| Abstract: | Though Larry McMurtry has repeatedly talked about the influence of the Victorian novel on his fiction, no study before has devoted itself to the question of such an influence or its significance. Instead, most previous studies have been limited and devoted to the relation of the author's work to Western and American literature and to films. In The Influence of the Victorian Novel on Larry McMurtry's Fiction, I use unpublished materials available in the Kunkel Collection of the University of Houston Library in conjunction with McMurtry's published fiction to date to trace how major recurrent themes in the author's work and his treatment of them parallels themes and techniques used by major Victorian novelists the author admires. My study concludes that beyond McMurtry's attraction to the Victorian emphasis on story-telling over style lies a moral aesthetic inspired by his predecessors' treatment of the problem of the relationship of the individual to society, the conflict between civilization and nature, and their attempts to find a basis for spirituality in a world without God or faith in organized religion. In contrast, therefore, to many of his post-modern contemporaries who use style to convey the utter isolation and devastation of the human spirit in the modern world, McMurtry, like the Victorians, through art creates a highly tangible world which offers consolation and hope. |
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