Philip Roth의 『偉大한 美國小說』(1973) = PHILIP ROTH'S Great American Novel(1973)

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Although hard to pinpoint the exact date, there was a strange obsession among American novelists toward the end of the 19th century: that they would write a Great American Novel. In 1903, Frank Norris commented on this strange, yet understandable energy: "The Great American Novel is not extinct like the Dodo but mythical like the Hippogriff...." As late as in 1973, Philip Roth quotes this dedication in his novel, The Great American Novel. There have been many American novels since the fin'desie｀cle, but such an obssessive dream can hardly be realized, because such a novel should include all the aspects of American life, including geography, sociology, economics, politics, religion, psychology, etc. No one can possibly write the total spirit of American life. John Dos Passos and Thomas Wolfe, in their fanatic desire to express arid capture such totality, failed topresent the "assimilated experience," a sine qua non of literature.
Based upon the historical phenomenan, the purpose of this article is to investigate how Philip Roth has treated the Idea of the Great American Novel and how his version of The Great American Novel can be related to the presentation of the zeitgeist of the 60's, the absurdist novel, and the black humor that has been prevalent in American literature, as in European literature, since the end of the World War II. For this purpose, in Section II, some attempt has been made to clarify how the novelist reduces the recent social confusion and restlessness in the form of novels. In Section III, the decade of "demythologizing of American myths," in particular of the baseball myth" has been discussed. The conditions of modern America are so grotesque that the only way to interpret and tolerate is through fun dominated by farce and fantastic illusions. The Great American Novel is an excellent exemplar of this. Several book reviewers were angry at the time of its publications As shown in Roth's My Life as a Man, his moral concerns are apparently lying under the surface of comicality in the Great American Novel. Smitty is a strangely unsatisfying character; however, when we come to see that he serves as "a kind of passageway from the imagenary that seems real to the real that seems imaginary, a continuum between the credible incredible and incredible credible," we come to see the American intellectual climate and the plight of the novelist in it. The reader should, in this respect, respond with deeper understanding and sympathy toward Roth's sixth novel. The Great American Novel.

목차 (Table of Contents)

• Ⅰ.序 言
• Ⅱ.喜劇的 動機
• Ⅲ.野球神話의 非神話化
• Ⅳ.結 言