Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
Date of Degree
6-2026
Document Type
Master's Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts
Program
Comparative Literature
Advisor
Sorin Radu Cucu
Subject Categories
Comparative Literature | Dramatic Literature, Criticism and Theory | European Languages and Societies
Keywords
Body, Beckett, Barnes, Kafka, Urmuz, Blecher, Grotesque, Surface Reading
Abstract
Literary modernism works within a regime of tension between the unified corporeal system and the parts that compose said “unity.” The modern human body is frequently manipulated through techniques of deprivation, fragmentation, hyperbole or augmentation, and hybridization. The often confounding manipulations of the body, and of language itself, in modernist literature leave readers with little to hold onto in terms of deriving precise meaning. If, as Jorge Luis Borges claims in his essay “From Allegories to Novels” the modern allegory creates an “aesthetic error” used to thwart or defer obvious interpretation, then the modern body might also be labeled as such (337). This project uses depictions of the human body to reorient the modern allegory, and vice versa. In order to do so, I will work with texts from the European modernist canon and take a detour into the lesser-known literatures of Romania, to present a parallax. Ultimately, the modernist allegory thwarts all definite understanding, leaving an allegorical residue that remains a mystery. Similarly, the body can be understood as a unified entity or as an assemblage of parts, without offering the opportunity for exhaustive comprehension. I am asking: how might the body inform the modern allegory and the modern allegory inform the body? In short, the use of one calls the other into question. I investigate how both concepts rely on a fractured or distorted structure, and how this fracturing is happening in a network of simultaneity in modernist texts.
Recommended Citation
Hebert, Abigail R., "Fleshing Out the Modern Allegory: An Examination of Modernism's Corporeal Limits" (2026). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/6689
Included in
Comparative Literature Commons, Dramatic Literature, Criticism and Theory Commons, European Languages and Societies Commons
