Schizophrenic narratives the dissolution of self and agency in Audrey Thomas's Mrs. Blood and Hubert Aquin's Prochain épisode

Abstract

This thesis explores the parallel between the ontological insecurity of schizophrenia, according to contemporary theories of the condition and the worldviews of protagonists/narrators in Audrey Thomas's Mrs. Blood and Hubert Aquin's Prochain épisode . The narrators/protagonists are both confined. Aquin's narrator is incarcerated in a mental asylum awaiting trial; Thomas's narrator is confined to a hospital bed due to a complicated pregnancy. To alleviate the anxiety and powerlessness they are experiencing they dissociate from the external world to an inner world over which they at first have full control. However, as human beings with both body and mind, they cannot fully retreat without also experiencing a cleft inside. Their dissociation from the exterior world undermines their sense of self and as this happens they begin to lose control over their inner world. In addition to a discussion of the narrator's ontological anxiety and of the ensuing dissolution of their selves, I will discuss how the form of the novels deploys doubling and splitting through multiple narratives, fragmentation and postmodernity."--Résumé abrégé par UMI