Writing Space and Death Experience in Saul Bellow’s Novels

Abstract

ABSTRACT Death experience is sketched out as possibility rather than the end in Saul bellow’s novels, and it is approached and explored in correspondence to writing space and authorship. This study aims to shed light on the experience of death in Saul Bellow’s major novels concerning Maurice Blanchot’s elaboration on death experience that he offers mainly in his book The Space of Literature. Trying to figure out their possibilities and topographies in writing space, this study is concerned with three different death experiences in Herzog, Humboldt’s Gift, and Ravelstein. It is concluded that, regarding the concerns and conditions, the space of writing helps the writer (embodied in characters Herzog, Humboldt, and Chick) die in this space and endure living in reality.