Narrative Ethics and Intuition of the Infinite: E. L. Doctorow´s Gnostic Hope for the Postmodern Era

Abstract

Abstract: Walker Bergström, Catharine. Narrative Ethics and Intuition of the Infinite: E. L. Doctorow s Gnostic Hope for the Postmodern Era, Department of English, University of Gothenburg, 2008.The aim of this study is to re-examine, from an ethical perspective, the classification of E. L. Doctorow s works as postmodern fiction. My analysis is presented through readings of seven novels Welcome to Hard Times (1960), The Book of Daniel (1971), Ragtime (1975) Loon Lake (1980), Billy Bathgate (1989), The Waterworks (1994) and City of God (2000) and divided into three chronologically ordered groupings. In the first I focus on the protagonists narrative ethics, which have a strong affinity to the moral philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas. In the second group I uncover several important intertexts that allude to Ralph Waldo Emerson s Transcendentalism, as well as Carl G. Jung s theory of the collective unconscious and synchronicity. These I read in light of what I claim is the narrator-protagonists Levinasian sense of pre-original responsibility to the Other. In the works written at the end of the millennium, I find intertexts that point to another interest of Jung s, Gnosticism, as well as to the Kabbalah. My research thus traces Doctorow s characterizations of the quest for narrative truth throughout the seven novels and discovers a growing focus on the Gnostic intuition of an immanent and infinite responsibility to give and interpret signs.Exploration of the overlap between ethical issues and Gnostic influences on Doctorow s fiction uncovers its concerns with metaethical questions as to why it is that justice and truth are valued. I argue that the narrators sense of ethical obligation and the previously overlooked intertexts point to an important aspect of his work: what Doctorow in his essay False Documents claims is the valuable counsel that fiction, as opposed to scientific texts, should and can offer its readers. Ethical criticism has an obligation to recognize the multiplicity of interpretations available and to be suspicious of powerful discourses. My approach goes beyond the ironic tone and fragmentation of textual surface, which have led critics to read Doctorow s works as participating in a discourse of skepticism. Accordingly, this study refers to the more recent ethical readings of deconstruction theory and thus underscores the importance of providing not only ethical readings but also clarification of the metaethical significance of Doctorow s texts. Key words: ethics, postmodernism, narrative ethics, metaethics, intertextuality, intuition, truth, Self, moral agency, deconstruction, Gnosticism, Kabbalah, Levinas, Emerson, Jung, Derrida