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1
Kane, Virginia M. "Taoism and Contemporary Environmental Literature." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2001. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc3047/.
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This thesis encompasses a survey of contemporary environmental literature (1970s to the present) as it relates to the tenets of Taoist literature, specifically the Chuang Tzu and the Tao te Ching. The thesis also presents and evaluates pertinent criticisms concerning the practice of relating modern environmental problems to ancient Chinese philosophy. The thesis contains a preface that describes the historic roots of Taoism as well as an explanation of the Chinese terminology in the paper. The environmental literature is divided into three major groups and discussed in the three chapters of the paper. The three groups include mainstream environmentalists, deep ecology, and ecofeminism.
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Harrison, Chloe. "Cognitive discourse grammar in contemporary literature." Thesis, University of Nottingham, 2013. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.659197.
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Cognitive poetics has largely drawn so far on psychological models, and only recently have researchers turned their attention to cognitive linguistics. Considering the insights drawn from systemic-functional models over the past few decades and the revolutionary analyses that cognitive linguistics has brought to the fore, several of the difficulties that arise in the stylistic application of Hallidayan, cognitive linguistic and narratological frameworks seem to be resolvable from the perspective of Langacker's Cognitive Grammar (Langacker 1993a, 1993b, 1999a, 1999b, 2001, 2007, 2008, 2009; see also Croft and Cruse 2004; Evans and Green 2006; Taylor 2002). Specifically, Cognitive Grammar offers a means of accounting for experiential organisation, the attenuation of experience and how it is simulated, in a literary reading. In this study I propose an extension of Cognitive Grammar towards a cognitive discourse grammar through the unique environment that literary stylistic application offers. Thus, this research aims to develop, almost from an incipient point, the application of Cognitive Grammar in literary analysis. Through the application of Cognitive Grammar concepts, a verifiable framework and methodological principles will be established, drawing upon points of contact with cognitive-narratological developments as well as upon elements of cognitive linguistics in the process. Such points of contact include but are not limited to similarities with text world theory, cognitive semantics, cognitive narratology, systemic-functional grammar, mindmodelling and structuralist approaches to narrative layering. Rather than suggesting CG as a replacement for these existing frameworks, this analysis instead involves providing a cognitive or CG-extension to their approach. As a data set for this application, I use examples of contemporary fiction, which both exemplify and challenge the central CG concepts.
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Bell, Richard 1972. "Towards a psychoanalytic aesthetics of contemporary literature." Monash University, German Studies, 2001. http://arrow.monash.edu.au/hdl/1959.1/8912.
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Brennan, Zoe. "Representations of older women in contemporary literature." Thesis, University of the West of England, Bristol, 2003. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.271040.
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This study argues that novels by contemporary women writers, such as Doris Lessing, May Sarton, Barbara Pym and Jenny Diski, through their representation of older female protagonists, create alternative discourses of ageing to those that dominate Western society. By placing these figures at the centre of their narratives, the texts counteract the silence and pejorative stereotyping that routinely surrounds the lives of the aged. The technique of studying literary representations of women is not new; in fact, it is a trusted part of feminist methodology. However, one of the assertions of this dissertation is that it is rarely used to investigate texts about the senescent, reflecting feminism's failure to include the older women in their theories. Part one of the dissertation examines such issues in depth, setting out the theoretical orientation of the study. It considers popular representations and paradigms of ageing, as well as considering the power of normalising discourse and dynamics of representation. Part two uses this material to analyse the strategies that British and North American authors have employed, since the 1960's, to challenge common stereotypes of older women. The first three chapters focus on novels that portray protagonists who display emotions, not usually associated with the old, which are revealed in relation to different aspects of ageing: anger and frustration (dependency); passion and desire (sexuality); and contentment (daily life). Chapter 7, 'The Wise and Archetypal Older Woman', shifts its attention away from more realist texts to study characters who emerge from the covers of ratiocinative fiction. It argues that conventional critiques of the genre often negate its more polemical elements, which is a result of their failure to use an age- and gender-aware approach and a problem that generally greets intelligent novels about female senescence. This thesis sees itself as part of a movement that aims to create a space in which older female characters' voices can be heard and recognised. It contends that the authors treated here produce visions of ageing that are not solely concerned with stagnation and decline. They represent a varied and compelling group of protagonists and, in doing so, illustrate that older women are worthy of literary, social and feminist interest.
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Petty, Sue. "Working-class women and contemporary British literature." Thesis, Loughborough University, 2009. https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/2134/5441.
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This thesis involves a class-based literary criticism of working-class women s writing. I particularly focus on a selection of novels by three working-class women writers - Livi Michael, Caeia March and Joan Riley. Their work emerged in the 1980s, the era of Thatcherism, which is a definitive period in British history that spawned a renaissance of working-class literature. In my readings of the novels I look at three specific aspects of identity: gender, sexuality and race with the intersection of social class, to examine how issues of economic positioning impinge further on the experience of respectively being a woman, a lesbian and a black woman in contemporary British society. I also appropriate various feminist theories to argue for the continued relevance of social class in structuring women s lives in late capitalism. Working-class writing in general, and working-class women s writing in particular, has historically been under-represented in academic study, so that by highlighting the work of these three lesser known writers, and by indicating that they are worthy of study, this thesis is also complicit in an act of feminist historiography.
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Pearse, Adetokunbo. "Aspects of madness in contemporary African literature." Thesis, University of Sheffield, 1985. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.250284.
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Ireson-Howells, Tristan. "Redemptive failure in contemporary American sports literature." Thesis, Canterbury Christ Church University, 2018. http://create.canterbury.ac.uk/17597/.
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This thesis explores America’s fascination with its own sports as purveyors of national identity. American literature has found unique inspiration in sporting competition, not only depicting professional athletes, but drawing from the experiences of fans and amateurs. While the athlete’s heroism and eventual fall has been analysed in previous discussions of this topic, my route of inquiry positions decline and defeat as more central and complex concepts. The focus of this thesis is on the remarkably diverse ways in which contemporary writers reimagine aspects of sporting failure both for their characters and within their own creative process. The centrality of failure seems an affront to the United States’ celebration of success and victory. However, the common strand in the most ambitious contemporary sports writing is to portray experiences of loss and failure as paradoxical routes to self-affirmation. Postmodern writing on sports has taken from the drama and narrative implicit in sporting contest, but uses this framework to question ideas of masculinity, ethnicity, memory and myth. The writers I discuss incorporate failure into these themes to arrive at points of redemptive discovery.
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McHugh, Ian Paul. "Liminal subjectivities in contemporary film and literature." Thesis, University of Sussex, 2012. http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/38659/.
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This thesis discusses the intersection of subjectivity and the liminal in contemporary literary and filmic texts. In discussion of eight texts, the thesis weighs the dual meaning of “liminal subjectivities” – the liminal space between subjectivities, and the condition of subjectivity as it negotiates the liminal. It aims to explore how liminality manifests in manners both universal and specific to the literary or filmic form, in the embodiments of characters, and the rhythms and poetics of the text. It considers the liminal a privileged trope of destabilised subjectivity, a space of suspension and potentiality, and explores how the liminal functions as an interface between haecceity and otherness; whether it binds together or holds apart; if it is a space between oppositional states or a continuum of specific sites of intensity. The eight texts discussed are The Rings of Saturn and Vertigo (W. G. Sebald), Sputnik Sweetheart, Kafka on the Shore, and After Dark (Haruki Murakami), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and The Science of Sleep (Michel Gondry), My Own Private Idaho (Gus Van Sant). The work of Sebald and Gondry is considered in translation from the original German and Japanese. The thesis considers both literary and filmic texts to contrast the salient modalities of subjectivity that each form constructs. Each chapter considers how liminality manifests at the surface of the text, how a liminal agency operates to interrupt, destabilise, and displace subjectivity in the spaces between languages, genre, form, voice, states of consciousness, word and image, facticity and fictionality, and cinematic and literary tropes and modes. The discussion explores how this is reflected and expanded upon within the text, in liminal embodiments, intensities, and motifs, such as the hypnagogic, rites of passage, the uncanny, home, the vespertine, night, metamorphosis, carnival, as well as issues of space – the non-place, the extraterritorial, and nomadic space.
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Montt, Strabucchi Maria. "Imagining China in contemporary Latin American literature." Thesis, University of Manchester, 2017. https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/theses/imagining-china-in-contemporary-latin-american-literature(39f1026f-5a85-4bd5-b9ac-db55a80d2e14).html.
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Since the late 1980s, there has been a steady production of Latin American narrative fiction in Spanish concerning China and the Chinese. Despite the work written about China and its relation to Latin America, no comprehensive examination of the representation of China in literature has been produced thus far. This thesis analyses nine novels in which China is the main theme, exploring how China has been represented in Latin American narrative fiction in recent decades. Using 'China' as a multidimensional term informed by Sara Ahmed's understanding of 'strangerness' (2000), this thesis first explores how the novels studied here both highlight and undermine assumptions about China that have long shaped Latin America's understanding of 'China'. Secondly, using theories of the fetish, it shows 'China' to be a kind of literary/imaginary 'third' term which reframes Latin American discourses of alterity. On one level, it is argued that these texts play with the way that 'China' stands in as a wandering signifier and as a metonym for Asia, a gesture that essentialises it as an unchanging other. On another level, it argues that the novels' employment of 'China' resists essentialist constructions of Latin American identity. 'China' is thus shown here to be a symbolic figure in Latin America, serving as a concept through which criticism of the construction of fetishised otherness becomes possible, as well as criticism of the exclusion inherent in essentialist discourses of identity, such as those contained in mestizaje. These discourses of mestizaje have traditionally emphasised racial and cultural mixture, and have excluded the Chinese from discourses of Latin American identity. As a result, 'China' is used here to deconstruct bound identities, interrupting discourses of otherness within Latin America. From this perspective, it is argued that these novels tend to gesture towards an understanding of identity as 'being-with', and community as inoperative, as developed by Jean-Luc Nancy (1991, 2000), whilst taking a cosmopolitan stance, as developed by Berthold Schoene (2011). The novels have been divided between those that set their stories in China, such as Cesar Aira's 'Una novela china' (1987); those that explore Chinese communities in Latin America, such as Ariel Magnus' 'Un chino en bicicleta' (2007); and those that focus on Latin American travel to China, such as Ximena Sanchez Echenique's 'El ombligo del dragon' (2007). Indebted to Ahmed's, Nancy's and Schoene's theoretical perspectives, Chapter 1 explores how 'China', as both a physical space and a discursive context, foregrounds negotiations of power in the histories of both China and Latin America. Chapter 2 studies how 'China' is used to recall and interrogate the notion of an indistinct 'oriental'. The final chapter seeks to understand the ways in which the novels articulate travel to China as a means of challenging Eurocentric structures and 'national' epistemologies. Ultimately, by disclosing the complex operations through which 'China' is represented in Latin American literary discourses, this study explores possible further reconfigurations of Latin American notions of identity and community as non-essentialist and in constant development.
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Campbell-Hall, Devon. "Writing Asian Britain in contemporary anglophone literature." Thesis, University of Winchester, 2008. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.502251.
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British identity has undergone a dynamic transformation over the past fifty years. The debates surrounding multiculturalism and the extent to which non-white Britons have genuinely integrated into mainstream British society have given rise to a generation of writing that arguably contends with these issues. Anglophone writers such as Monica Ali, Jamila Gavin, Maggie Gee, Raman Mundair, Ravinder Randhawa, Kami/a Shamsie, Zadie Smith and Meera Syal are amongst those contemporary writers who portray diverse aspects of Asian British communities, in which the Asian British characters arguablv subvert the Orientalist, colonialist binary of white over brown. Writers such as Michael Ondaatje, Arundhati Roy and Vikram Seth fictionally represent Indian students who come to Britain as temporary migrants on foreign study sojourns, using these students to interrogate the significance of an English education. These novels explode the reductive myth of Asian Britons as nice, well-behaved members of our multicultural society. This thesis demonstrates how these texts indeed interrogate depoliticised, sentimental portrayals of Asian Britons as harmless.
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Blacker, U. "Representations of space in contemporary Ukrainian literature." Thesis, University College London (University of London), 2011. http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1318068/.
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The thesis examines representations of space in Ukrainian literature from the late 1980s to the late 2000s. It argues that space in this period became an important preoccupation for Ukrainian writers. Representations of cities, architecture, regions, geopolitical spaces, the spaces of the home and of the body became common tropes through which authors tackled the pressing cultural and political issues of the era, and sought cultural and personal identity. The thesis discusses a wide range of leading contemporary Ukrainian authors, looking at their use of space and the aesthetic, cultural and political implications of this use. The thesis is divided into four chapters. The first focuses on the carnivalesque urban writing of the late 1980s and early 1990s, the second on postcolonial and post-Soviet space, the third on gendered space, and the final chapter on the relationship between time, space and text. The thesis argues that the preoccupation with space defined the way in which Ukrainian literature represented the world in the period in question, placing space as an equal and often privileged dimension over time. The second important consequence of this was the development of a spatial conception of text and language itself. The thesis demonstrates that in order to understand Ukrainian literature of the post-independence period, it is necessary to think of it in terms of space. It also argues that study of these texts can provide an understanding of space, both in literature and beyond it.
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Yearwood, Susan J. "Representation of madness in contemporary Black literature." Thesis, Sheffield Hallam University, 2005. http://shura.shu.ac.uk/20589/.
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This thesis uses Bakhtinian theory, in particular the chronotope, as well as insights into my personal writing and other texts to look at the representation of madness in contemporary black literature. The representation of madness is reflected in three texts by writers of African descent: Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat; Orange Laughter by Leone Ross and Paradise by Toni Morrison. I look at how madness as an instance of rupture and trauma relates to language used within the texts. I draw on Bakhtin's theories on language as a basis on which claims to madness in language, or text, are made. Bakhtin's theories are useful as he attempted to define social aspects of language in a way that illuminated the psycho-social in texts. In an attempt to further define aspects of the chronotope - which relates to the correlation between space and time within aspects of literature - it became useful to add the definition of the "mad" chronotope to aspects of language so that the literature in question could be seen through a new definition that was pertinent to the subject. The writers, Danticat, Ross and Morrison, all approach madness from differing viewpoints that help to emphasise the relationship between madness and the chronotope. This relationship is explored throughout the following chapters and helps to define the new concept of the "mad chronotope" as an aspect of language useful to the interpretation of texts. I analyse my personal writing by looking at madness and other relevant themes in relation to the novel and by relating ideas on Bakhtinian theory, notably the mad chronotope, to the creative process. In the second part of the novel, the protagonist suffers with schizophrenia within an extended period of time. At this point, the novel attempts to mirror the concerns of the thesis in relation to the mad chronotope and other themes relevant to the thesis so that there is a correlation between the two pieces of work.
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Maughan, Christopher. "Activism Ltd : environmental activism and contemporary literature." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2015. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/79823/.
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This thesis examines representations of environmental activism in contemporary literature. In general terms, this thesis understands activism to be a mode of politics that seeks to transform society, counter to forces of oppression and crisis. Precisely as a transformative or counter-hegemonic mode of politics, the actions, public perceptions, and representations (literary or otherwise) of activism and social movements mark out an extreme – though rarely understood – horizon of political agency and possibility. The thesis uses and adapts Fredric Jameson’s theory of the political unconscious to explore, via literary representation, the prospects, constraints, and capacities which exist in contemporary forms of environmental activism. It begins by considering novelistic representations of climate change that display a tension between ‘fast-violent’ and gradual or historically-embedded forms of environmental change. The thesis then moves on to consider novelistic fiction that displays evidence of the intertwining of environmental crises and neoliberal governmentalities. A later chapter turns to a more specific site of resistance – food production – examining novelistic fiction that not only thematises the emergence of particular forms of resistance, but also aesthetically and formally registers agroecological theory and practice. The final chapter moves away from fictive writing and investigates the ways in which literary non-fiction presents a new kind of critical problem regarding the accuracy of its representations of activism; namely, the tensions which emerge between realist and speculative registers. To date, there has been a relative lack of attention paid to representations of activism in environmental literary and cultural criticism. A critical study of the cultural representation of environmental social movements will, I argue, yield valuable insights into how environmental problems are articulated and the forms of activism in use today, along with the contradictions, tensions – and even unintended harmonies – between environmentalism and mainstream political and economic trends.
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LaDuke, Aaron J. "Gothic Trends in Contemporary Great Plains Literature." Ohio University / OhioLINK, 2013. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1368028912.
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Petrides, Sarah I. "The postregional turn in contemporary American literature." View abstract/electronic edition; access limited to Brown University users, 2008. http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&res_dat=xri:pqdiss&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:3318350.
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Lechner, Judith. "Matters of Recognition in Contemporary German Literature." Thesis, University of Oregon, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/1794/19680.
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This dissertation deals with current political immigration debates, the conversations about the philosophical concept of recognition, and intercultural encounters in contemporary German literature. By reading contemporary literature in connection with philosophical, psychological, and theoretical works, new problem areas of the liberal promise of recognition become visible. Tied to assumptions of cultural essentialism, language use, and prejudice, one of the main findings of this work is how the recognition process is closely tied to narrative. Particularly within developmental psychology it is often argued that we learn and come to terms with ourselves through narrative.
The chosen literary encounters written by Alev Tekinay, Emine Sevgi Özdamar, Maxim Biller, Rafael Seligmann, and Finn-Ole Heinrich magnify this particular human experience on an aesthetic level and dismantle “mechanisms of recognition,” particularly three aspects illustrating the recognition process: the role of the narrator and his or her description of the characters, the construction of family bonds within the texts, and the linguistic and cultural practice of naming with all of its connotations.
Within the chosen texts there is no unified depiction of the recognition process, but rather the texts elucidate a multidimensionality of this concept, tying it closely to the political, social, and aesthetic sphere. In this context the analysis brings to light that the notion of “authenticity” crucially informs recognition as well as the circumstances of a power imbalance that dominates the process. My analysis shows that contrary to popular assumptions in philosophical and political debates, the concept of recognition turns out to be rather limiting instead of liberating.
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Pini, Sara <1991>. "Holocaust postmemory in contemporary anglophone children's literature." Doctoral thesis, Alma Mater Studiorum - Università di Bologna, 2022. http://amsdottorato.unibo.it/10406/1/Pini%20tesi%20dottorale%20.pdf.
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This dissertation discusses contemporary Anglophone children’s literature representing the Holocaust and it claims that, through the reading of historical novels, children can acquire a specific kind of postmemory, which I call ‘attitudinal postmemory’. The works analyzed have been written by ‘non-related’ authors, meaning writers who are not witnesses nor their descendants. Attitudinal postmemory is based on the readers’ establishment of a personal-emotional link with the Holocaust by means of narrative empathy towards the characters; it is an ‘active’ kind of memory because it will hopefully convert into an informed, respectful attitude towards peers that opposes the Nazi ideology.
The dissertation is structured into two main parts. Part One provides an overview of the origins and development of Holocaust memory in Western countries. Chapter 1 introduces two major historiographical-literary debates and the following chapter discusses three main issues concerning the representation of the Holocaust (naming, the need to represent, and the ‘right to’ represent) while considering the forms and genres traditionally used and considered ‘appropriate’. Focusing on the scope of literary narratives, Chapter 3 explains how the presence of a personal-emotional link is essential to acquire Holocaust postmemory and, in particular, attitudinal postmemory. The criteria adopted with regard to the case studies are described in Chapter 4.
Part Two discusses the process of interweaving historical truth with fiction and how historical fiction helps child readers acquire attitudinal postmemory. After a brief overview of the genre in Chapter 5, Chapter 6 probes how it is possible to meet the two main expectations of historical fiction while avoiding a disrespectful stance towards the Holocaust. Chapter 7 discusses the idea of empathy and some issues in the representation of Nazi evil, while Chapter 8 offers a comparative analysis of the case studies proposed, including authors from the UK, Ireland, Australia, and the USA.
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Wattenbarger, Melanie. "Reading Postcolonialism and Postmodernism in Contemporary Indian Literature." Ohio Dominican University / OhioLINK, 2012. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=odu1351102017.
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Rogers, Alan. "The contemporary horror film." Thesis, Sheffield Hallam University, 1990. http://shura.shu.ac.uk/3121/.
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This thesis approaches the contemporary horror film from a number of directions. Firstly, it is considered in relation to the historical roots of horror fiction, the tradition of the literary Gothic which stretches back as far as the late eighteenth century. The same chapter elaborates the broad outline of a methodology, drawing upon an established body of genre theory in both literary and film studies, which is then applied to the gradual diffusion of the Gothic legacy into the related genres of detective stories/thrillers, horror, and science-fiction, the inter-relatedness of these three genres forming part of the cultural context for modern horror. Chapter 3 considers Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) in relation to the structures and iconography of the original Gothic, and in the light of its fusion of conventions drawn from the horror film and the thriller. Chapter 4 compares this film with a similarly influential movie - Halloween - made almost two decades later, assessing some of the changes which the genre has undergone in the intervening period. The following five chapters (5-9) discuss a number of films of the period 1968 - 80, paying particular attention to works that have figured prominently in the established critical literarure around the genre, both as an appraisal of existing approaches and as an indication of the immediate context for developments over the last decade. The remaining four chapters (10 - 13) consider some developments of the 1980's, disputing the critical construction of the "body horror" category and providing an account of the horror-comedies which have generally been neglected by critics. The conclusion involves a synthesis of the material covered and a return to the Gothic tradition in order to conceptually situate the findings. There is an extensive biblography involving a variety of material ranging from popular magazines and newspapers to influential academic works, drawn more or less equally from the fields of literary criticism and film studies.
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Herlambang, Wijaya. "Exposing state terror : violence in contemporary Indonesian literature /." [St. Lucia, Qld.], 2005. http://www.library.uq.edu.au/pdfserve.php?image=thesisabs/absthe18905.pdf.
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Hunt, Kevin T. Salgado María Antonía. "Beyond indigenismo contemporary Mexican literature of indigenous theme /." Chapel Hill, N.C. : University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2007. http://dc.lib.unc.edu/u?/etd,805.
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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2007.<br>Title from electronic title page (viewed Dec. 18, 2007). "... in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures (Spanish-American)." Discipline: Romance Languages; Department/School: Romance Languages.
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Heinze, Rüdiger. "Ethics of literary forms in contemporary American literature /." Münster : LIT, 2005. http://bvbr.bib-bvb.de:8991/F?func=service&doc_library=BVB01&doc_number=013366740&line_number=0001&func_code=DB_RECORDS&service_type=MEDIA.
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Jones, Ffion Wynne. "Relative strangers : father-daughter incest in contemporary literature." Thesis, Bangor University, 2005. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.432794.
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Dragas, Areti. "The return of the storyteller in contemporary literature." Thesis, Durham University, 2007. http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/2877/.
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This thesis sets out to identify a growing interest in storytelling in contemporary literature, which I argue is reflected in the return of the figure of the storyteller. This interest in storytelling and stories seems to be inter-disciplinary and is reflected not only in literary critical discourses such as postmodernism and the postcolonialist interest in oral traditions, but also in arc as such as cognitive and evolutionary science, which have presented stories as necessary for survival. However, despite this, the role of the storyteller has been relatively neglected in literary criticism and theory, a neglect that may have arisen in part because of the recent preoccupation with writing and textuality, which has led criticism to focus debates on the figure of the author. This thesis sets out to address this omission. The role of the storyteller in contemporary Western fiction is еxplored alongside some examples of postcolonial and hybrid fictions. I draw largely on methodologies from narrative and postmodernist theory, and investigate the preoccupation of the storyteller through a reading of six contemporary authors chosen as a representative sample of contemporary fiction today. These are: Jim Crace, Mario Vargas Llosa, Salman Rushdie, John Barth, A.S. Byatt and J M. Coetzee. Through the close reading of a selection of their novels, I reveal how the storyteller, and the art of storytelling, are genuine preoccupations in their works. Moreover, I show how, through their employment and problematisation of the figure of the storyteller, these writers all raise questions about the role and value of fiction and real authors. Surprisingly, the infamous 'death of the author' has produced a rebirth of the storyteller. The storyteller has returned and provides us with some new and useful tools with which to re-map the territories of contemporary fiction.
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Smith, William Leon. "Torontos : representations of Toronto in contemporary Canadian literature." Thesis, University of Nottingham, 2012. http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/14507/.
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This thesis examines how representations of Toronto in contemporary Canadian literature engage with place and further an understanding of spatial innovation in literature. Acknowledging the Canadian critical tradition of discussing place and space, the thesis moves the focus away from conventional engagements with wilderness motifs and small town narratives. In this way the thesis can be seen to respond to the nascent critical movement that urges engagement with contemporary urban spaces in Canadian literature. Responding to the critical neglect of urban representation, and more particularly, representations of Toronto in Canadian literary criticism, this thesis examines Toronto as a complex and contradictory site of symbolic power across critical, political and popular discourses. Furthermore, this thesis repositions an understanding of Toronto by paying attention to literary texts which depict the city's negotiation of national, local and global forces. The thesis seeks to understand the multiplicity of the city in lived, perceived and conceived forms - seeing Toronto as Torontos. Questioning existing frameworks deployed in Canadian literary criticism, the thesis develops a unique methodology with which to approach the complex issues involved in literary writing about place, drawing on contemporary Canadian criticism and transnational approaches to critical literary geography. The central chapters focus on four texts from the twenty-first century, three novels and one collection of poetry, approaching each text with a critically informed spatial lens in order to draw out how engagements with Toronto develop spatial innovation within literature. The thesis analyses how engaging with Toronto challenges writers to experiment with literary form. In turn the thesis seeks to elucidate the spatial developments achieved through literary writing. The thesis then demonstrates an understanding of the material geography of the city, situating readings with reference to interview material from parties involved in writing, producing and distributing literary depictions of Toronto. Hence it combines traditional literary criticism with a spatially and socially engaged criticism, in order to clearly address the literary geographies of Torontos.
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VIDAL, PALOMA. "AFTER ALL: PATHS IN LATIN AMERICAN CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE." PONTIFÍCIA UNIVERSIDADE CATÓLICA DO RIO DE JANEIRO, 2006. http://www.maxwell.vrac.puc-rio.br/Busca_etds.php?strSecao=resultado&nrSeq=9407@1.
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COORDENAÇÃO DE APERFEIÇOAMENTO DO PESSOAL DE ENSINO SUPERIOR<br>A tese acompanha as trajetórias de Diamela Eltit, João
Gilberto
Noll e Rodolfo Enrique Fogwill, realizando através do
trabalho desses
três escritores uma cartografia das questões estéticas e
políticas
que atravessam as últimas décadas. Seus projetos
narrativos, tão
diferentes entre si quanto pertinentes para nosso tempo,
foram
marcados por uma perda de sentido referente às crises da
utopia
revolucionária e vanguardista, que se torna visível na
transição da
ditadura à pós-ditadura. A partir dessa perda, surgirão
algumas
alternativas para uma literatura por vir: uma escrita
performática, que
coloca em jogo o corpo do próprio escritor para dar
sentido aos
trânsitos contemporâneos, no caso de Noll; uma escrita
agonística, que
faz da provocação cínica uma arma contra a apatia
contemporânea, no
de Fogwill; uma escrita resistente, que deixa ver os
efeitos perversos
do consenso neoliberal, no de Eltit.<br>This thesis follows the paths of Diamela Eltit, João
Gilberto Noll
and Rodolfo Enrique Fogwill, charting, through their
works, the territory
of aesthetical and political questions of the last
decades. The narrative
projects of these writers, as distinct from each other as
they are
pertinent to our time, were marked by a loss of meaning
that relates to
the crisis of revolutionary and avant-garde utopias, which
becomes
visible in the transition from dictatorship to post-
dictatorship. Taking this
loss as a starting point, some alternatives for a
literature to come will
appear: a performatic writing, that puts in place the body
of the writer
himself to give sense to contemporary transits, in Noll´s
case; an
agonistic writing, that uses cynical provocation as a
weapon against
contemporary apathy, in Fogwill´s; a resistant writing,
that allows us to
see the perverse effects of the neoliberal consensus, in
Eltit´s.
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CONDE, MIGUEL BEZZI. "VOICES AND CARICATURES: ESSAYS ON CONTEMPORARY BRAZILIAN LITERATURE." PONTIFÍCIA UNIVERSIDADE CATÓLICA DO RIO DE JANEIRO, 2010. http://www.maxwell.vrac.puc-rio.br/Busca_etds.php?strSecao=resultado&nrSeq=33045@1.
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PONTIFÍCIA UNIVERSIDADE CATÓLICA DO RIO DE JANEIRO<br>PROGRAMA DE SUPORTE À PÓS-GRADUAÇÃO DE INSTS. DE ENSINO<br>A dissertação reúne cinco ensaios sobre a ficção brasileira contemporânea, articulados em torno da ideia de que os anos 1990 e 2000 são um momento de crise dos conceitos que demarcavam o valor e lugar da literatura no Brasil. Se entre nós o valor literário foi muitas vezes pensado em função de seu índice de
verdade ou medida de utilidade, as fraturas atuais nas noções de História e Nação ajudam a redefinir interesses, prioridades, referências e caminhos dos autores brasileiros. Discussão que não implica um experimentalismo ensimesmado, mas antes um jogo político, no sentido de busca de um lugar. Num tal contexto, o surgimento de vozes narrativas que vinculam o narrado a uma determinada inflexão afetiva aparece como contraponto às incertezas, instaurando um novo tipo de assertividade que orienta e circunscreve a imaginação do leitor. Uma rediscussão da distinção feita por Blanchot entre falar e ver, e da experiência de leitura como descrita por Iser, abre caminho para o exame da tensão entre visão de
mundo e modo de ver inerente ao texto literário, e fundamenta o desenvolvimento da noção de uma literatura caricatural, que permite a constatação de afinidades entre autores aparentemente díspares, como João Anzanello Carrascoza, André Sant Anna e Marcelino Freire. Apresentados em conjunto, os três são também pensados em separado, em leituras críticas apoiadas na discussão das noções de kitsch, engajamento político e valor do ordinário.<br>This dissertation is composed of five essays about contemporary Brazilian literature, organized around the idea that the 1990s and 2000s are a moment of crisis in the concepts that traditionally defined the value and place of literature in Brazil. If among us literary value has often been measured according to its degree
of truth or usefulness, the current fractures in the notions of History and Nation help to redefine the preoccupations, priorities, references and practices of Brazilian authors. This does not result in an insular experimentalism, but rather in a political effort, in the sense of search for a place. In such a context, the
emergence of narrative voices that link the narrated events to a determined affective inflection appears as a counterpoint to uncertainties, establishing a new kind of assertiveness that guides and circumscribes the reader s imagination. A discussion of Blanchot s distinction between speaking and seeing, and of the
experience of reading as described by Iser, opens up the way for the analysis of the tension between the point of view and the viewpoint intrinsical to literary texts, and supports the development of the notion of a caricatural literature, which allows the recognition of affinities between apparently incompatible authors, such as João Anzanello Carrascoza, André Sant Anna e Marcelino Freire. Although presented as a group, they are also examined individually, in critical readings that rely on the discussion of such notions as kitsch, political commitment and the value of the ordinary.
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Panzarella, Gioia. "Disseminating migration literature : a dialogue with contemporary Italy." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2018. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/113827/.
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This thesis engages with migration literature in Italian keeping at the centre of the analysis its dissemination. I argue that this approach offers new insights into the ways migration dialogues with contemporary Italian literature - and, more generally, with contemporary Italy - with a focus on the work of translingual authors writing in Italian. The aim of this research is not to engage critically with the body of texts written by migrant writers. Rather, it focuses on sites of dissemination of this production, analysing the aims, content, and outcomes of selected case studies from this perspective. Key concerns are the public perception of migration and growing attention in the media: this thesis seeks to explore to what extent these tensions emerge when migration literature is communicated to a wide public audience and whether they affect the way in which these writers and their works are presented. This thesis considers these case studies in relation to the scholarly debate on transnational and migration literature in Italian. Thanks to the notion of 'cultural intermediary', I discuss the role and prerogatives of agents involved, for example the creative nature of their work. The case studies cover a range of time that spans from the early nineties to 2017 and they include: initiatives devoted specifically to migration literature such as series of book launches and workshops (Centro culturale Multietnico La Tenda in Milan, Seminari della Sagarana); television broadcasts (with a focus on three television broadcasts on the Italian public television channel RAI 3); educational materials for schools; and writers (Compagnia delle poete and Gabriella Ghermandi). Thanks to this approach, this thesis inserts some crucial moments of the dissemination of migration literature in Italian into a polycentric network of initiatives that uses the internet as a means to communicate and as a repository of materials. The thesis demonstrates the impact that these modes of dissemination have had not only on reception, but also on artistic practices and the production of literary texts.
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Wilson, Joanna Katherine. "Violent-eye literature : contemporary American narratives of causality." Thesis, University of Leicester, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/2381/40766.
Full textAbstract:
During the 1990s, a number of violent homodiegetic narrators appeared in what I call “violent-eye fiction”, that which is written from the continually immersive first-person perspective of a violent protagonist. This sub-genre of transgressive fiction is used in this thesis to question whether a first-person protagonist can ever be a completely unsympathetic character, or whether narratives of causality reconfigure violent narrators into multifaceted, complex, and ultimately familiar individuals. Structured around four chapters, the thesis takes a comparative and thematic approach that enables me to argue that violent-eye texts are ultimately narratives of causality by charting the progression of the violent-eye protagonist out of childhood, into adolescence, and ultimately into adulthood, with the first three chapters reflecting this movement. Aetiological violence is the subject of the first two chapters, with childhood trauma and mother blame explored in Chapter One through textual analysis of A. M. Homes’ The End of Alice (1996a) and Jeff Lindsay’s Dark Dreaming Dexter (2004), and adolescent trauma and absent fathers analysed in Chapter Two in relation to Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club (1996) and Don de Grazia’s American Skin (1998). Ontological violence is the subject of Chapter Three, in which adult violence and sexual desire are explored, particularly in relation to the problematic conflation in some novels of violence and homosexuality, including Joyce Carol Oates’ Zombie (1995) and Poppy Z. Brite’s Exquisite Corpse (1996). Finally, Chapter Four looks at Stephen King’s Rage (1977a) and Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk about Kevin (2003a) in order to explore the absence of school shooters in 1990s fiction. This discussion brings the thesis full circle by returning to reassess the concept of the unsympathetic character and showing how the absence of school shooters from violent-eye fiction of the 1990s onwards arguably indicates that they fall into this category.
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Burkey, Adam P. "Prisoners of Loss: Melancholia in Contemporary American Literature." Miami University / OhioLINK, 2013. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=miami1374594525.
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Arzac, Sergio. "Spanish Migration in Contemporary Spanish Literature and Film." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2011. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc84163/.
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Spain underwent drastic social and political changes in the last decades of the twentieth century which also affected the nation’s patterns of emigration. Contemporary Spanish literature and film that portray these decades reflect the country’s fluctuating characteristics of migration. ¡Vente a Alemania, Pepe! (1971) by Pedro Lazaga, Coto vedado (1985) by Juan Goytisolo, El hijo del acordeonista (2003) by Bernardo Atxaga, and Yoyes (2000) by Helena Taberna demonstrate Spain’s migration trends during the last years of Franco’s dictatorship and the transition to democracy. The nation’s highly increased socioeconomic development in the 1970s and 1980s which eventually led to a first-world status also affected emigration, which can be seen in Carlota Fainberg (1999) by Antonio Muñoz Molina, Kasbah (2000) by Mariano Barroso, Restos de carmine (1999) by Juan Madrid, and Map of the Sounds of Tokyo (2009) by Isabel Coixet.
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Chiaruttini, Riccardo. "Exile, migration, and borders in contemporary Italian literature." [Bloomington, Ind.] : Indiana University, 2008. http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&res_dat=xri:pqdiss&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:3319907.
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Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of French & Italian Studies, 2008.<br>Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on May 11, 2009). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 69-08, Section: A, page: 3167. Adviser: Andrea Ciccarelli.
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van, Heerden Imke. "The vulnerable body in contemporary South African literature." Thesis, University of York, 2015. http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/10686/.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis examines a selection of South African literary texts written in English and published after 2000, arguing that these works of literature illustrate the ways in which the exigencies of the vulnerable body – brutal violence, HIV/AIDS, and social inequality – complicate attempts to transcend discrimination in contemporary South Africa. Consequently, the study concentrates on representations of the vulnerable body that specifically destabilise fixed categories of identity, thus instantiating the literary ethics of interconnection that comprises its main focus. Each of the five chapters, “Sex”, “Skin”, “Blood”, “Taste”, and “Tongue”, considers a primary text by one South African author, foregrounding a particular body part that plays an important role in the work’s exploration of vulnerability. The thesis engages with different genres, which range from narrative non-fiction to cyberpunk, in addition to diverse and controversial subject positions such as “victim”, “coloured”, “HIV-positive”, “cool”, and “Afrikaner”. The selected texts develop new modes of understanding the body’s vulnerability in order to unsettle the binary oppositions that continue to shape post-apartheid society. Discursive strategies by which this is achieved include Margie Orford’s “counter-derivatisation” in Like Clockwork, Zoë Wicomb’s tact in Playing in the Light, Jonny Steinberg’s clash of epistemologies in Three Letter Plague, Lauren Beukes’s aesthetics of cool in Moxyland, and Antjie Krog’s vocabulary of grace in A Change of Tongue. Following Fanon’s plea, “O my body, always make me a man who questions!”, the ideal post-apartheid author would be one who draws on the body’s potential for self-definition, ambiguity, and change in spite of decades of deep-seated discrimination. The thesis ultimately concludes that sustained critical engagement with representations of the vulnerable body is vital to the project of national reconciliation.
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Rountree, Wendy Alexia. "THE CONTEMPORARY AFRICAN-AMERICAN FEMALE BILDUNGSROMAN." University of Cincinnati / OhioLINK, 2001. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin997212820.
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Livesay, Sarah Lindsay. "Literature as memorial: challenging histories and reckoning with absences through contemporary American literature." Diss., University of Iowa, 2016. https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/6982.
Full textAbstract:
What are the intersections between literary and memorial studies? This study interrogates that question by combining critical readings of contemporary American literature (1969-present) with national memorials. My method of reading moves between physical memorials that provide canonical representations of American historical events and textual memorials that provide literary counter-readings of the same events. These texts challenge traditional memorial-making by reframing the discourses for the ways memorials function in American culture.
The study of memorial traverses several disciplines and fields of scholarship. Within the broad field of memorial studies, this dissertation examines the concerns of physical monuments and memorials, memory and counter-memory, trauma and terror, place and community, and absence and haunting. Situating both literary and physical memorials within these interconnected frameworks offers an interdisciplinary and multidirectional understanding of what memorials can be, what they mean, and what they do in the contemporary era.
A useful way to understand how literature can be framed as memorial is through recognizing its overlap with Pierre Nora’s concept of “lieux de mémoire,” or sites of memory. Nora defines lieux de mémoire as sites where memory eternally lingers. These lieux “are fundamentally remains, the ultimate embodiments of a memorial consciousness” (12). Commemorative texts fall into this categorization because of their existence as purely symbolic objects that nevertheless address the many interests of history and memory. Literature utilizes imaginative and emotive modes to reframe the ways in which sites of memory can work in American culture. In this way, they become “the ultimate [embodiment] of a memorial consciousness.”
The literature analyzed in this dissertation enriches memorial studies by adopting forms of counternarrative as radical frameworks for thinking and rethinking American memorialization. Literature’s theoretical production of memorial contrasts with most national memorials’ physicality. Thus, it is worth considering how literary abstraction allows for different ways of responding to history and trauma. The literary memorial’s dialogic facilities allow it to be subversive without seeking legitimacy from the national organizations that typically approve of the nation’s large built memorials. Therefore, literature does not perform merely as memorial but also as countermemorial. The countermemorial challenges authoritative structures by questioning patriotic tropes, resisting nationalistic expression, and reconstructing historical understanding. In doing so, it posits lyric and fiction as valid methods of truth-telling and memorial-making.
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Reginio, Robert, David Houston Jones, and Katherine Weiss. "Samuel Beckett and Contemporary Art." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2017. https://www.amzn.com/3838210794/.
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This groundbreaking collection from scholars and artists on the legacy of Beckett in contemporary art provides readers with a unique view of this important writer for page, stage, and screen. The volume argues that Beckett is more than an influence on contemporary art―he is, in fact, a contemporary artist, working alongside artists across disciplines in the 1960s, 1970s, and beyond.The volume explores Beckett's formal experiments in drama, prose, and other media as contemporary, parallel revisions of modernism's theoretical presuppositions congruent with trends like minimalism and conceptual art. Containing interviews with and pieces by working artists, alongside contributions of scholars of literature and the visual arts, this collection offers an essential reassessment of Beckett's work. Perceiving Beckett's ongoing importance from the perspective of contemporary art practices, dominated by installation and conceptual strategies, it offers a completely new frame through which to read perennial Beckettian themes of impotence, failure, and penury. From Beckett's remains, as it were, contemporary artists find endless inspiration.<br>https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu_books/1182/thumbnail.jpg
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Bleeker, Joshua James. "The Trinity and spiritual growth in contemporary evangelicalism." Online full text .pdf document, available to Fuller patrons only, 2004. http://www.tren.com.
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Moran, Alexander James Paul. "Cultural reproduction in contemporary American fiction." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2017. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/7683/.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis traces the ways in which David Foster Wallace, Jonathan Franzen, Michael Chabon, Jennifer Egan, and Colson Whitehead react against the historical, institutional, and formal limits imposed upon contemporary fiction and culture. It argues that in order to counteract such constraints, they embrace and co-opt older forms and values as enabling for their fiction. To map these processes and relationships, I read these five writers as engaging with and reflective of the concept of cultural reproduction. Building largely from Raymond Williams’s definitions, the lens of cultural reproduction acknowledges what Williams terms the ‘limits and pressures’ of the contemporary – such as the inheritance of postmodernism, creative writing programs, technological changes, and commercial demands – but also how these writers display agency in reaction to such limits. Chapter One uses pragmatist philosopher John Dewey’s theories of habit to suggest Wallace’s work explores the way culture is reproduced habitually. Chapter Two contends that Franzen’s attention to these processes is distinctly melodramatic, and his writing embodies melodrama, rather than his stated realism. Chapter Three examines Chabon, Egan, and Whitehead as representative of the ‘genrefication’ of contemporary American fiction, and how each embrace genre forms to respond to different elements and processes of cultural reproduction.
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Bretag, Tracey. "Subversive mothers : contemporary women writers challenge motherhood ideology /." Title page, contents and abstract only, 1999. http://web4.library.adelaide.edu.au/theses/09ARM/09armb844.pdf.
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Kanjilal, Sucheta. "Modern Mythologies: The Epic Imagination in Contemporary Indian Literature." Scholar Commons, 2017. http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/6875.
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This project delineates a cultural history of modern Hinduism in conversation with contemporary Indian literature. Its central focus is literary adaptations of the Sanskrit epic the Mahābhārata, in English, Hindi, and Bengali. Among Hindu religious texts, this epic has been most persistently reproduced in literary and popular discourses because its scale matches the grandeur of the Indian national imagining. Further, many epic adaptations explicitly invite devotion to the nation, often emboldening conservative Hindu nationalism. This interdisciplinary project draws its methodology from literary theory, history, gender, and religious studies. Little scholarship has put Indian Anglophone literatures in conversation with other Indian literary traditions. To fill this gap, I chart a history of literary and cultural transactions between both India and Britain and among numerous vernacular, classical, and Anglophone traditions within India. Paying attention to gender, caste, and cultural hegemony, I demostrate how epic adaptations both narrate and contest the contours of the Indian nation.
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Trigg, Susan Elizabeth, and mikewood@deakin edu au. "Mermaids and sirens as myth fragments in contemporary literature." Deakin University. School of Communication and Creative Arts, 2002. http://tux.lib.deakin.edu.au./adt-VDU/public/adt-VDU20051125.104438.
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This thesis examines three works: Margaret Atwood's The Robber Bride and Alias Grace, and Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus. All three novels feature female characters that contain elements or myth fragments of mermaids and sirens. The thesis asserts that the images of the mermaid and siren have undergone a gradual process of change, from literal mythical figures, to metaphorical images, and then to figures or myth fragments that reference the original mythical figures. The persistence of these female half-human images points to an underlying rationale that is independent of historical and cultural factors. Using feminist psychoanalytic theoretical frameworks, the thesis identifies the existence of the siren/mermaid myth fragments that are used as a means to construct the category of the 'bad' woman. It then identifies the function that these references serve in the narrative and in the broader context of both Victorian and contemporary societies. The thesis postulates the origin of the mermaid and siren myths as stemming from the ambivalent relationship that the male infant forms with the mother as he develops an identity as an individual. Finally, the thesis discusses the manner in which Atwood and Carter build on this foundation to deconstruct the binary oppositions that disadvantage women and to expand the category of female.
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Fagan, Kristina Rose. "Laughing to survive, humour in contemporary Canadian Native literature." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 2001. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk3/ftp05/NQ63653.pdf.
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Ha, Jingjun. "Remapping Chinese literature digitizing contemporary Chinese writers, 1949-1999 /." online access from Digital Dissertation Consortium, 2006. http://libweb.cityu.edu.hk/cgi-bin/er/db/ddcdiss.pl?MR22155.
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Lembert, Alexandra. "The heritage of Hermes : alchemy in contemporary British literature /." Glienicke (Berlin) [u.a.] : Galda + Wilch, 2004. http://www.loc.gov/catdir/toc/ecip0421/2004018978.html.
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Renger, Nicola. "Mapping and historiography in contemporary Canadian literature in English /." Frankfurt am Main [u.a.] : Lang, 2005. http://www.gbv.de/dms/bs/toc/490250424.pdf.
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Leane, Elizabeth Mary. "Contemporary popular physics : an interchange between literature and science." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1999. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.313327.
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Nathanson, Shelby. "Bite Me: Sadomasochistic Gender Relations in Contemporary Vampire Literature." Honors in the Major Thesis, University of Central Florida, 2014. http://digital.library.ucf.edu/cdm/ref/collection/ETH/id/1629.
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While the term sadomasochism might conjure cursory images of whips, chains, and leather-clad fetishists, this thesis delves deeper into sadomasochistic theory to analyze dynamics of power and powerlessness represented by a chosen sample of literary relationships. Using two contemporary works of vampire literature—Anne Rice's novel Interview with the Vampire and Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series—I examine how power is structured by and between male and female characters (and vampires and humans), and particularly emphasize the patriarchal messages these works' regressive sexual politics engender. Psychoanalysis and feminist theory are employed to support my overarching argument following the gendered dynamics of male sadism and female masochism (and vampire sadism and human masochism), as this dyad reflects men's and women's "normalized" roles of power and powerlessness, respectively, in today's society. Sadomasochistic relationships as depicted in this literature are created through mutual contracts or, what I refer to as, sociocultural sadomasochism to reflect the gendered power imbalances inherent in patriarchy. By concluding with readers' responses to these franchises, this thesis further attempts to determine why such unequal and oppressive relationships are desirable. Since vampires as Gothic figures embody what specific cultures dread yet desire, this literature possesses frightening implications—gender roles are conservative and masculinity is privileged in fiction and, by extension, in twenty-first-century American culture.<br>B.A.<br>Bachelors<br>English<br>Arts and Humanities
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O'Rawe, Desmond. "Encountering Eros : discourses on desire in contemporary Irish literature." Thesis, Queen's University Belfast, 1999. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.301033.
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BRAGANÇA, GUSTAVO MOURA. "BODY AMONG RELICS: ARCHIVE AND PICTURE IN CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE." PONTIFÍCIA UNIVERSIDADE CATÓLICA DO RIO DE JANEIRO, 2009. http://www.maxwell.vrac.puc-rio.br/Busca_etds.php?strSecao=resultado&nrSeq=13929@1.
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COORDENAÇÃO DE APERFEIÇOAMENTO DO PESSOAL DE ENSINO SUPERIOR<br>A dissertação apresenta um estudo, através da leitura de obras de Pedro
Nava, Valêncio Xavier e W.G. Sebald, sobre a relação entre o arquivo e a
literatura, concentrando o foco sobre obras contemporâneas de cunho memorial
que investem na inserção de objetos de arquivo e documentos como parte da obra
literária, tanto implicitamente, na elaboração do texto, quanto, explicitamente, na
justaposição à escrita de imagens documentais (com destaque para a fotografia).
Explorando, desse modo, um efeito de índice, através do qual o objeto literário é
evidenciado como construção material, as obras trabalhadas permitem à pesquisa
abrir reflexões relevantes sobre a relação imagem/palavra, sobre representação,
sobre realismo e sobre hibridismo literário, visando uma reflexão ampla sobre o
espaço da literatura na contemporaneidade, marcada pela quebra dos gêneros e
dos modelos tradicionais.<br>The dissertation presents a study, through the reading of works of Pedro
Nava, Valêncio Xavier e W.G. Sebald, about the relations between archive and
literature, concentrating the focus over contemporary works of memorial tone that
invest on the insertion of archival objects and documents as part of the literary
work, not only implicitly, in the development of the text, but also explicitly, in the
juxtaposition to the writing of documental pictures (with emphasis on
photography). By exploring, in that way, an effect of index, by which the literary
object is put on evidence as material construction, the works studied allow the
research to produce relevant considerations about the relation picture/word, about
representation, about realism and about literary hybridism, aiming a wider
consideration about the space of literature in the contemporary world, marked by
the fall of genres and of models of tradition.
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FERRARI, BRUNO. "MULTIPLE SUBVERVIONS: CLASSICAL-REFERENCED EPIC CONFIGURATIONS IN CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE." PONTIFÍCIA UNIVERSIDADE CATÓLICA DO RIO DE JANEIRO, 2017. http://www.maxwell.vrac.puc-rio.br/Busca_etds.php?strSecao=resultado&nrSeq=34074@1.
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PONTIFÍCIA UNIVERSIDADE CATÓLICA DO RIO DE JANEIRO<br>COORDENAÇÃO DE APERFEIÇOAMENTO DO PESSOAL DE ENSINO SUPERIOR<br>PROGRAMA DE SUPORTE À PÓS-GRADUAÇÃO DE INSTS. DE ENSINO<br>O objetivo principal deste trabalho é investigar sobre a permanência do gênero épico na contemporaneidade, a partir da leitura e análise das seguintes obras: Uma viagem à Índia, de Gonçalo Tavares, Viva o povo brasileiro, de João Ubaldo Ribeiro, A odisseia de Penélope, de Margaret Atwood e A odisseia de Homero (segundo João Vítor), de Gustavo Piqueira. O trabalho parte da premissa de que, assim como todo paradigma consagrado, na contemporaneidade, o épico é retomado e modalizado em diferentes gêneros formando novas configurações. Assim, focaliza o relacionamento que as obras do corpus estabelecem com as matrizes clássicas e seus procedimentos estilísticos, temas e motivos. Ao utilizarem o gênero épico como paradigma, todos os escritores estabelecem um relacionamento intertextual explícito e ambíguo com as matrizes épicas clássicas. A partir da referência a elas, eles promovem sua desconstrução e subversão e evidenciam seus vieses, ora questionando, ora reafirmando sua viabilidade e importância nos dias de hoje.<br>The main aim of this work is to investigate about the permanence of the epic genre in contemporaneity by analyzing the following works: Gonçalo Tavares s Uma viagem à Índia, João Ubaldo Ribeiro s Viva o povo brasileiro, Margaret Atwood s A odisseia de Penélope, e Gustavo Piqueira s A odisseia de Homero (segundo João Vítor). This thesis departs from the point that the epic genre, like any other established paradigm, is and modalized in diferente genres, forming new configurations. Therefore, it focuses on the relationship that the works in the corpus entail with the classical matrix and its stylistic procedures, themes and motifs. All the writers studied establish an ambiguous and explicit intertextual relationship with the classical epics. Departing from the reference to them, they promote their deconstruction and subversion, evidencing their biases, both questioning and reinforcing their viability and importance nowadays.