Incarnations: exploring the human condition through Patrick White�s Voss and Nikos Kazantzakis� Captain Michales.
Keywords
Patrick WhiteNikos Kazantzakis
incarnation
human condition
nostos
comparative literature
food
hunger
body
soul
gender
nature
landscape
home
home-coming
god
religious experience
eucharist
myth
human being
hero
return
Crete
Australia
Voss
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http://hdl.handle.net/2123/671Abstract
Nikos Kazantzakis� Captain Michales is a freedom fighter in nineteenth century Crete. Patrick White�s Voss is a German explorer in nineteenth century Australia. Two men struggling for achievement, their disparate social contexts united in the same fundamental search for meaning. This thesis makes comparison of these different struggles through thematic analysis of the texts, examining within the narratives the role of food, perceptions of body and soul, landscapes, gender relations, home-coming and religious experience. Themes from the novels are extracted and intertwined, within a range of theoretical frameworks: history, anthropology, science, literary and social theories, religion and politics; allowing close investigation of each novel�s social, political and historical particularities, as well as their underlying discussion of perennial human issues. These novels are each essentially explorations of the human experience. Read together, they highlight the commonest of human elements, most poignantly the need for communion; facilitating analysis of the individual and all our communities. Comparing the two novels also continues the process of each: examining the self both within and outside of the narratives, producing a new textual self, arising from both primary sources and the contextual breadth of such rewriting.Date
2004Identifier
oai:arrow.nla.gov.au:120885310278157http://hdl.handle.net/2123/671