Immanence and Representation in W. H. Hudson's Green Mansions

• Main Author: Sundman, Siv Alice
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: Stockholms universitet, Engelska institutionen 2009
• Subjects: Specific Languages; Studier av enskilda språk
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-37056

Immanence and Representation in W. H. Hudson’s Green Mansions Alice Sundman   Abstract   The study investigates the tension between immanence and transcendence in W. H. Hudson’s novel Green Mansions. The method in use is Edmund Husserl’s phenomenological method of bracketing that which is transcendent to the field of study (epoché). It is argued that there is a fundamental tension in the novel between presentation (unmodified acts of consciousness) and representation (modified acts of consciousness). The conclusion drawn from the studied evidence is that Green Mansions favours intimacy over remoteness, immediacy over mediation, presence over rupture, and wholeness over divisiveness. The study shows that the hero is caught in a contradiction between a culture based on representivity (a mania for picture-thinking, sign-thinking, and relation-thinking) and an immediacy of life embodied in the heroine as a pure presentation lacking any significant traces of gaps, divisions, or borders. Personified by the heroine, immanence constitutes a silent yet persisting resistance to a world-view based on representivity.