Graduation Semester and Year

2018

Language

English

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts in English

Department

English

First Advisor

James E Warren

Abstract

Shame as an emotional response in the late 2010s has been discussed in both high and low sectors, from a high level of shame with social media use in high school classrooms, to the lack of shame by the president of the United States. My thesis addresses this question by analyzing Karl Ove Knausgaard’s two autobiographical works, My Struggle and his Seasonal Quartet. Readers, critics, and Knausgaard himself have described his work as a focus on the shameful moments of his life. Using positive psychology’s term “explanatory style,” coined by Martin E.P. Seligman, I do a structural reading of explicit moments of shame. Combining this with computer text-analysis software, Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count, devised by James Pennebaker, I create a thorough reading of shame in Knausgaard’s work. The thesis addresses the question of shame’s effect on the style of writing for the multiple volumes, as well as document possible moments of pessimistic mental health. I conclude that Knausgaard operates in typical literary arcs, regardless of his self-proclaimed thesis statement, and I discuss the importance of emotional changes in Knausgaard’s work.

Keywords

Linguistic inquiry, Explanatory style, Positive psychology, Karl Ove Knausgaard, Word count

Disciplines

Arts and Humanities | English Language and Literature

Comments

Degree granted by The University of Texas at Arlington

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