Memory Machines: Exploring Moby-Dick and Gravity's Rainbow Through the History of Film

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dc.contributor.authorSpencer, Benjamin Paulen
dc.contributor.committeechairSiegle, Robert B.en
dc.contributor.committeememberSalaita, Steven G.en
dc.contributor.committeememberKiebuzinska, Christineen
dc.contributor.departmentEnglishen
dc.date.accessioned2014-03-14T20:32:41Zen
dc.date.adate2011-04-13en
dc.date.available2014-03-14T20:32:41Zen
dc.date.issued2011-03-16en
dc.date.rdate2011-04-13en
dc.date.sdate2011-03-18en
dc.description.abstractFor close to a decade, I have weighed comparative approaches to "the Great American Novel". Progress increased as soon as I resolved on selecting Moby-Dick as the work originally responsible for issuing that slogan. Making this particular selection required the application of a dynamic concept which, appropriately, reflects critiques of knowledge production: "the Archive". Perhaps the most direct references to a conceptual archive appear in Derrida's Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression, which addresses the dual forces "preservation/destruction" that influence allegory and mythology. Other critical writers refer to a similar concept through various other terms, ultimately equipping my thesis with a method for studying the relation between myth and allegory. The method draws from each writer's focus on the form and content dynamics of artifacts, and how these dynamics reflect the historical conditions that affirm or produce them. Specifically, all the writers I have selected to study, in some way consider the play between the mechanical apparatus and the representation it produces. Thus, I concluded that my literary comparative approach could involve juxtaposing a different, historically concurrent mode of documentation: film media and photography. Gravity's Rainbow is often considered, after Moby-Dick, the most universally-recognized "Great American Novel". Pynchon spends a lot of time referring to mass-produced films, their effects on the global order emerging with WWII, and to the material occurrence of film technology as it relates to the book as a material artifact. For Pynchon, the backlots built up by such "great" as D.W. Griffith constitute the twentieth-century frontier.en
dc.description.degreeMaster of Artsen
dc.identifier.otheretd-03182011-210113en
dc.identifier.sourceurlhttp://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/available/etd-03182011-210113/en
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10919/31492en
dc.publisherVirginia Techen
dc.relation.haspartSpencer_BP_T_2011.pdfen
dc.rightsIn Copyrighten
dc.rights.urihttp://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/en
dc.subjectPynchonen
dc.subjectFilmen
dc.subjectGravity's Rainbowen
dc.subjectMoby-Dicken
dc.subjectMelvilleen
dc.titleMemory Machines: Exploring Moby-Dick and Gravity's Rainbow Through the History of Filmen
dc.typeThesisen
thesis.degree.disciplineEnglishen
thesis.degree.grantorVirginia Polytechnic Institute and State Universityen
thesis.degree.levelmastersen
thesis.degree.nameMaster of Artsen

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