Literature beyond Solipsism: Self- Consciousness, Empathy and the Other in the Short Fiction of David Foster Wallace

Abstract

Drawing on existing contributions to the growing field of David Foster Wallace studies, this dissertation seeks to specifically examine the generic idiosyncrasy of Wallace's short fiction production. This exercise is carried out in a twofold manner: on the one hand, via the study of the interrelation of Wallace's literature with the problems of the notion of selfhood following the wake of postmodernism; and, on the other, by attesting to how this crisis is made manifest in his tales through a reappropriation of the modernist epiphany. The conflation of these two problems considered, this study proposes a tripartite approach to the postmodernist moment of being, a distinction paving the way for new readings of the defining themes of Wallace's short fiction.