Redefining the Self: Selected Essays on Swift, Poe, Pinter, and Joyce
by John Murray
Category: Literary Collections

The essays in this volume examine the conflict of ‘self' in society as a leitmotif in Swift's Gulliver's Travels, Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher, Joyce's Ulysses, and Pinter's The Dwarfs, The Lover, The Caretaker, and The Homecoming.In his analyses, Murray discusses the ideas of behavioral and ideological conformity in Swift's work. He examines Poe's use of the grotesque to suggest correlations between the moral, physical, and spiritual degeneration of the characters, and the natural decay of their environment. Murray examines passages of dialogue from Pinter's dramas and discusses how the characters within the plays use language to create spatial boundaries to secure their identities by making themselves impervious to the language of their ‘social others.' Murray's final essay concentrates on the use of role-playing and misidentification in Joyce's novel.