Chapters

There's an 'Off the Rails' Meeting at mine in an hour, but in the meantime I'm thinking about my dissertation commentary. It occurred to me as I was driving back from Noah's school, that I already have quite a number of chapters in mind.

So far, they are:

1. Depictions of Heaven and Hell. Using the books that I'm reading at the moment I can compare and contrast how I have depicted heaven with the masters. I might use some kind of journey similar to the 'Pilgrim's Progress', but also I want to get a Kafka-like feel to Heaven. I also want to focus on the language. The End of Days stuff is really powerful, but not something that I'd want to sustain throughout the novel.
2. Language - as discussed above, but also I want to delve into some post-modernist stuff about language. If I am going to have Nicky learn to speak throughout the journey then I need to work on how this can happen. At the moment I envision this being done through 'Topsy and Tim' books: the gradual accumulation of his language through reading and mimicking. I suppose the 'Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers', and 'The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time' will be good starters. There should also be some decent text books about language acquisition. Language that deals with language is called something but I can't remember what. I've just tried to google it, but couldn't find anything. It'll come to me: Derek Walcott's poems are said to have this aspect to them.
3. Memoir - How is it possible to use memoir and real characters in a work of fiction? This is going to be a big part of the dissertation and as yet I have no leads. Plenty of time to work on it.
   
   There will be plenty more to discuss but I will only want a maximum of five chapters if the dissertation is to be 10,000 words long. Perhaps less if I want an introduction and conclusion. It seems to me as though I have not got enough space for everything I want to say. But that is why I need to go on and do a PhD. This is such a huge subject, and I am wanting to use such an unusual genre.