| Abstract [eng] |
The present MA paper aims to examine Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch (2013), a novel which is primarily preoccupied with the themes of art and death. Seeing as one of the purposes of this thesis is to establish relevant connections between the logic of still life paintings, the protagonist’s life choices and, consequently, his way of constructing the narrative, the analysis of this novel is based primarily on Norman Bryson’s examinations of still life paintings and Hans Belting’s anthropological observations about the connections between the concepts of art and death. Furthermore, an examination of the narrative relevance of 17th century Dutch paintings and the way these works by Carel Fabritius, Frans Hals, and Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn foreshadow certain plot twists will also be presented in the analysis part. Seeing as the novel addresses the relationship between the verbal and the visual, the analysis will also be based on Liliane Louvel and her notion of the iconotext and the typology of pictorial saturation. By employing Louvel’s terminology, I will argue that the visually saturated verbal descriptions of Theo’s romantic interest Pippa in fact reveals his obsession and even objectification of the female character. |
