The Poetics of Fragmentation: Modernism and Theology in Twentieth-Century British and Irish Literature

This dissertation examines the fragment, placing in conversation twentieth-century literary and theological vocabularies for thinking through this vital concept. In so doing, it nuances two provisionally useful but limited models in literary scholarship. In the first, interest in fragmentation, especially among modernist authors, stems from a basically mimetic impulse. Faced with a reality in which God is dead and the world seems broken, art follows suit: prose imitates chaotic subjectivity, language disintegrates into syntactic paroxysm, narrative eschews linearity, all in pursuit of mimetic fragmentarity. The main literary alternative to this mimetic fragmentation is a conservative, nostalgic collector’s impulse: “these fragments I have shored against my ruins,” as T. S. Eliot writes. Lamenting the loss of a unified, religiously ordered imagination, modernity in this model is marred by rupture, disunity, chaos. All the poet can do is clutch at fragments and hope that is enough—in other words, to turn the fragment into the autonomous whole. This dissertation agrees that the twentieth century—war-torn and shorn of social, cultural, and epistemic certainties—was indeed the era of the fragment. However, it argue for a key group of authors the rest of this narrative falls flat. For them, art may be fragmentary but is never merely a fragment, mimetic, autonomous or otherwise. Rather it is a fragment gesturing beyond itself. Translated into a theological context, the fragment becomes a regulating principle for mediating ultimate realities, fragment (or part) paradoxically containing divine whole—or as Hans Urs von Balthasar notes, the Whole dwelling in the fragment. With this framework in mind, my dissertation traces this in-and-beyond, Whole-in-fragment orientation across a variety of authors, with individual chapters focusing on different ways the fragment has been understood in a literary context: as technique (Joyce), as theme (Eliot), and finally as a genre unto itself (Tolkien).

本论文深入探讨碎片化的概念，将二十世纪的文学与神学词汇置于对话之中，以深入思考这一关键议题。在此过程中，论文对文学研究中两种具有条件性但有限的模型进行了细致的阐释。首先，对碎片化的兴趣，尤其是现代主义作家中的兴趣，源于一种基本的模仿冲动。面对一个上帝已死、世界似乎破碎的现实，艺术亦步亦趋：散文模仿混乱的主观性，语言分解为句法痉挛，叙事摒弃线性，所有这些都在追求模仿的碎片化。这一模仿性碎片化的主要文学对立面是一种保守的、怀旧的收藏冲动：“这些碎片，我已加固在我废墟之上，”正如T. S. 艾略特所言。哀悼统一的、宗教秩序化的想象力的丧失，在此模型中，现代性因断裂、不统一、混乱而蒙上了阴影。诗人所能做的只是紧紧抓住碎片，希望这已足够——换句话说，将碎片转化为自主的整体。本论文认同二十世纪——饱受战争之苦，且在社会、文化和认知上失去了确定性——确实是碎片化的时代。然而，它主张对于一组关键作家而言，这一叙事的其他部分显得苍白无力。对他们来说，艺术可能是碎片化的，但绝不仅仅是碎片，无论是模仿的、自主的还是其他形式。相反，它是一种指向自身之外的碎片。将这一概念转化为神学语境，碎片成为调节终极现实的准则，碎片（或部分）悖论地包含着神圣的整体——正如汉斯·乌尔里希·冯·巴尔塔萨所言，整体寓于碎片之中。带着这一框架，我的论文追踪了这种在自身之内超越自身的整体-碎片取向，跨越了众多作家，各章节专注于文学语境中碎片被理解的不同方式：作为技巧（乔伊斯）、作为主题（艾略特），最后作为一种独特的体裁（托尔金）。