Victims of Cosmic Construction: A Study of John Barth’s Floating Opera and Thomas Pynchon’s V
Journal Title: Notions A Journal of English Literature - Year 2017, Vol 0, Issue 3
Abstract
This paper explicates the Protean Wo/man’s frail struggle to constitute identity resulting in psychological disintegration. Most of the characters of Pynchon and Barth suffer from peculiar afflictions which can be categorized under the labels ‘Cosmopsis’ (Barth) and ‘Entropy’ (Pynchon). Cosmopsis intimates a cosmic manipulation in extremity that as a result numbs the mind and the body. Entropy indicates the declivity of energy or the measure of disorder actualized by it. The paper attempts a scientific clarification of these terms in order to apply them to the study of the demented personalities of these novelists. This paper concludes with the observation that entropy/cosmopsis above all elucidate the tension between order and disorder in reality and that the approach of both Barth and Pynchon to this problem is dualistic. That to retain an identity by sustaining the tension in an ambilectic world of order/disorder, the entropic/cosmoptic protean wo/men need control.
Authors and Affiliations
Muzafar Ahmad Bhat, Dr. S. Kartik Kumar
Keywords
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