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“Mad-Speak” And Manic Prose: Nick Cave’S Presentation Of Insanity In And The Ass Saw The Angel, Laura Hardt (Class Of 2014)
“Mad-Speak” And Manic Prose: Nick Cave’S Presentation Of Insanity In And The Ass Saw The Angel, Laura Hardt (Class Of 2014)
English Undergraduate Publications
Nick Cave’s novel And the Ass Saw the Angel attempts to exist firmly within the Southern Gothic tradition, pulling direct inspiration from authors such as William Faulkner, Cormac McCarthy, and Flannery O’Connor. However, Cave’s novel seems to lack the careful construction and purposefulness of these writers, with its graphic violence, constantly shifting tone, style, narrative voice, and employing an utterly bizarre and arcane vocabulary. This essay aims to illustrate that although this may make the work seem poorly composed and somewhat slipshod, the manic prose of Cave’s novel is actually rather purposeful, presenting the protagonist’s descent into madness in an …