Preface

15 January 1998

I wanted to thank everyone who has written in with comments and suggestions about this site. I am happy to have written a resource that many people in the academic world find useful. Please keep the suggestions and questions coming.
Several people have suggested an FTP-able file of the whole paper to diminish online time. I'll soon have Word, WordPerfect, and MacWrite Pro versions that interested readers can download and read at their leisure. These documents should be available off of the Table of Contents. Thanks again for all of the mail.

Welcome to my hypertext thesis. Even though I present my thesis in HTML format, it remains, basically, a traditional thesis. However, unlike its traditional printed counterpart, this thesis is malleable and dynamic. I expect to continually add resources on both Rushdie and Bulgakov as interest waxes.
Rushdie is already well-known because of the on-going controversy caused by The Satanic Verses; however, this site will concentrate not on Rushdie's extra-literary life, but on his art, specifically on the Verses. Bulgakov, too, was controversial politically during his life, but, again, his literary offerings are of interest here, especially The Master and Margarita.
I am making this thesis available to the world for two reasons: I have not seen a study similar to this during my research; and for a demonstration of my writing for any prospective employers and Ph.D. programs. Please enjoy, and forward any suggestions and comments to Gerald Lucas. Below appears the original abstract for my printed thesis.
This thesis is dedicated to my family and friends, professors and colleagues, and teachers and students who all had faith in me. Specifically, I owe a profound thanks to Carole Cole for inspiring me to pursue a career in academia by her unique approach to literature and life. Other professors that continued to stoke my ardent enthusiasm for literature include: Robert Hall, Don Wyly, Frank Fabry, Sara Deats, Daniel Wells, Victor Peppard, and, my mentor for the last two years, Silvia Ruffo Fiore. Your guidance has been integral to my success thus far and will continue to play a role in all my future undertakings.
Personally, I would like to thank my family for always having confidence in my abilities, even when I didn't: my father, Gerald Henry Lucas, my mother, Donna Rahe Mikell, and my brother, Timothy Barton Lucas. For his continued support throughout my emotional and intellectual crises, my best friend Kip James Bilderback remains dear to my heart even though physically he is much removed.
Finally, this thesis is for all individuals: artists and poets alike. May you be inspired to never lose faith in yourself or those truths that are no less than your own souls.

Gerald Lucas, 10 March 1997
Department of English
University of South Florida

In an increasingly postmodern world, the expression of a new belief is becoming progressively dangerous, especially if that new supposition challenges an already codifed "truth." New thinkers who boldly challenge the status quo come under severe scrutiny from both extremes: the fundamentalist right-wing and the liberal left ostensibly denounce and excommunicate any impudent, new expression, particularly if it challenges a passionately felt religious belief. The reaction against Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses has been mostly one of moral outrage from devout Muslims and dour displeasure from many respected artists. Rushdie has alienated many of the world's religious communities, political régimes, and cultural fraternities with his 1989 novel about the contemporary world and the birth of an increasingly growing religion: Islam.
Similarly, Mikhail Bulgakov's 1939 novel The Master and Margarita takes an equally heterodox view of the genesis of Christianity and the world of communist Moscow in the 1930s. He, too, blasphemes in a religious sense, questioning the beginning of a religion that millions throughout the world hold sacred.
This thesis proposes to look at the healthy blasphemy of the artists Salman Rushdie and Mikhail Bulgakov in their respective novels The Satanic Verses and The Master and Margarita. The working supposition is that Rushdie and Bulgakov celebrate the creative aspect of each individual artist, yet remain skeptical about the holistic truth of that creativity, i.e. the manuscript. In this instance the manuscript represents the written form of an artist's creativity: The New Testament's Gospels and the Qur'an, both of which were derived from the spoken word of the Jesus and Muhammad and, to utilize a verbally precise colloquialism, put down on paper by scribes and followers.
Through an examination of pertinent criticism and a juxtaposition of the novels' major themes of creativity, individuality, expression, and truth, this thesis will attempt to answer the question posed by Rushdie's novel: "What kind of idea are you?" (95). This question, indeed, seems to be the relevant question in both novels: are one's ideas worth enough to go insane, or die, for? And what will these ideas do to, or for, others? The very essence of the artist, his raison d'être, is in question by both novels. Rushdie and Bulgakov represent the rebellious, uncompromising artist as hero, and criticize and abuse the masses for their thoughtless acceptance of one man's vision of the "truth"--a truth they interpret, in true postmodernist form, as being as multifarious as there are souls on this world and as difficult to realize. Therefore, Rushdie and Bulgakov admire the artist and his creation as being representative of an individual truth, yet despise a thoughtless devotion to their art by unthinking masses.