While the two modernist novels considered in this book Samuel Beckett's Murphy and Malcolm
Lowry's Under the Volcano were initially understood within the categories of stoic and tragic
despair more recent criticism has focused upon their carnivalesque dimension. The
identification of these hermeneutic polarities presented the author with the challenging
problem which underlies the present analysis namely the question concerning the structural
relationship between the contesting thematics. Drawing upon the paradigm of oscillation as
established within the natural sciences and adding a figurative dimension to the concept the
author has adapted this model as a key to unravelling the narrative buoyancy and structural
coherence which sustain these novels of Modernism. The book elucidates how the carnivalesque
challenge to despair contributes towards innovative narrative configurations galvanizing the
thematic antipodes into vertiginous microcosms of defiant selfhood.
