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Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Children's stories. Fantasy fiction'
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1
Chau, Ka-wah Anna. "Imaginary spaces in children's fantasy fiction a psychoanalytic reading of Lewis Carroll's Alice Books and Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials Trilogy /." Click to view the E-thesis via HKUTO, 2004. http://sunzi.lib.hku.hk/hkuto/record/B31364986.
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Chau, Ka-wah Anna, and 周嘉華. "Imaginary spaces in children's fantasy fiction: a psychoanalytic reading of Lewis Carroll's Alice Booksand Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials Trilogy." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2004. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B31364986.
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Davies, Lynda Mary. "Susan Cooper's heightened reality : how narrative style, metaphor, symbol and myth facilitate the imaginative exploration of moral and ethical issues /." St. Lucia, Qld, 2001. http://www.library.uq.edu.au/pdfserve.php?image=thesisabs/absthe16530.pdf.
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Dihal, Kanta. "The stories of quantum physics : quantum physics in literature and popular science, 1900-present." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2017. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:ebe4c5eb-ce48-495f-b015-024f8ac4f4ac.
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This thesis investigates quantum physics narratives for non-physicists, covering four interlocking modes of writing for adults and children, fictional and nonfictional, from 1900 to the present. It brings together three separate scholarly fields: literature and science, science fiction, and science communication. The thesis has revealed parallels between the approaches to quantum physics in these disparate narratives that have not been addressed before, shedding new light on the mutual influences between science and narrative form. The thesis argues that similar narrative tropes have been employed in popular science writing and in fiction across all age groups, changing non-physicists' ideas of quantum physics. This understanding differs significantly from the professional understanding of quantum physics, as I establish by means of a series of case studies, including popular science books for adults by Alastair I.M. Rae, George Gamow and Robert Gilmore; popularizations for children by Lucy and Stephen Hawking, Russell Stannard, and Otto Fong; children's fiction by Philip Pullman and Madeleine L'Engle; and fiction for adults by Greg Egan, David Walton, Blake Crouch, and Iain Pears. An analysis of authors who wrote for various audiences or in multiple genres, such as Fred Hoyle, Stephen Hawking, and Ian Stewart, shows how the same concerns and conflicts surface in a wide range of stories. Quantum physics is not yet fully understood; the Copenhagen, conscious collapse, many-worlds and other interpretations compete for both scientific and public acceptance. Influential physics communicators such as John Gribbin and Brian Cox have written popularizations in which they express a personal preference for one interpretation, arguing against others. Scientific conflict, which tends to be omitted from university teaching, is thus explicitly present in popularizations, making it clear to the reader that quantum physics is in a constant state of flux. I investigate the conflicts between Fred Hoyle and George Gamow, and Stephen Hawking and Leonard Susskind, to see how they undermine the alleged objectivity of science. The interplay between the different stories of quantum physics shows how the science not only shapes the stories: the stories shape the science, too.
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Drolet, Cynthia L. (Cynthia Lea). "Four Stories of Fantasy and Science Fiction." Thesis, North Texas State University, 1988. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc500548/.
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This thesis contains four stories of fantasy and science fiction. Four story lengths are represented: the short short ("Dragon Lovers"), the shorter short story ("Homecoming"), the longer short story ("Shadow Mistress"), and the novel ("Sword of Albruch," excerpted here).
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Hirst, Miriam Laufey. "Fantasy and feminism : an intersectional approach to modern children's fantasy fiction." Thesis, University of Bolton, 2018. http://ubir.bolton.ac.uk/1968/.
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This thesis compares modern children’s fantasy literature with older texts, particularly Grimms’ fairy tales. The focus is on tropes from fairy tales and myths that devalue women and femininity. In looking at these tropes, this thesis examines how they are used in modern fiction; whether they are subverted to show a more empowering vision of femininity or simply replicated in a more modern guise. Whereas other approaches in this area have addressed the representation of gender in an isolated fashion, this study adopts an intersectional approach, examining the way that different axes of oppression work together to maintain the patriarchal hegemony of powerful, white, heterosexual men. As intersectional theory has pointed out, mainstream feminism has tended to focus only on the needs and rights of more privileged women, who are themselves complicit in the oppression of their more marginalised “sisters”. Intersectional feminism, in contrast, seeks to dismantle the entire system of interlinked oppressions, rather than allowing some women to benefit from it to the detriment of others. The intersectional issues around feminism that this thesis addresses include race, disability, class, and sexuality. There is also an emphasis on female solidarity, which is championed as an effective strategy to weaken the hold of patriarchy and subvert it in its aim to “divide and conquer”. It is this intersectional approach to children’s fantasy literature that is seen as the thesis’s main contribution to knowledge. The primary texts under examination are mainly from the United Kingdom, but also include works from the United States, Australia, and Germany. All of them were originally published between 1980 and 2013. The thesis explores heroism, beauty, magic, and gender performance in these works, showing how such themes can be dealt with in ways that are either reactionary and detrimental or progressive and empowering.
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Campbell, Nick. "Children's Neo-Romanticism : the archaeological imagination in British post-War children's fantasy." Thesis, University of Roehampton, 2017. https://pure.roehampton.ac.uk/portal/en/studentthesis/Children’s-Neo-Romanticism(d8dd7f80-d6a7-4e02-a103-c627adc0fad1).html.
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The focus of this study is a trend in British children’s literature concerning the ancientness of British landscape, with what I argue is a Neo-Romantic sensibility. Neo-Romanticism is marked by highly subjective viewpoints on the countryside, and I argue that it illuminates our understanding of post-war children’s literature, particularly in what is often called its Second Golden Age. Through discussion of four generally overlooked authors, each of importance to this formative publishing era, I aim to explore certain aspects of the Second Golden Age children’s literature establishment. I argue that the trend I critique is characterised by ambiguity, defined by the imaginative practice entailed in the archaeological view.
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Pavlik, Anthony. "A view from elsewhere : the spatiality of children's fantasy fiction." Thesis, University of Newcastle Upon Tyne, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10443/1891.
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Fantasy other worlds are often seen as alternatives with which to critique the ‘real’ world, or as offering spaces where child protagonists can take advantage of the otherness they encounter in their own process of maturation. However, such readings of fantasy other worlds, rather than celebrating heterogeneity, implicitly see ‘other’ spaces as ‘unreal’ and there either to support the real in some way, as being in some way inferior to the real, or in need of salvation by protagonists from the real world. This thesis proposes a reading of such texts that draws on social theories of constructed spatiality in order to examine first how, to varying degrees, and depending upon the attitude of authors towards the figure of the child, such ‘fantasy’ places can be seen as potentially real “thirdspaces” of performance and agency for protagonists, and thus as neutral spaces of activity rather than confrontation or growth and, second, how such presentations may be seen as reflecting back into the potential for the spatial activity of readers.
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Holcomb, Will. "The Sunken Country & Other Stories." OpenSIUC, 2020. https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/theses/2735.
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TITLE: THE SUNKEN COUNTRY & OTHER STORIESMAJOR PROFESSOR: Dr. Rebekah Frumkin The Sunken Country & Other Stories collects five works that place personal tales of alienation, repression, isolation, obsession, and romance and broader themes of dramatic shifts in the workings of culture and environment under a microscope and vivisect them with tools gathered from the New Weird tradition
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Porta, Fernando. "Narrative strategies in H.G. Wells's romances & short stories (1884-1910)." Thesis, University of Reading, 1996. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.339482.
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Varnado, Ethan C. "A Wonder Book." VCU Scholars Compass, 2017. http://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd/4965.
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This thesis is a collection of nine short stories about real people dealing with unreal problems. In one story, a small-town man answers a knock at his door, only to find three wisemen, who have followed a star and proclaimed him as their new messiah. In another, a reporter travels across the snowy length of Canada looking to interview people who have witnessed the Virgin Mary materialize above Toronto. Deranged Egyptologists, vampires with diseased blood, wacky witches, and unhappy mediums all inhabit tales whose landscapes span the distance between Chattanooga, Tennessee and the afterlife.
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Cupitt, Catherine Anne. "Space opera: a hybrid form of science fiction and fantasy." Thesis, Curtin University, 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/1082.
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This thesis considers space opera as a hybrid form of science fiction and fantasy.“Falling Stars,” the creative component which includes fantasy, space opera and science fiction stories, constitutes a spectrum of speculative fiction. In order to illustrate the similarities and difference between the genres represented in the spectrum, I focus on the central figure of the alien other and the ways in which such a figure can be gendered and embodied. The space opera novella combines motifs of both fantasy and science fiction within the figure of the cyborg, Orlando, who is transgendered and hyperchangeably embodied.The exegesis offers a theoretical context through which to view the creative work. I argue that space operas are melodramatic adventure stories, which operate as a hybrid form of science fiction and fantasy, using the non-realist expectations inherent in both, but mixing the extrapolations and icons of science fiction with the self-consistent but unbelievable discontinuities of fantasy. I also consider space opera’s tendency to exhibit a conservative, unexamined colonialistic imperative, with the attendant assumptions that create a potential for feminist subversion.
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Koras, Demetra. "Primrose and Other Stories." Digital Commons @ Butler University, 2020. https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/grtheses/519.
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Wylie, Erin N. "The Cunning Folk." ScholarWorks@UNO, 2016. http://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/2203.
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Chen, Jou-An. "An exploration of nature and human development in young adult historical fantasy." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2018. https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/282878.
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Traditional historical writing focuses on the cause and effect of human action, assuming that it is the historian's responsibility to recount the ebbs and flows of human progress. In the process of laying hold of the past as a narrative of human action, historical writing has developed the tendency to marginalise nature and undermine its power to influence the historical narrative. My investigation explores the fantastic in historical fantasy as a means of resisting historical writing's anthropocentrism. Historical fantasy uses fantastical elements to create counterfactual and alternative historical realities that have the potential to resist and undermine history's anthropocentric norm. My thesis examines four contemporary young adult historical fantasy trilogies that reimagine key turning points in history such as industrialisation, the American frontier, European imperialism, and World War I. They share the theme of retrieving and subverting anthropocentric discourses in the history of human development and thereby creating space for nature's presence and agency. My study finds that the fantastic is an effective means of subverting historical writing's anthropocentrism. But it also uncovers ambiguities and contradictions in historical fantasy's ecological revisionism, pointing to the idea that despite the fantastic's capacity for subversion, historical representations of nature cannot be separated from considerations of human identity and survival.
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Ibrahim, Wesam Mohamed Abdel-Khalek. "Towards an integrated approach to the analysis of text worlds in children's crossover fantasy fiction." Thesis, Lancaster University, 2010. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.547986.
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Ibrahim, Wesam. "Linguistic approaches to crossover fiction : towards an integrated approach to the analysis of text worlds in children's crossover fantasy fiction." Thesis, Lancaster University, 2011. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.684376.
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Chappell, Shelley Bess. "Werewolves, wings, and other weird transformations fantastic metamorphosis in children's and young adult fantasy literature /." Doctoral thesis, Australia : Macquarie University, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/1959.14/226.
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Thesis (PhD)--Macquarie University, Division of Humanities, Department of English, 2007.Bibliography: p. 239-289.
Introduction -- Fantastic metamorphosis as childhood 'otherness' -- The metamorphic growth of wings : deviant development and adolescent hybridity -- Tenors of maturation: developing powers and changing identities -- Changing representations of werewolves: ideologies of racial and ethnic otherness -- The desire for transcendence: jouissance in selkie narratives -- Conclusion -- Bibliography -- Appendix: "The great Silkie of Sule Skerry": three versions.
My central thesis is that fantastic motifs work on a metaphorical level to encapsulate and express ideologies that have frequently been naturalised as 'truths'. I develop a theory of motif metaphors in order to examine the ideologies generated by the fantastic motif of metamorphosis in a range of contemporary children's and young adult fantasy texts. Although fantastic metamorphosis is an exceptionally prevalent and powerful motif in children's and young adult fantasy literature, symbolising important ideas about change and otherness in relation to childhood, adolescence, and maturation, and conveying important ideologies about the world in which we live, it has been little analysed in children's literature criticism. The detailed analyses of particular metamorphosis motif metaphors in this study expand and refine our academic understanding of the metamorphosis figure and consequently provide insight into the underlying principles and particular forms of a variety of significant ideologies.
By examining several principal metamorphosis motif metaphors I investigate how a number of specific cultural beliefs are constructed and represented in contemporary children's and young adult fantasy literature. I particularly focus upon metamorphosis as a metaphor for childhood otherness; adolescent hybridity and deviant development; maturation as a process of self-change and physical empowerment; racial and ethnic difference and otherness; and desire and jouissance. I apply a range of pertinent cultural theories to explore these motif metaphors fully, drawing on the interpretive frameworks most appropriate to the concepts under consideration. I thus employ general psychoanalytic theories of embodiment, development, language, subjectivity, projection, and abjection; poststructuralist, social constructionist, and sociological theories; and wide-ranging literary theories, philosophical theories, gender and feminist theories, race and ethnicity theories, developmental theories, and theories of fantasy and animality. The use of such theories allows for incisive explorations of the explicit and implicit ideologies metaphorically conveyed by the motif of metamorphosis in different fantasy texts.
In this study, I present a number of specific analyses that enhance our knowledge of the motif of fantastic metamorphosis and of significant cultural ideologies. In doing so, I provide a model for a new and precise approach to the analysis of fantasy literature.
Mode of access: World Wide Web.
[12], 294 p
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Chew, Laureen. "Chinese American images in selected children's fiction for kindergarten through sixth grade." Scholarly Commons, 1986. https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/uop_etds/2131.
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The purpose of this study is to investigate Chinese American images in selected children's fiction to determine whether or not data support the position of the Council on Interracial Books for Children, that the works of fiction studied tend to stereotype Chinese Americans.
After reading the selected fifteen works of fiction, a criterion checklist was devised by the investigator to examine the behavior and lifestyle of Chinese Americans depicted in a variety of circumstances. validity of the criterion checklist was established by a panel of experts in the area of Chinese American studies. Inter-rater reliability was determined by two readers who utilized the criterion checklist to analyze the content of one lower elementary grade and one upper elementary grade work of fiction. Finally, the criterion checklist was used to analyze the fifteen works of fiction and draw conclusions related to the purpose of this study.
The findings in this study do support the conclusions of the Council on Interracial Books for Children that this group of fiction portrays Chinese Americans in a one dimensional, stereotypic manner. In the checklist items related to environment, food, utensils, physical attributes, cultural celebrations, occupations, and recreation, Chinese Americans were portrayed as adhering to Chinese-specific characteristics. However, in cross-cultural and behavioral items, Chinese Americans were portrayed as desiring Western-specific characteristics. This tendency was especially prevalent in upper elementary grade fiction. A more integrative or multi-dimensional view of Chinese Americans appreciating, and able to function well in, both cultural contexts is disconcertingly absent.
Based on the findings of this study, the following recommendations are made:
1. That teachers, librarians, and other school personnel who use this collection of books, supplement them with materials containing contemporary and realistic information about Chinese Americans.
2. That future writers of children's fiction dealing with Chinese Americans portray them in a multidimensional manner.
3. That curriculum writers of textbooks use a similar criterion checklist to offset the one-dimensionality of Chinese American images in existing children's literature.
4. That future writers of children's fiction on Chinese Americans utilize a criterion checklist such as the one in this study to assist them in developing multi-dimensional characters.
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Fleetwood, Carolyn. "Imarill of the star : an illustrated children's novel." Honors in the Major Thesis, University of Central Florida, 2002. http://digital.library.ucf.edu/cdm/ref/collection/ETH/id/273.
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This item is only available in print in the UCF Libraries. If this is your Honors Thesis, you can help us make it available online for use by researchers around the world by following the instructions on the distribution consent form at http://library.ucf.edu/Systems/DigitalInitiatives/DigitalCollections/InternetDistributionConsentAgreementForm.pdf You may also contact the project coordinator, Kerri Bottorff, at kerri.bottorff@ucf.edu for more information.Bachelors
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Crowe, Elizabeth A. "The Wit and Wisdom in the Novels of Diana Wynne Jones." Diss., CLICK HERE for online access, 2005. http://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/ETD/image/etd846.pdf.
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Day, Kathryn Dawn. ""Girls who kick butt" : a cognitive interpretation of Tamora Pierce's adolescent feminist fantasy." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2018. https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/284630.
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Recent empirical evidence supports the theoretical stance that fiction provides vicarious experiences of imagined spaces and situations that can help shape our perceptions of the real world, our social others, and the self. The implications for this are especially interesting for adolescents, as their brains undergo a restructuring during puberty, making them more responsive to change in executive function and social cognition. Few scholars have yet addressed how texts instruct young readers in how to use their developing cognition to assess characters' emotions and behavior, and how fiction can potentially affect these readers' cognitive and emotional development. This thesis analyzes the concept that potential adolescent readers can engage with a novel's characters' thoughts and behaviors by using their improving cognitive abilities to transmute what is on the page into real-life coping strategies. This phenomenon is especially compelling when considering the potential impact empowered female characters could have on adolescent girl readers, since their malleable brain around puberty makes them more receptive to accepting ideas - such as a person's gender not being a limitation. I examine what the primary texts themselves offer to potential readers, and analyze certain aspects of the texts that could be linked to potential readers' cognitive and affective engagement. The primary texts I have chosen are Tamora Pierce's two narrative quartets (The Song of the Lioness and Protector of the Small) that deal with characters from the fictional land of Tortall, as they focus closely on female characters in fantasy realms who are breaking gendered stereotypes by training to become knights. Pierce's books are representative of this adolescent feminist fantasy. I extrapolate that findings from this thesis will be applicable to other kinds of adolescent feminist fantasy texts; namely, that adolescent feminist fantasy fiction can beneficially change potential readers behavior and cognition.
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Chen, Jou-An. "Airship, Automaton, and Alchemy: A Steampunk Exploration of Young Adult Science Fiction." Thesis, University of Canterbury. Humanities, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/10092/7423.
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Steampunk first appeared in the 1980s as a subgenre of science fiction, featuring anachronistic technologies with a veneer of Victorian sensibilities. In recent years steampunk has re-emerged in young adult science fiction as a fresh and dynamic subgenre, which includes titles such as The Girl in the Steel Corset by Kady Cross, The Hunchback Assignment by Arthur Slade, and Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve. Like their predecessors, these modern steampunk novels for teens use retrofuturistic historiography and innovative mechanical aesthetics to dramatize the volatile relationship between man and technology, only in these novels the narrative is intentionally set in the context of their teen protagonist's social and emotional development. However, didactic conventions such as technophobia and the formulaic linearity of the bildungsroman narrative complicate and frustrate steampunk's representation of adolescent formation. Using case studies of Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld and The Alchemy of Stone by Ekaterina Sedia, retrofuturism and technological hybridity are presented as defining features of steampunk that subvert
young adult science fiction's technophobic and liberal humanist traditions. The dirigible and the automaton are examined as the quintessential tropes of steampunk fiction that reproduce the necessary amphibious quality, invoking new expressions and
understanding of adolescent growth and identity formation that have a distinctly utopian, nostalgic, and ecocentric undertone.
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Haschick, J. D. "The fellowship experience : an investigation into the shared exploration of children's fiction by teacher and pupils in the senior primary school." Thesis, Rhodes University, 1987. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1001440.
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Theodoropoulou, Athanasia. "Stories of initiation for the modern age : explorations of textual and theatrical fantasy in Jules Verne's Voyage à travers l'impossible and Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/4294.
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While the theatrical works of Jules Verne have gathered some critical attention over recent years, the text of the Voyage à travers l’Impossible has remained an obscure space in the author’s oeuvre or deemed unworthy by Vernian scholars. Jules Verne has predominantly been seen as a writer of adventure novels whereas the fantastic elements in his work have commonly been overlooked by critics. This thesis examines the ways in which the Voyage à travers l’Impossible amalgamates ideas that are representative not only of the Vernian work in general but also of the pre-freudian spirit of the nineteenth century. By viewing the play within the context of theatrical fantasy, this thesis opens up new paths of analysis in the genre. Part of this endeavour consists of a comparison with a seemingly disparate text: Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials, which, similarly to Verne’s play, facilitates an exploration of the function of fantasy both in literary and theatrical terms as it was first adapted for the stage in 2003. During the course of this thesis I offer an analysis of the trilogy and proceed to cover new ground by comparing this to an analysis of the adapted text. For the purpose of my examination I establish a connection between the two texts by regarding the Voyage à travers l’Impossible and His Dark Materials as dominated by the literary motif of initiation according to the model introduced by Vernian specialist Simone Vierne. I subsequently interweave an array of theories on fantasy, psychoanalysis, topography and the body as part of my analysis of the literary fantastic. Texts by Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, Tzvetan Todorov, Irène Bessière, Mircea Eliade, Judith Butler and Vernian critics such as William Butcher are amply used in my readings of Verne and Pullman before I proceed to examine their relevance to the theatrical experience of the fantastic. An analysis of the adaptation of His Dark Materials offers the opportunity for fresh critical insights by creating new perspectives on the function of fantasy in its fluctuation from page to stage and vice-versa. It is through these different perspectives that I revisit old questions and introduce new ones such as the difference between fantasy and the fantastic, their regressive or progressive character, the modification of ii fantastic elements on the passage from the literary to the theatrical and from pre-modernism to post-modernism. Basing my analysis on stories of initiation, I suggest that fantasy evades exclusive association with either progress or regress and only remains faithful to the notions of passage and blurring of frontiers.
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Inamoto, Masako. "Insignificance Given Meaning: The Literature of Kita Morio." The Ohio State University, 2010. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1282123908.
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Slatter, Angela Gaye. "Sourdough & other stories : a story told in parts (a mosaic novel and exegesis)." Thesis, Queensland University of Technology, 2012. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/50910/1/Angela_Slatter_Thesis.pdf.
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The mosaic novel - with its independent 'story-tiles' linking together to form a complete narrative - has the potential to act as a reflection on the periodic resurfacing of unconscious memories in the conscious lives of fictional characters. This project is an exploration of the mosaic text as a fictional analogue of involuntary memory. These concepts are investigated as they appear in traditional fairy tales and engaged with in this thesis's creative component, Sourdough and Other Stories (approximately 80,000 words), a mosaic novel comprising sixteen interconnected 'story-tiles'. Traditional fairy tales are non-reflective and conducive to forgetting (i.e. anti-memory); fairy tale characters are frequently portrayed as psychologically two-dimensional, in that there is no examination of the mental and emotional distress caused when children are stolen/ abandoned/ lost and when adults are exiled. Sourdough and Other Stories is a creative examination of, and attempted to remedy, this lack of psychological depth. This creative work is at once something more than a short story collection, and something that is not a traditional novel, but instead a culmination of two modes of writing. It employs the fairy tale form to explore James' 'thorns in the spirit' (1898, p.199) in fiction; the anxiety caused by separation from familial and community groups.
The exegesis, A Story Told in Parts - Sourdough and Other Stories is a critical essay (approximately 20,000 words in length), a companion piece to the mosaic novel, which analyses how my research question proceeded from my creative work, and considers the theoretical underpinnings of the creative work and how it enacts the research question: 'Can a writer use the structural possibilities of the mosaic text to create a fictional work that is an analogue of an involuntary memory?' The cumulative effect of the creative and exegetical works should be that of a dialogue between the two components - each text informing the other and providing alternate but complementary lenses with which to view the research question.
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Wallner, Lars. "I Have Dreamed a Dream... : An Analysis of H.G. Wells' Short Stories "Mr Skelmersdale in Fairyland", "The Door in the Wall" and "A Dream of Armageddon"." Thesis, Linköping University, Language and Culture, 2008. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:liu:diva-17555.
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"I Have Dreamed a Dream..." is an analysis of the three short stories "Mr Skelmersdale in Fairyland", "The Door in the Wall" and "A Dream of Armageddon" by H.G. Wells. The essay makes a comparison of the three short stories from the perspectives of the dreamland, the inner struggle of the protagonist and the message of the story. The purpose is to show that the three seemingly similar short stories have different outcomes and deliver different messages to the reader. The essay finally presents a theory of how these messages coincide despite their differences.
"Jag har drömt en dröm..." är en analys av de tre novellerna "Mr Skelmersdale in Fairyland", "The Door in the Wall" och "A Dream of Armageddon" av H.G. Wells. Uppsatsen gör en jämförelse av de tre novellerna utifrån tre perspektiv: drömvärlden, huvudpersonens inre kamp och historiens budskap. Syftet är att visa hur de tre till synes lika novellerna har olika resultat och presenterar olika budskap till läsaren. Uppsatsen framför slutligen en teori för hur dessa budskap överensstämmer trots sina olikheter.
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Godinho, Sally. "The portrayal of gender in the Children's Book Council of Australia honour and award books, 1981-1993." Connect to this title online, 1996. http://eprints.unimelb.edu.au/archive/00000337/.
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Glover, Jayne Ashleigh. "The Harry Potter phenomenon literary production, generic traditions, and the question of values." Thesis, Rhodes University, 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002243.
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This thesis is a study of the first four books of J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. It accounts for the widespread success of the novels by examining their publication and marketing histories, and their literary achievement as narratives including a sophisticated mix of generic traditions. Chapter One looks at the popularity of the novels, comparing their material production and marketing by Rowling’s English language publishers: Bloomsbury in Britain and Scholastic in the United States of America. The publisher’s influence on the public perception of each book is demonstrated by comparative study of its mode of illustration and layout. Further, the design of the books is linked to their strategic marketing and branding within the literary world. The second chapter considers Rowling’s debt to the school story. It concentrates first on the history of this relatively short-lived genre, briefly discussing its stereotypical features and values. Traditional elements of setting and characterisation are then examined to show how the Harry Potter novels present a value system which, though apparently old-fashioned, still has an ethical standpoint designed to appeal to the modern reader. Chapter Three focuses on the characterisation of Harry as a hero-figure, especially on how the influence of classical and medieval texts infuses Rowling’s portrayal of Harry as a hero in the chivalric mode. The episodes of “quest” and “test” in each book illustrate specifically how he learns the values of selflessness, loyalty, mercy and fairness. Chapter Four surveys the contribution of modern fantasy writing to the series. It shows how Rowling creates a secondary world that allows us to perceive magic as a metaphorical representation of power. This focus on the relationship between magic and power in turn has a bearing on our assessment of the author’s moral stance. The thesis concludes by suggesting that Rowling’s unusual mix of genres is justified by the values they share, and which are inscribed in her work: the generic combination forms a workable, new and exciting mode of writing that helps to account for the phenomenal popularity of the series.
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Mead, Heather Margret-Marie. "The effects of storytelling on student writing: A tool for the English language learner classroom." CSUSB ScholarWorks, 2002. https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/etd-project/2159.
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This thesis examines the use of storytelling as a tool to facilitate writing in English language learners. It examines specifically the effects storytelling had on the student use of expressive language, story structure and creativity in their writing. It also analyzed the enjoyment level storytelling brought to the writing experience of the student.
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Kim, Christine. "Munui (문의): Modern Adaptations of Korean Folk and Fairy Tales." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2018. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cmc_theses/1911.
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Oliveira, Margareth Laska de. "A leitura da erotização da infância e da cultura do estupro: denúncia social na obra Sapato de salto, de Lygia Bojunga." Universidade Tecnológica Federal do Paraná, 2017. http://repositorio.utfpr.edu.br/jspui/handle/1/2571.
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Esta pesquisa visou compreender a cultura do estupro e a consequente erotização da infância construídas pela sociedade patriarcal e representadas na literatura infantil e juvenil pelo romance Sapato de salto, de Lygia Bojunga, publicado em 2006. Assim, partindo da hipótese interpretativa de que a mídia tem uma grande influência na erotização e objetificação da criança, buscou perceber como a representação da cultura do estupro e a erotização da infância são construídas socialmente pelas mídias e reafirmadas na idealização da feminilidade e da masculinidade, em que se destaca uma espécie de amadurecimento precoce da infância como forma de justificativa para a violência sexual. Desse modo, a relevância desse trabalho se evidencia na necessidade de discutir e denunciar os crimes sexuais contra a infância, em que se deve dar voz àqueles que não têm espaços de fala na sociedade e estão vulneráveis dentro de uma cultura que naturaliza a erotização dos seus corpos e culpabiliza as vítimas pelos casos de pedofilia e prostituição infantil. Para tanto, utilizou-se das teorias feministas como base para se discutir as questões ligadas ao gênero presentes no romance, além disso, houve a necessidade de construção de um quadro teórico que trate das relações da obra com um ambiente tecnológico que enaltece o corpo feminino como objeto. Nesse sentido, utilizou-se da pesquisa exploratória e de levantamento bibliográfico sobre o assunto, possibilitando aprofundar o tema proposto, realizando uma análise de cunho qualitativo. Verifica-se que o sapato de salto utilizado pela personagem tia Inês e posteriormente pela personagem Sabrina nos momentos de prostituição, denota a tentativa de crescimento precoce para justificar a prostituição de uma criança. Assim, procurou compreender como é construído pela autora a simbologia do sapato em contraposição aos pés descalços, e como a sociedade de consumo enfatiza esse objeto, influenciando através das mídias, a erotização da infância, com a necessidade de evidenciar um discurso que transforma meninas precocemente em objetos sexuais. Além disso, verificou-se como a representação do sapato no romance remete intertextualmente ao conto de fadas Cinderela, que é recriado inesgotavelmente pela literatura e por diversas mídias. Destarte, essa pesquisa contribui para discussão e compreensão da cultura do estupro e da erotização da infância presentes na sociedade patriarcal, enfatizando a necessidade de reflexão sobre a temática e da busca pela proteção da infância e pelo fim da impunidade dos agressores sexuais. Além disso, a literatura se destacou como representação dessa sociedade que naturaliza a violência sexual.This research aimed to understand rape culture and the resulting eroticization of childhood built by the patriarchal society and represented in children’s literature, here in the novel “Sapato de Salto”, written by brazilian author Lygia Bojunga, and published in 2006. Based on interpretive hypothesis that the media has a great influence on the eroticization and objectification of the child, it sought to understand how the rape culture and the eroticization of hildhood are socially constructed by the media and reiterated in the idealization of femininity and masculinity, a kind of early maturity of childhood was highlighted as a form of justification for sexual violence. Thus, the relevance of this work is demonstrated in the need to discuss and to denounce child sexual abuse. It hould give voice to those who do not have speech space in the society and are vulnerable within a culture that naturalizes the eroticization of their bodies and blames the victims of pedophilia and child prostitution. For this purpose, feminist theories were used as a basis for discussing gender issues present in the novel, in addition, there was a necessity to construct a theoretical framework that deals with the relations between the novel and a technological environment that validates the female body as a sexual object. Therefore, it was used exploratory research and bibliographical survey about the subject, made it possible to deepen the proposed theme, carrying out a qualitative analysis. It was verified that the high heel shoe, used by the character aunt Inês and later by the character Sabrina, as prostitute, denotes the attempt of early maturity to justify the child prostitution. Thus, it sought to understand how the author builds the symbology of the shoe in contrast to the bare feet and how the consumer society emphasizes this object, influencing through the media the eroticization of childhood, in a need to highlight a discourse that transforms girls early into sexual objects. In addition, it was also verified how the representation of the shoe in the novel refers to the fairy tale of Cinderella, in a intertextual way. This tale is recreated inexhaustibly by the literature and by many other medias. Thus, this research contributes to the discussion and understanding of rape culture and the eroticization of childhood present in the patriarchal society, emphasizing the necessity for reflection about the theme and the pursuit for the protection of childhood and the end of the impunity of sexual aggressors and even more, literature has been stood out as a representation of this society that naturalizes sexual violence.
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Frederico, Aline. "Embodiment and agency in digital reading : preschoolers making meaning with literary apps." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2018. https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/283637.
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This dissertation investigates meaning-making in children's joint-reading transactions with literary apps. The analysis of meaning-making focuses on embodiment as a central aspect of literary app's texts and their reading and on children's negotiation of agency in the act of joint-reading. Meaning-making is understood through a multimodal social semiotics perspective, which considers that meaning is realised in the dynamic transaction between reader, text and social context. Therefore, the dissertation integrates the analysis of the apps and of the children's responses to capture the dynamics of meaning-making in such transactions. Case studies were conducted with six families, who read the apps The Monster at the End of This Book (Stone & Smollin, 2011) and Little Red Riding Hood (Nosy Crow, 2013) in an English public library. The central method of data collection involved video-recorded observations of parent-child joint-reading events, complemented by graphic elicitation, informal interviews and a questionnaire. The video data was analysed through multimodal methods. The findings indicate that the participant readers used their bodies not only as a material point of contact and activation of the interactive features but also as a resource for meaning-making in their transactions with the apps. The reader's body was essential in their engagement with the material and interactive affordances of the apps, in reader's expressions of their responses, and in the sharing of the reading experience with the parents. The body of the reader, through spontaneous and interactive gestures, is a mode of communication in the multimodal ecologies of both the text and the reader's responses. Furthermore, the child readers constantly negotiated their agency within the constraints posed by the text, which include the narrative itself and its interactive features, and those posed by the joint-reading situation. The bodies of the readers played an essential role in this dual negotiation of agency. Children's agency was scripted, that is, the readers exerted their agency within the limitations of a script. The script, however, allowed readers to improvise, and their performances also involved resistance to the script through playful subversion. In the joint-reading event, children's agency was foregrounded, positioning the children as protagonist readers, who performed most of the interactions and lived the aesthetic experience of the text fully, to the expense of their parents, who mostly participated as supporting readers, transferring their agency to the children through scaffolding.
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Potter, Mary-Anne. "Arboreal thresholds - the liminal function of trees in twentieth-century fantasy narratives." Thesis, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/10500/25341.
Full textAbstract:
Trees, as threshold beings, effectively blur the line between the real world and fantastical alternate worlds, and destabilise traditional binary classification systems that distinguish humanity, and Culture, from Nature. Though the presence of trees is often peripheral to the main narrative action, their representation is necessary within the fantasy trope. Their consistent inclusion within fantasy texts of the twentieth century demonstrates an enduring arboreal legacy that cannot be disregarded in its contemporary relevance, whether they are represented individually or in collective forests. The purpose of my dissertation is to conduct a study of various prominent fantasy texts of the twentieth century, including the fantasy works of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Robert Holdstock, Diana Wynne Jones, Natalie Babbitt, and J.K. Rowling. In scrutinising these texts, and drawing on insights offered by liminal, ecocritical, ecofeminist, mythological and psychological theorists, I identify the primary function of trees within fantasy narratives as liminal: what Victor Turner identifies as a ‘betwixt and between’ state (1991:95) where binaries are suspended in favour of embracing potentiality. This liminality is constituted by three central dimensions: the ecological, the mythological, and the psychological. Each dimension informs the relationship between the arboreal as grounded in reality, and represented in fantasy. Trees, as literary and cinematic arboreal totems are positioned within fantasy narratives in such a way as to emphasise an underlying call to bio-conservatorship, to enable a connection to a larger scope of cultural expectation, and to act as a means through which human self-awareness is developed.English Studies
D. Litt. et Phil. (English)
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Tierney, C. "The conventions of children's fantasy series : writing and publishing popular fiction." Thesis, 2022. https://eprints.utas.edu.au/47466/1/Tierney_whole_thesis.pdf.
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This thesis investigates the conventions that shape the subgenre of children’s fantasy as they manifest in traditionally published series. As a subgenre of popular fiction, children’s fantasy is entrenched in its genre and deeply engaged with the industry that produces it: the “inside” textual features and “outside” industry features of the subgenre are equally fundamental to understanding children’s fantasy. To develop an understanding of the textual and industrial dimensions as they work together to produce genre, I approach children’s fantasy through “conventions”—that is, the knowledges and practices that standardise novels and their production. Conventions enable an exploration of children’s fantasy that accounts for both its textual elements and its deep industry connectedness. Drawing on Howard S. Becker’s conceptualisation of conventions in “art worlds,” I conceive of two distinct kinds of conventions: “storytelling conventions” and “professional conventions.” Storytelling conventions comprise what we find in books, including the elements of plot, character and setting, as well as style and form. Professional conventions are those that inform perspectives regarding how the industry works, its processes, and the relationships between and behaviours of the people who produce books.
My thesis combines textual and paratextual analysis, analysis of book-related media (blogs, websites, published interviews), and primary interviews with participants engaged in the production of children’s fantasy to reveal how conventions shape the subgenre and to explicate their functions and effects. The first part of my thesis examines the location of children’s fantasy in the broader fiction industry, the professional values and relationships that drive the processes of book production in the subgenre and the storytelling conventions at its centre. Through this analysis, I consider how conventions shape children’s fantasy novels, always conceived as both creative works and commercial products. The second part of my thesis comprises case studies that examine specific elements of convention I identify as fundamental to children’s fantasy. I discuss conventions as enabling, elastic and reciprocal. These case studies discuss Rick Riordan’s multiple sequel series set in the world of Percy Jackson, Holly Black and Cassandra Clare’s Magisterium series and Jessica Townsend’s Nevermoor series. The concerns of these chapters are character branding, seriality and diversity in the first, creative collaboration in the second, and marketing and success in the third. These three areas of focus enable new insights into the core workings of convention in children’s fantasy.
The broad aim of this thesis is to enhance understanding of children’s fantasy and propose an approach to genres and subgenres of popular fiction that accounts for their multiple facets. In addition to advancing the study of popular fiction, my thesis contributes to the areas of children’s fiction and publishing studies. My thesis’s findings are relevant to researchers in all three areas, as well as to aspiring authors.
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Clark, Sherryl. "New (Old) Fairy Tales for New Children." Thesis, 2017. https://vuir.vu.edu.au/36015/.
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The creative thesis 'New (Old) Fairy Tales for New Children‘ makes a contribution to the field of creative writing research. It comprises creative work in the form of four fairy tales and a novel for upper primary/early high school readers (70%) and a short exegesis (30%). The creative work uses key fairy tale elements to tell new stories for contemporary children. The four fairy tales are intended to sit within the Western European tradition, drawing on the repetitions, cadence and storytelling voice of the tales collected by the Brothers Grimm.
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Herzog, Harold R. "Criminalistic fantasy : imagining crime in Weimar Germany /." 2001. http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&res_dat=xri:pqdiss&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:3000415.
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Potter, Mary-Anne. "The worlds between, above and below : "growing up" and "falling down" in Alice in Wonderland and Stardust." Diss., 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/10500/11870.
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The purpose of my dissertation is to conduct an intertextual study of two fantasy texts — Alice in Wonderland by Victorian author Lewis Carroll, and Stardust by postmodern fantasy author Neil Gaiman — and their filmic re-visionings by Tim Burton and Matthew Vaughn respectively. In scrutinising these texts, drawing on insights from feminist, children’s literature and intertextual theorists, the actions of ‘growing up’ and ‘falling down’ are shown to be indicative of a paradoxical becoming of the text’s central female protagonists, Alice and Yvaine. The social mechanisms of the Victorian age that educate the girl-child into becoming accepting of their domestic roles ultimately alienate her from her true state of being. While she may garner some sense of importance within the imaginary realms of fantasy narratives, as these female protagonists demonstrate, she is reduced to the position of submissive in reality – in ‘growing up’, she must assume a ‘fallen down’ state in relation to the male.English Studies
M.A. (English)
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Höfel, Anne-Kathrin [Verfasser]. "Current developments at the intersection of fantasy fiction and British children's literature / Anne-Kathrin Höfel." 2010. http://d-nb.info/1009463055/34.
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Clark, Louise Henriette. ""Making its own history" New Zealand historical fiction for children, 1862-2008 /." 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/10289/3959.
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Khoza, Solomzi Sonwabo. "The translation of humour in Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett's Good omens." Thesis, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/10539/21812.
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A research report submitted to the Faculty of Humanities University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Translation Johannesburg, 2016The aim of this paper is to investigate how the different types of humour in Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett's Good Omens have been translated into French and German as De Bons Présages and Ein Gutes Omen, respectively. This study applies frame semantics to analyse how the translators recreated the humour of the ST in the instances that they were able to do so. This theory examines how context is created and what expectations arise from an individual’s knowledge of context i.e. their understanding of the context and what the reader or hearer associates with it. The novel involves several subplots, but the same humorous elements such as puns, parody and an invented archaic variety of English appear throughout the book and it is the aim of this study to determine how these elements were dealt with by the translators. I will compare the two translations and determine how, and if each translator was able to recreate the same frames that made the ST humorous.
MT2017
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Verster, Helene. "Translating humour in children's literature: Dahl as a case study." Diss., 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10500/25414.
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Text in EnglishThis study focuses on the strategies and devices used to create humour in children’s literature. No language is a replica of another language and it is generally accepted that a translator has to be creative in order to make the Source Text (ST) meaning available to the Target Text (TT) reader. The research conducted in this study aims to fill a gap regarding the application of humour in the rather under-researched field of children’s literature. A descriptive framework was used to conduct this qualitative study in order to be able to describe the linguistic strategies and devices used to translate the English source text by Roald Dahl, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator into the Afrikaans Target Text, Charlie en die Groot Glashyser by Kobus Geldenhuys. Literary devices to create humour, employed by both the writer and the translator, were identified and analysed. Interviews and reading sessions with ST learners (English) as well as TT learners (Afrikaans) were conducted in order to observe their non-verbal reactions as well as document their verbal comments to complement the data obtained from the textual analysis. The textual analysis showed that the literary device most frequently applied in the ST was the simile and the main trend regarding the transference of humorous devices to the TT was to retain the device with formal equivalence. The most popular translation strategy was direct translation with the most important shifts identified on morphological and lexical level and shifts in expressive and evoked meaning were relatively low. With regard to the reading sessions, the most positive results from both groups of learners regarding humorous devices in the ST and TT were obtained for the device of inappropriate behaviour.
Linguistics and Modern Languages
M.A. (Linguistics)
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Gani, Safiyyah. "The fortifying and destructive power of love in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series." Thesis, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10500/5304.
Full textAbstract:
The aim of this study is to explore the importance of love in its various manifestations in
the lives of the Harry Potter characters and its power to consequently influence the
paths that they eventually choose to walk. Love is investigated as the reason behind the
choice between good and evil as well as paradoxically both a fortifying as well as a
destructive force. Furthermore, it attempts to examine the importance that love plays in
the healthy or dysfunctional development of the characters.
Numerous philosophies and theories that span two different eras will form the
theoretical framework of this research paper. There will be a constant interplay between
the theories and the main text, that is, the seven Harry Potter books that together
represent the Harry Potter series. Additionally, the author‟s opinion acquired from
invaluable fan interviews will be utilized in order to improve the understanding of the
characters motivations.
The introduction is a brief explanation of key terms and theories that are essential to the
exploration of love in the Harry Potter series. The study comprises five chapters. The
first three chapters are concerned with the three main manifestations of love
represented in the series, namely; parental love, friendship and romance respectively.
Chapter Four focuses on the adaptation of the novels into movies and the subsequent
result that this has on the depiction of love. Chapter Five highlights the finding of the
study conducted.English Studies
M.A. (English)