Metaphor, subjectivity and self-knowledge in Edward St. Aubyn’s novels

Abstract

ABSTRACT Edward St. Aubyn shows a persistent metaphysical interest in consciousness, personal identity and psychoanalysis. Reading seven of his novels, this article investigates the relationship between what appears to be a style topic, that of metaphor, and an ontological truth, that of self-knowledge. This article contends that St. Aubyn uses metaphor’s ambiguity to structure his narrative explorations of subjectivity and metaphor’s power to create new meanings to offer absolution for his agonising characters. In the Patrick Melrose novels, metaphor is structured as a thought experiment to conduct a philosophical discussion of consciousness and personal identity. The ambiguous structure of metaphor provides a model for rival views on personal identity for Patrick to achieve self-knowledge through narrative identity. In Dunbar, the exploration of self-knowledge turns to the body. St. Aubyn situates Dunbar in the Lake District’s ambiguous environment, allowing him to regenerate an embodied subject to restore his sanity. Double Blind revisits one of St. Aubyn’s favourite subjects, psychoanalysis, and offers a concluding remark on the relationship between metaphor and subjectivity. St. Aubyn presents schizophrenia as a hermeneutic problem of making bad metaphors. He analogises the interpretive ability of psychoanalysis to gaining metaphoric competence, which promises recovery from schizophrenia.