Extinctions (novel): Extinctions (thesis)

Josephine Wilson

Research output: ThesisDoctoral Thesis

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Abstract

[Truncated] This thesis is comprised of a full-length work of prose fiction, and an exegesis of 25,000 words. ‘Extinction’ acts as a hinge between the two components. Both parts are concerned with endings and beginnings, with life, death, loss, reproduction and biological continuity. For the exegesis, these concerns are metaphorical and critical. How do we begin a creative work? What does it mean to be original, or to be a copy? In the novel, these concerns are refracted through theme, character and plot. What does it mean to grow old? To lose your wife? To lose a child? What does it mean to be adopted? Can we ever really begin again?

The novel Extinctions is a work of prose fiction. On one level it is the story of a middle-class family struggling with loss and repressed truths and aligns itself with familiar tropes in contemporary realism.Yet the novel offers another more complex story of interfamilial relations in the 21st century, in a darkly comic register. The narrative strains at the edges of realism, using temporal compression and extended analepsis to orchestrate a series of crises and revelations that propel the protagonists towards change. The novel further unsettles generic conventions through the inclusion of historic image sand documents, which function as windows for the reader to look outside the novel into the (increasingly) adjacent archives of history, architecture and design.

My thesis is also the story of an egg. In the exegesis, the ‘discovery’ of the egg of an extinct species initiates an inquiry into the function of finding and losing in beginning and ending creative work. In the novel, the daughter Caroline is curating an exhibition called Extinctions. She is travelling to Scotland to secure the Auk Egg, at the same time as she is examining her life and identity as an adopted child. For Frederick Lothian, her father, the Auk egg is a potent symbol of familial loss, decline and death.

Original languageEnglish
QualificationDoctor of Philosophy
Publication statusUnpublished - 2013

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