Thesis Defence: A Story of Quiet Worlds
December 5 at 2:00 pm - 6:00 pm
Ronan Fraser, supervised by Anne Fleming, will defend their thesis titled “A Story of Quiet Worlds” in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing.
An abstract for Ronan Fraser’s thesis is included below.
Defences are open to all members of the campus community as well as the general public. Registration is not required for in-person defences.
ABSTRACT
This thesis, A Story of Quiet Worlds, is a novel of experimental fiction that utilises stage direction, redaction, and the mundane every day to explore ideas of ‘The End’ and what it might mean to grieve events both past and still to come. The novel explores a question of eschatology within the context of the climate crisis, the British Empire’s history of industrial colonialism, and the conflict between religious and secular identity of the individual.
The experimental form draws on live performance methodologies such as theatre of the absurd, where life is maddening and meaningless, and participatory theatre where, like with Augusto Boal’s ‘spect-actor’, an audience is implicated in the staged world and provided opportunity for active engagement. In addition, the thesis draws on literary pathways of non-linear time and fractured narrative found in historical fiction, historiographic metafiction, and magical realism. This blend of styles creates a fictional landscape that is grounded and fantastic, unstable and recurring, and invites the reader to observe the protagonist, Ting, as a performer might observe a character that they will briefly inhabit.
The story follows Ting, a traumatised veteran and immigrant, throughout their second year living in Abberin, the coastal capital city of a newly industrialising empire. Waking from a year of dissociation, and still within the grips of grief and depression, Ting must adapt to this new world while struggling to make sense of their own memories, convinced that this place, too, will soon go up in flames. As Ting begins to build a new life for themself, they are visited by the ghost of an old friend, Salieri, whose cryptic apologies and warnings lead them to reevaluate their actions, past and present.
