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James Walsh Final Formatted Thesis.pdf (243.7 KB)

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American Hamlet: Shakespearean Epistemology in Infinite Jest

Walsh, James Jason, JR.
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=csu1409079425

Abstract Details

2014, Master of Arts in English, Cleveland State University, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences.
Infinite Jest has been viewed by champions of its cause as a solution to the defeatist irony of postmodernism and by critics as a postmodern gag in which the reader falls victim to intellectual “jest.” Exploring the text’s initial affiliations with Hamlet is a fundamental move toward stabilizing Infinite Jest’s status as a sincere and authentic representation of American life at the turn of the twenty-first century. The shattered nature of reality and the “stinking thinking” inherent in addiction are depicted through the narrative structure, in which the time is literally “out of joint,” and the “antic disposition” of various characters who are evocative of both the melancholic and heroic sides of the play’s lead. Hamlet operates as a primary textual constraint in which the matrix of plot, device, methodology, and motif intersect and envision one of the Western world’s most recognizable stories transposed on 1990s America. Infinite Jest is a closed system in which geometry and literature converge by way of a customized Oulipo method that uses constraint as an improvisatory means to inhabit the space where things “fragment into beauty” (Infinite Jest 81): the glory of infinity.
James J. Marino, PhD (Advisor)
Adam T, Sonstegard, PhD (Committee Member)
F. Jeff Karem, PhD (Committee Member)
73 p.
American Literature; Ethics; Language Arts; Philosophy; Spirituality; Theater Studies; Therapy
Hamlet; Infinite Jest; David Foster Wallace; 20th Century America; Oulipo Method; Spirituality; Alcoholics Anonymous

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Walsh, JR., J. J. (2014). American Hamlet: Shakespearean Epistemology in Infinite Jest [Master's thesis, Cleveland State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=csu1409079425

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Walsh, JR., James. American Hamlet: Shakespearean Epistemology in Infinite Jest. 2014. Cleveland State University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=csu1409079425.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Walsh, JR., James. "American Hamlet: Shakespearean Epistemology in Infinite Jest." Master's thesis, Cleveland State University, 2014. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=csu1409079425

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

csu1409079425
25,234
© 2014, some rights reserved.Creative Commons License American Hamlet: Shakespearean Epistemology in Infinite Jest by James Jason Walsh JR. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at etd.ohiolink.edu.
This open access ETD is published by Cleveland State University and OhioLINK.