Abstract

The structure of a novel typically moves through events as the narrator describes them happening, and as such, relies on the coherence of that narrating figure. Ingeborg Bachmann’s Malina and James Hogg’s The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner both trouble the conventions of narrative presence, using narrators recording firsthand the dissolution of self to produce novels which necessarily negotiate and mediate the absence of a narrating figure. The novels are unique in their extremity: both play with ideas of memory and forgetting and with mediation as a matter of circular movement, and use a narrative which is disrupted and thrown back on itself as a feature of the texts themselves. This thesis positions itself between narratological and phenomenological lenses, producing a reading of the two novels in dialogue with each other, examining instances of disrupted narration to move through registers of presence and absence, deconstructing even as it is constructed by the narrator. While Hogg uses the perspective of the Editor to provide context to Robert’s account of his dissolution, Bachmann’s narrator is the only voice constructing the text of the novel. Both novels work to trouble the “I” of the narrator, calling into question their ability to recount events. Through my thesis, I examine Bachmann and Hogg’s work, establishing a link between the function of character, narrator, and narrative structure that relies upon a flexible narrative temporality and memory, exploring the development of a literary conception of narrative dissolution.