Phenomenological writing in the fiction of David Mitchell

Abstract

As the academic work on David Mitchell multiplies, and new claims are being added to describe his novel approach to writing, this study aims to understand what makes his work so apparently “innovative”. Previous studies that have tried to explain Mitchell’s significance have focussed on, for instance, his fragmented structures and genre-mixing, interconnectedness and globalisation, (a)temporality and the Anthropocene, and his linguistic acumen in mimicking period-specific language. The purpose of this dissertation is to explore the ongoing fictional world, being created in Mitchell’s macronovel, in relation to the lifeworld described by the field of phenomenology. By reviewing some of the existing literature on phenomenology, especially guided by the work of Robert Sokolowski, a kind of “toolset” is developed for approaching the texts. This toolset is aimed at synthesising the previous, metaphoric explanations of Mitchell’s work, into a workable methodology which can navigate such a large and dynamic fictional world. Mitchell’s first text, Ghostwritten, is initially used as an access point to the macronovel, from which an initial calibration of the toolset commences, followed by an analysis of this text’s interconnections. These theoretical concepts are then extended beyond Ghostwritten, for the use of further analyses of the macronovel. This study argues that the instances of interplay between the construction and the thematic use of temporalities, which make up Mitchell’s macronovel, are the key elements for understanding his texts in the phenomenological sense. Therefore, the lifeworld becomes a metaphor for the macronovel. The main objective is to illustrate how the macronovel creates a fictional world that represents, or imitates, the lifeworld both structurally and thematically.