Item Details

title

THE GREAT (GENRE) ESCAPE

author

Perrin, Madison

abstract

This thesis considers escapism in Michael Chabon's Kavalier & Clay in three parts. First, I trace Chabon’s employment of escapism through the novel in the interest of shedding light on his nuanced and multifaceted exploration of the phenomenon. Indeed, escapism is far from simplistically benign in Kavalier & Clay, and Chabon spends just as much time illuminating how it goes wrong as what it gets right. Ultimately, Chabon’s argument for the connective potential of escapism is grounded in the collapsing distinction between escape from and escape to because Joe’s final escape is in fact not an act of departure, but of return home to his family and connection. Second, I zoom out to consider how Chabon utilizes form and genre; the novel is rife with permeable barriers muddying the stark dichotomy of historical fact as opposed to fiction, and fantasy as opposed to realism. These porous boundaries counter the assumption that escapism embraces the fictive at the expense of the real and instead argues for the ability of the fictive to speak to and influence the real. Thirdly, I consider the nature of this influence with the aid of three antinomies and argue that escapism makes disbelieving belief possible, which then allows the individual to discover ordinary magic in reality by adopting an orientation of demystified mystification.

subject

Escapism

Genre

Michael Chabon

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

contributor

Franco, Dean (advisor)

Lee, Derek (committee member)

Richard, Jessica (committee member)

date

2024-05-23T08:35:53Z (accessioned)

2024-05-23T08:35:53Z (available)

2024 (issued)

degree

English (discipline)

identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/10339/109401 (uri)

language

en (iso)

publisher

Wake Forest University

type

Thesis