| dc.description.abstract | Through a literary analysis of two contemporary novels, J.M. Coetzee's Life & Times of
Michael K (1983) and Cormac McCarthy's The Road (2006), in which a common concern
seems to be an exploration of what it means to be human, the thesis seeks to explore the
relationship between human consciousness and language. This dissertation considers the
development of a conception of the human based on rationality, and which begins in the
Italian Renaissance and gains momentum in the Enlightenment. This conception models the
human as a stable knowable self. This is drawn in contrast to the novels, which figure the
absence of a stable knowable self in the representation of their protagonists. The thesis thus
interrogates language's capacity to provide definitional meanings of the ''human.'' On the
other hand, although language's capacity to provide essential meanings is questioned, its
abundant expressive forms give voice to the experience of human being. Drawing on a range
of fields of enquiry, both philosophical, linguistic, and bio-ethical, this thesis seeks to explore
the connection between human consciousness and the medium of language. It considers how
the two novels in question play with the concept of language to produce or imagine other
ways of thinking about human existence, and other ways of creating meaning to human
existence through the representation of their novels. | en_US |
