Make space for beauty: a contemporary vision

• Main Author: Zheng, Michelle Huixuan
• Other Authors: Neil Murphy
• Format: Thesis-Master by Research
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2023
• Subjects: Humanities::Literature::English
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/170605
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

This dissertation proposes multiple perspectives on beauty that challenge the resistance in literary criticism. To omit beauty in literature as it is viewed as a threat carries dangerous implications. For one, it suggests that there has to be a specific purpose and one that brings about positive value to validate the existence of beauty. While beauty can bring about goodness, it however does not need utilitarian purpose to be viewed as a value. Objecting to the de-emphasis of beauty in literary criticism, the dissertation examines three different prose fiction primary sources: Alessandro Baricco’s Silk, Zadie Smith’s On Beauty, and Han Kang’s The Vegetarian. The selected primary texts demonstrate beauty’s association with aesthetics where it cements the importance of beauty in novels and its tendencies to the beautiful. By emphasising beauty beyond pretty, these novelistic forms contribute and add value to the discussion of ideology and representation.