This thesis explores the aesthetics of immaturity in the work of two artists, Philip Roth and Lena Dunham. Both Roth and Dunham explore the autobiographical feedback between life and art, both narrate comically disastrous bildungsroman, and both are mercilessly keen social satirists. I consider two central preoccupations in their work. First is the way each artist voices their artistic concerns by formalizing and thematizing the problem of maturation. Both Roth and Dunham draw on the genre of the bildungsroman and both revise that form by creating stories of what Jed Esty, in his study of the modernist bildungsroman, calls \"frozen youth.\" Second, Roth and Dunham exemplify two different models of what it means to be a writer, reflecting two different vocational contexts—the \"Program Era\" of the post-WWII decades, which fostered a vision of the artist as trained professional and the neoliberal environment of the early 21st century, which promoted the idea of the artist as entrepreneur or cultural producer. As a result, they articulate distinct visions of the role of the artist and different sets of aesthetic and political values. These values are inseparable from gender, and both artists are obsessed with relating gender to vocation. Roth is preoccupied by what it means to be a writer and what it means to be a man, goals that he depicts as inseparable. In his work, women sometimes enable, but mostly frustrate that ideal. Dunham, by comparison, rejects the Program Era vision of the trained artist and portrays women who are compelled to negotiate a network of difficult jobs and dissatisfying relationships, locking them in a state of perpetual distraction. In this way Dunham's program Girls dramatizes the decline of the model of the artist as professional and seeks to imagine an alternative.
"},{"label":"Degree","value":["Bachelor of Arts with Departmental Honors"]},{"label":"Author-supplied Keywords","value":["Philip Roth","Lena Dunham","Bildungsroman"]},{"label":"Administrative Note","value":"Drupal Node ID: 24016