Original scientific paper
The Great Gatsby: Comedy of the Absurd Dressed Up as a Romance
Višnja Sepčić
Abstract
The article places The Great Gatsby in a multiple literary context. While recognizing the presence of both European an American tradition of realism and naturalism within its basic structural model of the novel of manners, the article draws attention to various other literary affiliations which The Great Gatsby demonstrates. It analyses
the sophisticated references the novel makes to E.A. Poe's powerful study of disintegration, The Fall of the House of Usher, as well as its ambivalent relation to the tradition of the chivalric romance. The major parallel is drawn between Fitzgerald's masterpiece and the existentially-slanted post-war literature, most notably the theatre of the absurd. The article contends that Fitzgerald's novel powerfully anticipates not only the overwhelmingly bleak vision of the human condition projected by the theatre of the absurd but many of the stylistic features by means of which this vision is realized.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
121612
URI
Publication date:
26.10.1987.
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