Anthony Burgess's "A Clockwork Orange" and Michel Foucault's "Panopticism"

Author

• Erika Dawn Brown

Author Type

Graduate Student

Date of Award

1998

Document Type

Thesis

Publication Status

Version of Record

Submission Date

October 2026

Thesis/Dissertation Advisor [Chair]

Collins, Robert A.

Abstract

Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange offers a "disciplinary technology," the "Ludovico Technique," which resembles Michel Foucault's interpretation of Jeremy Bentham's architectural figure, the Panopticon. Burgess's novel functions analogously to Foucault's image of the panopticon by dehumanizing and controlling the criminal, Alex, by omniscient, omnipotent surveillance, and also by disciplining the reader to assimilate an ambiguous vernacular language: the reader is "trained" by panopticonic techniques to read and interpret the novel.

Extent

54 p.

Comments

FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection|Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters|Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 1998.|FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Recommended Citation

Brown, Erika Dawn, "Anthony Burgess's "A Clockwork Orange" and Michel Foucault's "Panopticism"" (1998). Electronic Theses and Dissertations 1990 - 1999. 1269.
https://digitalcommons.fau.edu/etd_general_4/1269

Identifier

FADT15558

Format

pdf