Abstract

Nathaniel Mackey's serial fiction presents readers with characters who experience reality on several, interpenetrating levels: quotidian, dream, mythic, music-induced trance, and as subjects in an ongoing libretto. If one of these ontological shifts into a different consciousness is energized enough, two-dimensional balloons appear, inscribed with text, confronting the characters' sense of identity, and challenging their presuppositions regarding knowledge, morality, and aesthetics. This thesis examines this phenomenon from a mythic-materialistic perspective which is borrowed specifically from Mackey's critical writing. It seeks to show that Mackey's work provides myth criticism with valuable new contexts.