Reading the post-postmodern formal strategies of David Foster Wallace and Mark Z Danielewski

This thesis addresses the formal narrative strategies of two American authors, David Foster Wallace and Mark Z Danielewski, in terms of their relationship to postmodernism. Wallace's novel Infinite Jest (1996) and Danielewski's debut House of Leaves (2000) are substantial works, with an encyclopedic employment of large amounts of information (Wallace's novel fW1S to around 1,100 pages, while Dani()1ewski's is a little over 700 pages) and complex structuring principles. These .Jwo novels also represent the most explicit and lengthy programmatic dialogue with postmodernism that these writers have produced. The only manner in which to engage in serious and close critical detail with this element of Danielewski's and Wallace's formal strategies is to study these works in close and lengthy detail. Therefore, Infinite Jest and House of Leaves are the basis of this study, with references made to other works by Wallace and Danielewski where appropriate. It is the contention of this study that, while it has been critically posited that Infinite Jest occupies a position that is interrogative of the tenets of postmodernism, no critic has yet outlined in extensive detail Wallace's crucial employment of specifically formal narrative strategies to dramatise this interrogation. Furthermore, critical positions on House of Leaves are only just beginning to consider that the novel might adopt an combative position towards postmodem tropes. This study suggests the essential importance of reading Danielewski's novel as a post-postmodern text by outlining how, through its formal narrative strategies, the novel dramatises and interrogates its own roots within postmodernism. "Form" in this study is taken to mean both the pervasive employment of particular spatial, temporal and paratextual tropes to construct a narrative with a particular "shape", as well as an interaction and hybridisation with other, non-literary forms. The critical analysis within this study reveals the remarkable similarity of the formal narrative strategies ofthe two writers, with both Wallace and Danielewski employing a number of formal structuring principles that underpin the spatiotemporal form of their works, principles that draw from (among other areas) mathematics, poststructuralism and cultural theory in order to enact an interrogation of postmodern tropes. This study also suggests that the formal employment of cinematic terminology, theory and technique within both Infinite Jest and House of Leaves is substantial and fundamental to the post-postmodern position of both works

Rhythms of the gods: the musical symbolics of power and authority in the Tibetan Buddhist Kingdom of Ladakh

This thesis is a cultural study of music in Ladakh ("Indian Tibet"). Drawing upon interdisciplinary theories in symbolic anthropology and musicology, the study stresses the primacy of symbolic action as a means of defining and controlling social reality, and proceeds to examine the relationship between the activation of musical structures and the social construction of power and authority, in terms of the generation of meaning. Ladakhi music is particularly suited to this kind of study because the instrumental genre of lha-rnga (literally "god-drumming") was once closely linked to the structure of Ladakhi society as a feudal monarchy legitimated by Buddhist authority. This music, associated with the personification of deities or the divine aspects of certain mortal beings, constitutes a 'code' which, in the context of public ritual and royal ceremonial, represents and sustains political authority by embodying aspects of the ideal, transcendental order. Building upon Sherry Ortner's concept of cultural schemata, it is shown how music provides the key to 'naturalising' or 'grounding' these more or less predictable programmes of symbolic action in emotional experience, so that through the patronage of performance, those in authority can manipulate the conduct of their subjects or rivals in expected ways. In supporting cultural schemata, public musical performance also constitutes a mechanism for dealing with conflict and change, as historically demonstrated by the way in which the later dynastic kings used music to negotiate the perceived Islamic threat from Kashmir and Turkestan. Supported by the analysis of rhythmic structures, in conjunction with historical, organological and iconographic evidence, it is proposed that forms of military and chivalrous music of West Asian origin have been accommodated by the indigenous Buddhist tradition: to the external Mughal authorities, this represented the incorporation of Ladakh into their political framework, but the Ladakhi monarchs presented this phenomenon as the meaningful incorporation of the symbols of Islamic rule into a theoretically Immutable Buddhist cosmological order. The research is intended, in part, to complement existing work in Indian and Tibetan music, which has hitherto mainly concentrated on liturgical or classical traditions, and which has tended to overlook the role of the 'living', regional traditions in Indo-Tibetan culture. On a theoretical level, the study also aims to further understanding of the dynamics of culture change and continuity, and to develop lines of enquiry aimed at bridging the gap between musicological and anthropological contexts of explanatio