Memory and mourning in The Last Man and Wittgenstein's Mistress

This thesis examines two novels: The Last Man by Mary Shelley and Wittgenstein's Mistress by David Markson, from a theoretical perspective shaped by Jacques Derrida's reflections on memory, mourning, and ghosts. In these novels the concepts of memory and mourning are closely intertwined with the act of writing. Although these texts revolve around the theme of last human on earth, this study argues that both of them portray a solitary writer who clings to memory and tries to project it towards future by means of writing, and who mourns after the deceased figures of history by reading and remembering their works. Described as the last human beings on earth, the narrators of two novels are exemplars of a writer who has no one else to talk save the spectres of history. As a result of a comparative and hermeneutical study, this thesis argues that the narrator of Wittgenstein's Mistress emerges as a transfiguration of Mary Shelley.