Att veta och förstå : Moraliska svårigheter inom och i relation till Philippe Claudels roman Grå själar

Sammanfattning: The aim of the following master’s thesis is to analyze moral difficulties in and in relation to the French novel Grey Soulsby Philippe Claudel. Situated in the philosophic and literary tradition of Ordinary Language Criticism, the thesis applies and takes support from reasoning, ideas, and procedures from Niklas Forsberg, Stanley Cavell, Toril Moi and Nora Hämäläinen. A starting point is that the reader is vital for the novel’s moral impact. Through the analysis, sectioned into two parts, I study events, themes, and characters in the novel, before focusing on the anonymous narrator. By using the distinction between subjective and objective knowledge (Forsberg) and “best case of acknowledgement” (Cavell) I reach the conclusion that the narrator’s quest for objective knowledge is a diversion: it is subjective knowledge that he really seeks and needs to acknowledge. By applying Hämäläinen’s open-ended use and Forsberg’s mirroring, the thesis continuously puts emphasis on the role the reader holds in relation to the novel’s moral difficulties, arguing that the reader, too, needs to be subjectively engaged to grasp the novel’s difficulties and do it justice.