-conception is reinforced by their paradoxical presence-as-absence as figures in a fiction.
abstract: In this dissertation I examine through a close reading of J.M. Coetzee's Dusklands (1974) the textual dymamic that impels the two narrator-protagonists toward the solipsist position - the ground of the true Cartesian. I show how Eugene Dawn and Jacobus Coetzee are presented as products of Western print culture and children of RenÃ© Descartes: literate and acutely self-conscious. I note how each conceives himself according to Descartes' mind-body dualism as primarily a thinking thing. I argue that this self-conception is reinforced by their paradoxical presence-as-absence as figures in a fiction.
author: Powers, Donald
language: eng
date published: 2006
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:22:52Z
provider: University of Cape Town
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Department of English Language and Literature

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: http://hdl.handle.net/11427/8090