Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 2000. [Vol. 6.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 26)
Studies - Tibor Tóth: The Golden Cradle: Philip Roth's Revision of the Golden Bough Tradition
character's imprisonment in his mistaken interpretation of the role and possibilities of 'high art.' This alternation of established and negative aesthetics supports the perplexing quality of David Kepesh's obsession with 'high art' and subverts the possibility to discuss the misery of the professor of comparative literature in the context of traditional dignity and pathos characteristic of great literature of the past. Philip Roth's characters are trapped by the magic power of 'high art' because they remove the distance between the aesthetic and the existential. Wayne C. Booth warns us that removing the distance between the aesthetic and the existential results in the death of art (Booth. The Rhetoric. 117-132). Yet, Philip Roth intentionally declares art superior to the existential dimension in these novels and the story of David Kepesh's transformation into a female breast documents the power of art to change the fictionally existential dimension. Philip Roth's characters are obsessed with Kafka and in his "Looking at Kafka" he offers us a fictional variant of Kafka's fate in America. David Kepesh is dominated by the magic of fiction and his admiration for the works of Chekov, Flaubert, Kafka and Claire's breast leads to his metamorphosis into a female breast instead of becoming a potent and highly creative male. The Breast also announces that Gregor Samsa's transformation into a huge insect is subject to revision when David Kepesh announces that he has "outKafkaed Kafka" (B . 82). Debra Shostak praises the above characteristics of the novel. "One of the strengths of The Breast is the way in which Roth makes an absolutely implausible premise believable —precisely the lesson that he learned best from Kafka" (Shostak 318). The transformation is an incredible nightmare, which is not a dream in spite of the hero's attempt to interpret it as a dream, although in real terms it cannot be explained. The problem, as discussed by Debra Shostak, is illustrated through dislocation caused by the catastrophic difference between 'objective' and 'subjective' perceptions of David Kepesh's existence. I think it important to state at this point that the fictional quality of both the objective and the subjective dimensions is also of great relevance in these books. The Professor of Desire attempts to 127
