Paul Auster’s Transcendentalism: Shifting Postmodern Sensibility in the New Millennium

Jesús Bolaño Quintero

doi:10.18172/jes.4750

Autores/as

Jesús Bolaño Quintero Universidad de Cádiz https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2635-7812

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18172/jes.4750

Palabras clave:

Paul Auster, trascendentalismo, Ludwig Wittgenstein, juegos de lenguaje, Postmodernismo, ficción estadounidense

Resumen

Este artículo es un análisis del cambio de sensibilidad que se produce en la obra de Paul Auster después de los ataques de 2001 contra el World Trade Center. Aunque sus novelas anteriores al suceso eran paradigmáticas de la autorreferencialidad posmoderna, algunos críticos han argumentado que la producción del autor posterior al once de septiembre dio un giro hacia el realismo. Esto podría interpretarse como evidencia subsidiaria a favor del polémico debate en torno a la muerte del posmodernismo. Sin embargo, el objetivo de este artículo es describir la transformación que sufre la obra del escritor y ofrecer explicaciones de por qué ese cambio de sensibilidad no responde a una renuncia del posmodernismo, sino a una intensificación del mismo. Trazamos la alternativa de Auster al relativismo posmoderno, es decir, el trascendentalismo, para llegar a la conclusión de que su postura hacia el mismo no ha cambiado sus novelas posteriores.

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Biografía del autor/a

Jesús Bolaño Quintero, Universidad de Cádiz

Jesús Bolaño Quintero is a full-time lecturer at the University of Cadiz, where he read his PhD on Paul Auster and Dave Eggers. His research interests are centred on the role of transcendentalism in post-postmodern American literature and cinema. His latest article, entitled “Alexander Payne’s Nebraska and the Return of the Grand Narratives,” was published in the 2019 edition of the journal Revista Internacional de Culturas y Literaturas.

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