Citation

Sawada C. J. Soc. Engl. Am. Lit. Kansei Gakuin Univ. 2005; 50(1): 21-41.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2005, Kansei Gakuin University)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This paper discusses Muriel Spark's Reality and Dreams (1996), a novel which covers such contemporary concerns as unemployment, male impotence, female violence and the film industry. Here the author's theorising of the "individual subjectivity" in the postmodern world converges on the excess - evil, violence, desire, Otherness - of a missing girl and on the excess - from extravagance to redundancy - detected in contemporary life. Bringing an empty space created by the missing girl and the world of image-making business together into the field of vision, the novel explores "the tract of noman's land between dreams and reality." This study, dealing in particular with her analysis of excess, argues that Spark pursues the theme of excess and opens up the contradictions inherent in this notion to bring about a new philosophy of life by art as excess.