Doctoral Dissertations
Date of Award
8-2020
Degree Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy
Major
English
Major Professor
Margaret Lazarus Dean
Committee Members
Margaret Lazarus Dean, Christopher Hebert, Michael Knight, William Hardwig, Stephen Blackwell
Abstract
Failing Heaven is a dissertation composed of two sections: a critical introduction and a memoir. The critical introduction explores the relationship between memoir and honesty through close readings of three memoirs: Vladimir Nabokov’s Speak, Memory, Harry Crews’ A Childhood: the biography of a place, and Lewis Nordan’s Boy With Loaded Gun. The memoir is primarily a childhood memoir depicting the events of my life. It’s a multi-genre assemblage loosely arranged in chronological order and relies principally on a technique of association among short sections for meaning-making. The form allows a flexible play for the questions of imagination and memory, beauty and truth, and time and space. Findings: the craft elements in the creation of a memoir are similar to those in fiction, but because a memoir is already a timed event, it requires a writer to think differently about not only what they choose to write about, but how they choose to write about it.
Recommended Citation
Purio, Sean, "Failing Heaven. " PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 2020.
https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/6910