WORLDS BUILT AND BORROWED: A PARACOSMIC EXPLORATION OF THE METATEXTUAL UNCONSCIOUS

Abstract

This thesis explores literary phenomenology through the lens of fictional world-building and borrowing, integrating psychoanalytic play theories and reader response criticism, primarily through the works of D.W. Winnicott, Stanley Fish, and Wolfgang Iser. In applying this theoretical approach, the thesis investigates how fictional worlds function as intermediary phenomena through which creators can externalize and process their individual or collective experiences of being. Employing a comprehensive literary survey framework, the project spans a diverse range of texts, from canonical literature, such as the Brontës’ juvenilia and Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, to contemporary works like Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight and E.L. James’ Fifty Shades of Grey. By establishing literary worlds as externally preserved phenomenological expressions, the thesis reveals a transauthorial relationship between author, reader, and researcher, in which interpretation and recreative engagement facilitate narrative continuation. Through this process, a literary metatext, once unconscious, begins to emerge and gradually revives the functionality of fiction as a dynamic, imaginative play space where the full range of human experience can be explored and expressed