Narrative Circularity in Modern European Literature

This thesis analyses the ways in which various twentieth-century European writers adopt circular narrative forms in order to break with an essentially teleological and theological

thinking. The thesis assesses the extent to which this revolutionary break with linear narrative may be owing to the impact of Nietzsche's discussion of nihilism, and in particular his idea of the 'eternal recurrence of the same'. Having analysed the history and theory of linear form, the thesis charts the emergence of Nietzsche's idea of eternal recurrence before turning to the history of the use of circular narrative structures in twentieth-century European literature, from its inception in works by August Strindberg, Gertrude Stein and Azorín, through its deployment in the interwar years by writers including Raymond Queneau and Vladimir Nobokov, to its full flowering in works by James Joyce and Samuel Beckett, among others, as well as its later employment by post-war European writers including Alain Robbe-Grillet, Italo Calvino and Maurice Blanchot. Through a series of close readings, the thesis aims to highlight the various

ways in which narrative circularity serves to challenge the underlying ideology of linear narrative, and concludes with a proposed new typology of non-linear forms.