A Quest for FulfillmentLucy Pilgrim’s Map

Résumé

This composite thesis is the fruit of a marriage between the creative, imaginative, and critical aspects of writing. The overall aim of its elaboration has been the creation and critical examination of an autonomous interdependent female subject in literature. As it is a unique thesis at the University of Barcelona, and because one of its directors is Southern Cross University professor Baden Offord, the structure follows the regulations established at that institution: three-quarters of the thesis is a creative work: the novel, Lucy, Go See, a bildungsroman based on a quest. The other quarter is a critical exegesis: A Quest to Self-Construct: Lucy Pilgrim¿s Map. The exegesis is concerned with self- construction as opposed to self-destruction in response to a wound. After examining the history and nature of quests and bildungsromans and situating the novel within these genres, the exegesis traces eros, voice and wound through the vulnerable territory of humanity and explores how colonization has affected personal relationships. Thus, this thesis is a creative, narrative, and critical inquiry into the value of eros, voice, and wound as instruments and articulations of agency constituted through visions of subjectivity.