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1
El, Inglizi Najwa Yousif. "Negotiating the gothic in the fiction of Thomas Hardy." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2003. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/112/.
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The purpose of this research is to investigate Thomas Hardy’s relation to the Gothic tradition, especially that deriving from the classic period 1760-mid-1820s. The main novels chosen for such an investigation are Two on a Tower, The Mayor of Casterbridge, Tess of the d’Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure. Parallels with the following texts form the heart of the thesis: Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto, Ann Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho, William Godwin, Caleb Williams, Matthew Lewis, The Monk, Mary Shelley, Frankenstein and Charles Maturin, Melmoth the Wanderer. This investigation has been instigated by three major elements noted in the criticism on Hardy’s literary art in general and on his tragedies in particular. First, although Hardy scholars employ terminology pertaining to the Gothic and romance genres in describing Hardy’s plots, characters and settings, very few of them make a direct and explicit connection to the Gothic novel. Second, the few who do broach the Gothic elements in Hardy’s fiction limit their understanding of the kind of Gothic Hardy employs mainly to the second quarter of the nineteenth century and onwards. Moreover, they seem to be more willing to admit such influence in his minor works, obfuscating the influence of Gothic discourse on his major novels. Therefore, this research will attempt to investigate Hardy’s involvement with Gothic discourse and examine the ways in which the characteristic settings, drama and character-types of such discourse are domesticated, complicated and made more subtle in Hardy’s work. Finally, it envisages further investigation into Hardy’s work in its relation to his architectural knowledge and his philosophic views of life in general, and his views of humanity’s place in it in particular.
2
Foulds, Alexandra Laura. "Gothic monster fiction and the 'novel-reading disease', 1860-1900." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2018. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/30684/.
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This thesis scrutinises the complex ‘afterlife’ of sensation fiction in the wake of the 1860s and ‘70s, after the end of the period that critics have tended to view as the heyday of literary sensationalism. It identifies and explores the consistent framing of sensation fiction as a pathological ‘style of writing’ by middle-class critics in the periodical press, revealing how such responses were moulded by new and emerging medical research into the nervous system, the cellular structure of the body, and the role played by germs in the transmission of diseases. Envisioned as a disease characterised by its new immersive and affective reading process, sensation fiction was believed to be infecting its readers. It infiltrated their nervous systems, instigating a process of metamorphosis that gradually depleted their physical and mental integrity and reduced them to a weakened, ‘flabby’, ‘limp’ state. The physical boundaries of the body, however, were not the only limits that sensation fiction seemed to wilfully disregard. ‘[S]preading in all directions’, it contaminated other modes, other media, and other kinds of recreational entertainment, making them equally sensational and pathological. One of these modes was Gothic monster fiction at the end of the nineteenth century, which was repeatedly labelled ‘sensational’ and described as generating the same cardiovascular responses as works by Wilkie Collins, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, and Mrs Henry Wood. This infection of fin de siècle Gothic fiction by literary sensationalism can be gauged in the plots and monsters that those texts portray. Gothic monster narratives at the end of the nineteenth century are shaped by the concerns at the heart of middle-class commentators’ responses to sensation fiction, and by the medical lexicon employed to vocalise these anxieties. Monstrosity is linked to contagion and stimulation, as the monster seems to pollute all those with whom it comes into contact. It triggers a process of degeneration and debilitation akin to that associated with the reading of sensation fiction, producing a host of ‘shocked’, nervous, or hysterical characters. Encounters with the monster are linked to recreational reading or other kinds of behaviour that such reading became associated with, such as thrill-seeking, substance abuse, and illicit sexual desire. The result is a group of texts in which the monster embodies the same threat to boundaries, as well as individual, and, at times, national health that middle-class reviewers associated with literary sensationalism.
3
Alsulami, Mabrouk. "Science Fiction Elements in Gothic Novels." DigitalCommons@Robert W. Woodruff Library, Atlanta University Center, 2016. http://digitalcommons.auctr.edu/cauetds/47.
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This thesis explores elements of science fiction in three gothic novels, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Robert Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Bram Stoker’s Dracula. It begins by explicating the important tropes of science fiction and progresses with a discussion that establishes a connection between three gothic novels and the science fiction genre. This thesis argues that the aforementioned novels express characters’ fear of technology and offer an analysis of human nature that is literarily futuristic. In this view, each of the aforementioned writers uses extreme events in their works to demonstrate that science can contribute to humanity’s understanding of itself. In these works, readers encounter characters who offer commentary on the darker side of the human experience.
4
White, Troy Nelson. "The Gothic threshold of Sabine Baring-Gould : a study of the Gothic fiction of a Victorian squarson." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2010. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/35652/.
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This thesis is a study of the Gothic fiction of Sabine Baring-Gould (1834- 1924), with particular attention given to Baring-Gould’s roles as squire and parson. I have chosen to analyze two of Baring-Gould’s Gothic works, the novel Mehalah (1880) and the novella Margery of Quether (1884), both which allow a particularly profitable examination of the influence of Baring-Gould’s roles on his fiction. In studying these texts I apply my theory of Gothic fiction as a particularly modern genre built upon a "Gothic threshold," a meeting point of extreme opposites which ambivalently contrasts and merges the categories of the modern and the medieval. In the first chapter I describe how Baring-Gould’s unique Hegelian-influenced Tractarian philosophy influenced his creation of the dialectical setting of Mehalah. I argue that because of this influence Mehalah should be recognized as a significant contribution to the literature of the Oxford Movement. In the second chapter I argue that Mehalah’s historical setting in the time of the French Revolution and the influence of Wuthering Heights reinforce Mehalah’s use of the “Gothic threshold” structure and contribute to its theme of ambivalent progress. In the third chapter I discuss the influence of Baring-Gould’s sermon-writing on Mehalah and consider connections between Baring-Gould’s role as parson and the novel’s botched marriage theme. In the final chapter I discuss Margery of Quether as an innovation in the Gothic and vampire tradition as perhaps the only Gothic work that directly dramatizes the Land Law debate and presents that debate as a "Gothic" contest. I argue that Margery channels Baring-Gould’s tensions as a landowner. In the conclusion I argue that Mehalah and Margery display Baring-Gould’s technique of constructing miniature Gothic battles that relate to larger confrontations, and that the ultimate terror presented in these works is the conclusion of the battle between ancient and modern forces.
5
Lawn, Jennifer. "Trauma and recovery in Janet Frame's fiction." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1997. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk3/ftp04/nq25087.pdf.
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6
McLeod, Melissa. "Sounds of terror hearing ghosts in Victorian fiction /." unrestricted, 2007. http://etd.gsu.edu/theses/available/etd-11282007-112908/.
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Thesis (Ph. D.)--Georgia State University, 2007.Title from file title page. Michael Galchinsky, committee chair; Calvin Thomas, Lee Anne Richardson, committee members. Electronic text (181 p.) : digital, PDF file. Description based on contents viewed Feb. 7, 2008. Includes bibliographical references (p. 174-181).
7
Rivera, Alexandra. "Human Monsters: Examining the Relationship Between the Posthuman Gothic and Gender in American Gothic Fiction." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2019. https://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/1358.
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According to Michael Sean Bolton, the posthuman Gothic involves a fear of internal monsters that won't destroy humanity apocalyptically, but will instead redefine what it means to be human overall. These internal monsters reflect societal anxieties about the "other" gaining power and overtaking the current groups in power. The posthuman Gothic shows psychological horrors and transformations. Traditionally this genre has been used to theorize postmodern media and literary work by focusing on cyborgs and transhumanist medical advancements. However, the internal and psychological nature of posthumanism is fascinating and can more clearly manifest in a different Gothic setting, 1800s American Gothic Fiction. This subgenre of the Gothic melds well with the posthuman Gothic because unlike the Victorian Gothic, its supernatural entities are not literal; they are often figurative and symbolic, appearing through hallucinations. In this historical context, one can examine the dynamic in which the "human" is determined by a rational humanism that bases its human model on Western, white masculinity. Therefore, the other is clearly gendered and racialized. Margrit Shildrick offers an interesting analysis of the way women fit into this construction of the other because of their uncanniness and Gothic monstrosity. Three works of American Gothic fiction--George Lippard's The Quaker City, Edgar Allen Poe's "Ligeia," and Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" portray these gendered power dynamics present within the posthuman Gothic when applied to the American Gothic; the female characters are either forced by patriarchy into becoming monstrous, or they were never fully human in the first place.
8
Levine, Jonathan David. "'One wiser, better, dearer than ourselves' : gothic friendship /." Thesis, Connect to this title online; UW restricted, 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/1773/6643.
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Ogston, Linda C. "The clone as Gothic trope in contemporary speculative fiction." Thesis, University of Stirling, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/1893/21487.
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In February 1997, the concept of the clone, previously confined to the pages of fiction, became reality when Dolly the sheep was introduced to the world. The response to this was unprecedented, initiating a discourse on cloning that permeated a range of cultural forms, including literature, film and television. My thesis examines and evaluates this discourse through analysis of contemporary fiction, including Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go (2005), Stefan Brijs's The Angel Maker (2008), Duncan Jones's Moon (2009), and BBC America's current television series Orphan Black, which first aired in 2013. Such texts are placed in their cultural and historical setting, drawing comparisons between pre- and post-Dolly texts. The thesis traces the progression of the clone from an inhuman science fiction monster, to more of a tragic "human" creature. The clone has, however, retained its fictional portrayal as "other," be that double, copy or manufactured being, and the thesis argues that the clone is a Gothic trope for our times. The roots of the cloning discourse often lie in Gothic narratives, particularly Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818), which is analysed as a canonical cloning text. Each chapter focuses on a source of fascination and fear within the cloning discourse: the influence of Gothic paternity on the figure of scientist; the notion of the clone as manufactured product, victim and monster; and the ethical and social implications of cloning. There is a dearth of critical analysis on the contemporary literary clone, with the most comprehensive study to date neither acknowledging the alignment of cloning and the Gothic nor demonstrating the impact of Dolly on fictional portrayals. My thesis addresses this, interweaving fiction, science and culture to present a monster which simultaneously embodies difference and sameness: a new monster for the twenty-first century.
10
Leroux, Julie. ""Shocking his readers out of their complacence": gothic and fantasy tropes in H.G. Wells' «fin-de siècle» science fiction novels." Thesis, McGill University, 2011. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=97160.
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The main goal of this thesis is to identify Gothic and fantasy tropes in four fin-de-siècle novels by H.G. Wells – The War of the Worlds, The Invisible Man, The First Men in the Moon and The Food of the Gods – and to examine their rhetorical effects within the framework of science fiction. More precisely, my project was inspired by Kelly Hurley's analysis of the thematic similarities shared by the science fiction and Gothic genres during the fin-de-siècle, and by Darko Suvin's definitions of science fiction and of the Gothic as being rhetorically antithetical. Through an analysis of how the two thematically compatible but rhetorically antithetical genres interact in the novels, I evaluate the potential responses that could be expected from readers, and compare these responses to the contemporary reception of the work. My research is based on the idea that Wells' novels promote a social message based on Darwinian theory and socialism, and that he uses the combination of SF and the Gothic in order to lead his complacent readers to intellectual conclusions by first drawing their attention through shock and terror. This study will seek to determine whether the author's use of the Gothic ultimately benefits the works by enhancing their social message, or if it results in the contrary effect.Ce mémoire vise à identifier les tropes gothiques et fantaisistes dans quatre romans de la fin-de-siècle par H.G. Wells – The War of the Worlds, The Invisible Man, The First Men in the Moon et The Food of the Gods – et d'examiner leur effet dans ces romans de science fiction au niveau rhétorique. Plus précisément, ce projet fut inspiré par l'analyse qu'a faite Kelly Hurley des ressemblances thématiques entre la science fiction et le gothique au tournant du vingtième siècle, et par l'argument de Darko Suvin selon lequel la science fiction et le gothique seraient antithétiques au niveau rhétorique. À travers une analyse de l'interaction entre ces deux genres compatibles au niveau thématique, mais théoriquement incompatibles au niveau rhétorique, j'évalue les réponses potentielles que l'on peut attendre des lecteurs de ces romans, et je compare ces réponses théoriquement possibles aux la réception contemporaine réelle de ces œuvres. Ma recherche repose sur l'idée que Wells tentait de promouvoir dans ses romans une réflexion sociale basée sur les théories darwiniennes et sur le socialisme, et qu'il utilisait la combinaison de la science fiction et du gothique afin de mener ses lecteurs vers des conclusions intellectuelles par le biais d'un éveil brusque causé par le choc et la terreur. Cette étude tente de déterminer si l'utilisation du gothique faite par l'auteur mène vraiment ses lecteurs à porter davantage attention aux thèmes contenus dans les romans, ou si, au contraire, ces tropes ne font qu'engendrer une réponse émotive chez le lecteur.
11
Gooding, Ava E. "McCarthy's Outer Dark and Child of God as Works of Appalachian Gothic Fiction." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2013. https://dc.etsu.edu/honors/79.
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In both Outer Dark and Child of God, McCarthy does a masterful job of blending the elements of Appalachian Gothic to present a novel that is darkly suspenseful and grimly thought-provoking. Outer Dark focuses on the complex incestuous relationship between a brother and sister and their interaction with others. The novel follows the two on a journey through the wilderness where they must cope with the unknown qualities of that wilderness, as well as the guilt stemming from their own behaviors. In Child of God, McCarthy explores the grotesque nature of a life lived in isolation and poverty in the mountains. This novel focuses more on an individual descent into the gruesome depths that illustrate the main character’s depravity. In these two novels McCarthy examines the darker side of life in Appalachia, and forces readers to question the purpose and meaning for the characters’ lives and actions.
12
Liu, Tryphena Y. "Monsters Without to Monsters Within: The Transformation of the Supernatural from English to American Gothic Fiction." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2015. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/632.
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Because works of Gothic fiction were often disregarded as sensationalist and unsophisticated, my aim in this thesis is to explore the ways in which these works actually drew attention to real societal issues and fears, particularly anxieties around Otherness and identity and gender construction. I illustrate how the context in which authors were writing specifically influenced the way they portrayed the supernatural in their narratives, and how the differences in their portrayals speak to the authors’ distinct aims and the issues that they address. Because the supernatural ultimately became internalized in the American Gothic, peculiarly within female bodies, I focus mainly on the relationship between the supernatural and the female characters in the texts I examine. Through this historical exploration of the transformation of the supernatural, I argue that the supernatural became internalized in the American Gothic because it reflected national anxieties: although freed from the external threat of the patriarchal English government, Americans of the young republic still faced the dangers of individualism and the failure of the endeavor to establish their own government.
13
Dabek, Diana I. "Misinterpreted experiences : the tension between imagination and divine revelation in early 19th century Anglo American Gothic fiction." FIU Digital Commons, 2010. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/2649.
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The purpose of this study was to analyze the ways in which 19th century Gothic fiction novelists Charles Brockden Brow and James Hogg explore the themes of religious enthusiasm and divine revelation. A close look at these texts reveals a common interest in the tension between the imagination and reality. By analyzing the philosophical and theological roots of these issues it becomes clear that Wieland and Confessions of a Justified Sinner mirror the anxieties of 19th century Anglo American culture. Questions regarding voice and authority, the importance of testimony, and religious seduction are common to both novels. I maintain that these authors comment on the obscure nature of human rationale by presenting readers with narrators that exhibit traits of delusion and spiritual awakening.
14
Aktari, Selen. "Abject Representations Of Female Desire In Postmodern British Female Gothic Fiction." Phd thesis, METU, 2010. http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12612288/index.pdf.
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The aim of this dissertation is to study postmodern British Female Gothic fiction in terms of its abject representations of female desire which subvert the patriarchal definition of female sexuality as repressed and female identity as the object of desire. The study analyzes texts from postmodern Female Gothic fiction which are feminist rewritings of the traditional Gothic narratives. The conventional Gothic plot is based on the Oedipal development of identity which excludes the (m)other and deprives the female from autonomous subjectivity. The feminist rewritings of the conventional Gothic plot have a subversive aim to recast the Oedipal identity formation and they embrace the (m)other figure in order to blur the strict boundaries between the subject and the object. Besides, these rewritings aim to destroy the image of the victimized heroine within the imprisoning conventional Gothic structures and transgress the cultural, social and sexual definitions of women constructed by patriarchal sexual politics. The study bases its analyses on Jean Rhys&rsquos Wide Sargasso Sea, Angela Carter&rsquo
s The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories, and Emma Donoghue&rsquo
s Kissing the Witch: Old Tales in New Skins as examples in which patriarchal definition of the female desire as passive is destroyed and the female desire as active is promoted by the adoption of abject representations, which challenge the strictly constructed hierarchical relationships between men and women. Basing its argument on Julia Kristeva&rsquo
s psychoanalytical theories, which re-vision the traditional psychoanalytical theories, this study puts forward that by the emergence of postmodernism, which has overtly provided a ground for the marginalized discourses to get into dialogue with the oppressive ones, the abject representations of female desire have gained a positive characteristic that can liberate female body from the control and authority of the male-dominated ideology. Thus, one can chronologically follow the positive development of abject representations of female sexuality in Rhys&rsquo
s, Carter&rsquo
s and Donoghue&rsquo
s works which promote a liberation for the Gothic heroines from patriarchal psychoanalytical identity development, which render female desire active and female body expressive, which rehistoricize female sexuality from a feminist lens and which call for a new world order built upon an egalitarian basis that destroys hierarchically constructed gender roles. As a result, postmodern British Female Gothic Fiction is proved to be offering a utopian ideal of an egalitarian society, but although utopian and radical, not an impossible one to be realized.
15
Kulperger, Shelley. "Disorienting geographies, unsettled bodies : Anglo-Canadian female Gothic / by Shelley Kulperger." [St. Lucia, Qld.], 2004. http://www.library.uq.edu.au/pdfserve.php?image=thesisabs/absthe18401.pdf.
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Goss, Sarah Judith. "The agony of consciousness : history and memory in nineteenth-century Irish gothic novels /." view abstract or download file of text, 2003. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/uoregon/fullcit?p3102166.
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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2003.Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 225-231). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.
17
Stasiak, Lauren Anne. "Victorian professionals, intersubjectivity, and the fin-de-siecle gothic text /." Thesis, Connect to this title online; UW restricted, 2002. http://hdl.handle.net/1773/9491.
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Wright, Angela. "The claustral gaze : visions of imprisonment in the gothic novel and French melodrama." Thesis, University of Aberdeen, 2002. http://digitool.abdn.ac.uk:80/webclient/DeliveryManager?pid=158599.
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This thesis provides a critique of the gaze in Gothic novels and French melodramas between 1790 and 1825. After situating itself historically in relation to the eighteenth century's prioritization of vision, the thesis then progresses in chapters two to seven to textual examinations of visual critiques provided by Gothic novelists. It examines the following authors: Sophia Lee; Ann Radcliffe; Matthew Lewis; the Marquis de Sade; Charles Maturin; James Hogg, and William Godwin. The thesis contends that these Gothic novelists demonstrate the function of the gaze in its most violent and reductive light. In the novels examined, the thesis posits that vision is used as a tool of power, rather than one of education and enlightenment. An examination is made of the imprisoning function of the gaze with reference to psychoanalytical essays on the gaze written by Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan. These essays help to promote the theory that the Gothic novels studied all portray some form of transgressive gazing: the punishment for this lies in the characters' temporary transition into some form of inanimate image. Whether this be a portrait, a statue, or a dramatic tableau, the transition is indicative of the regressive gaze to the past that the characters have been using. The eighth and final chapter of the thesis turns the focus from Gothic novels to French melodramas. This is done to represent the failure of French melodramatists to regulate the visual responses of their audiences. By examining their critical projects, and the results of them, the thesis concludes by demonstrating the practice, and failure, of the gaze.
19
West, Melissa Ann. "Hauntings in the church counterfeit Christianity through the fin de siécle Gothic novel /." Lynchburg, Va. : Liberty University, 2009. http://digitalcommons.liberty.edu.
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Williams, Anna. "My Gothic dissertation: a podcast." Diss., University of Iowa, 2019. https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/7046.
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In My Gothic Dissertation, I perform an intertextual analysis of Gothic fiction and modern-day graduate education in the humanities. First, looking particularly at the Female Gothic, I argue that the genre contains overlooked educational themes. I read the student-teacher relationships in Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818, 1831), and Charlotte Brontë’s Villette (1853) as critiques of the insidious relationship between knowledge and power. Part literary critic and part literary journalist, I weave through these readings reports of real-life ‘horror stories’ of graduate school, arguing that the power imbalance between Ph.D. advisors and their students can be unexpectedly ‘Gothic’ as well. Drawing on research from the science of learning—developmental psychology, sociology, and pedagogical theory—I advocate for more a student-centered pedagogy in humanities Ph.D. training.
Following in the footsteps of A.D. Carson and Nick Sousanis, I have produced My Gothic Dissertation in a nontraditional format—the podcast. Mixing voice, music, and sound, I dramatize scenes from the novels and incorporate analysis through my narration. The real-life “Grad School Gothic” stories are drawn from personal interviews. Much of the science of learning is drawn from personal interviews with researchers as well, though some material comes from recorded presentations that have been posted to public, online venues such as YouTube. The creative/journalistic style of reporting is heavily influenced by programs such as This American Life, Invisibilia, and Serial, with the dual aims of engaging a broad audience and expanding our modes of scholarly communication beyond the page.
21
Gessell-Frye, Donna Ann. "Contesting guardianship, challenging authority: The guardian and ward relationships in Gothic and domestic fiction, 1789-1793." Case Western Reserve University School of Graduate Studies / OhioLINK, 1995. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1058282118.
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Mighall, Robert. "The brigand in the laboratory : a study of the discursive exchange between Gothic fiction and nineteenth-century medico-legal science." Thesis, University of Wales Trinity Saint David, 1994. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.683119.
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Slagle, Judith Bailey. "Romantic Appropriations of History: The Legends of Joanna Baillie and Margaret Holford Hodson." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2012. http://amzn.com/1611475090.
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Introduction: The Historical Tradition of Baillie, Scott, Hodson and Southey -- William Wallace : "A Terrible Beauty" -- Exploration and conquest : Columbus, Balboa, and Pizarro -- National and Domestic Heroines : Margaret of Anjou and Lady Griseld Baillie -- Gothic Interactions : The Miscellaneous Legends of Baillie and Hodson.https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu_books/1035/thumbnail.jpg
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Evans, Jessica R. "THE MALE MENTOR FIGURE IN WOMEN'S FICTION, 1778-1801." UKnowledge, 2017. http://uknowledge.uky.edu/english_etds/62.
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This dissertation follows the development of the mentor figure from Frances Burney’s Evelina published in 1778 to Maria Edgeworth’s Belinda in 1801. The mentor becomes a key figure for exploring women’s revolutionary ideas on female education and women’s roles in society. My dissertation contributes to discussions on mentoring, development of the Gothic mode, and debates over sensibility and sentimental fiction. It considers how the female mentee paradoxically both desires and criticizes her male mentor and his authority. Each author under discussion employed the mentor figure in a way that addressed their contemporary society’s issues and prejudices toward the treatment of women and the power of sensibility. Much of this treatment was traced to a conversation of reforming female education from an accomplishment-based pedagogy to a moral, intellectual-based instruction that was more masculine in nature (emphasizing a balance between sensibility and reason).
Frequently, the mentor provides general comments and recommendations about love to his female pupil, who is entering into the marriage market, but his advice often turns out to be wrong or misplaced since it does not fit the actual situation. He is a good spiritual guide but a poor romantic advisor. I assert that the mentor figure’s usual lack of romantic sentiment and his pupil’s ability to surpass him in matters of the heart reveal a tendency to subvert male authority. Throughout this discussion, questions related to gender arise. Women’s desire for their own agency and control over both their minds and bodies underpin much of women’s eighteenth-century fiction. My dissertation explores these complex relationships between male mentors and their female pupils.
25
Magie, Lynne Adele. "The daemon Eros : Gothic elements in the novels of Emily and Charlotte Brontë, Doris Lessing, and Iris Murdoch /." Thesis, Connect to this title online; UW restricted, 1988. http://hdl.handle.net/1773/9448.
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Lawrence, Jennifer Thomson. "The Third Person in the Room: Servants and the Construction of Identity in the Eighteenth-Century Gothic Novel." unrestricted, 2008. http://etd.gsu.edu/theses/available/etd-04172008-130053/.
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Thesis (Ph. D.)--Georgia State University, 2008.Title from file title page. Malinda Snow, committee chair; Murray Brown, Tanya Caldwell, committee members. Electronic text (223 p.) : digital, PDF file. Description based on contents viewed July 11, 2008. Includes bibliographical references (p. 215-223).
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Alegrette, Alessandro Yuri. "Frankenstein : uma releitura do mito de criação /." Araraquara : [s.n.], 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/11449/91524.
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Orientador: Maria Clara Bonetti ParoBanca: Karin Volobuef
Banca: José Garcez Ghirardi
Resumo: A dissertação de mestrado, "Frankenstein: uma releitura do mito de criação", tem como principal objetivo demonstrar como a escritora inglesa Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, por meio de seu romance Frankenstein, ou o moderno Prometeu (1818), conseguiu criar um novo mito, isto é, o mito de Frankenstein, contribuiu para a renovação do romance gótico e para a criação de uma nova modalidade literária - a ficção científica. No primeiro capítulo foi realizado um estudo sobre as origens, características e principais obras do romance gótico. No segundo capítulo é abordada a relação entre mito e literatura e são analisados quais mitos aparecem no enredo do romance de Mary Shelley, enfatizando-se a importância do relato mítico de Prometeu. No terceiro capítulo é estudada a construção do discurso narrativo mítico de Frankenstein e é demonstrada a intertextualidade dessa obra com outros textos, tais como poemas, romances e estudos filosóficos e científicos. No quarto e último capítulo é demonstrado a releitura do mito de criação feita por Mary Shelley, a conseqüente criação do mito de Frankenstein, e as diversas interpretações e releituras que o romance recebeu, terminando com Blade Runner (O caçador de andróides, 1982), filme do cineasta inglês Ridley Scott que, ao promover a atualização do mito de Frankenstein, deu uma contribuição significativa para sua permanência em nossa cultura
Abstract: The main aim of this Master's Thesis, "Frankenstein: a rewriting of the myth of creation, is demonstrate how the English writer Mary Shelley in her novel Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus (1818), created a new kind of myth, renewed the gothic novel and gave origin to a new literary genre - science fiction. The first chapter discusses - the origins, characteristics and main works of the Gothic literature. The second chapter explores the relationships between myth and literature, and analyses which myths are present in the plot of Mary Shelley's novel, stressing the importance of the Promethean's story. The third chapter is concerned with the construction of mythic narrative discourse and with the novel's intertextuality with different kind texts, such as poems, another novels and philosophical and scientific studies. The fourth and last chapter concentrates on Mary Shelley's rewriting of the myth of creation, on the different ways her novel was interpreted and read, and it finishes with study of the film by the English director Ridley Scott, Blade Runner (1982), that offered a major contribution to update and foster the permanence of the Frankenstein's myth in our culture
Mestre
28
Hodgen, Jacob Michael. ""Boot Camp for the Psyche" : inoculative nonfiction and pre-memory structures as preemptive trauma mediation in fiction and film /." Diss., CLICK HERE for online access, 2008. http://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/ETD/image/etd2506.pdf.
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Koonce, Elizabeth Godke. "SENSATION FICTION AND THE LAW: DANGEROUS ALTERNATIVE SOCIAL TEXTS AND CULTURAL REVOLUTION IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY BRITAIN." Ohio : Ohio University, 2006. http://www.ohiolink.edu/etd/view.cgi?ohiou1155670056.
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Alegrette, Alessandro Yuri [UNESP]. "Frankenstein: uma releitura do mito de criação." Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP), 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/11449/91524.
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A dissertação de mestrado, “Frankenstein: uma releitura do mito de criação”, tem como principal objetivo demonstrar como a escritora inglesa Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, por meio de seu romance Frankenstein, ou o moderno Prometeu (1818), conseguiu criar um novo mito, isto é, o mito de Frankenstein, contribuiu para a renovação do romance gótico e para a criação de uma nova modalidade literária - a ficção científica. No primeiro capítulo foi realizado um estudo sobre as origens, características e principais obras do romance gótico. No segundo capítulo é abordada a relação entre mito e literatura e são analisados quais mitos aparecem no enredo do romance de Mary Shelley, enfatizando-se a importância do relato mítico de Prometeu. No terceiro capítulo é estudada a construção do discurso narrativo mítico de Frankenstein e é demonstrada a intertextualidade dessa obra com outros textos, tais como poemas, romances e estudos filosóficos e científicos. No quarto e último capítulo é demonstrado a releitura do mito de criação feita por Mary Shelley, a conseqüente criação do mito de Frankenstein, e as diversas interpretações e releituras que o romance recebeu, terminando com Blade Runner (O caçador de andróides, 1982), filme do cineasta inglês Ridley Scott que, ao promover a atualização do mito de Frankenstein, deu uma contribuição significativa para sua permanência em nossa cultura
The main aim of this Master’s Thesis, “Frankenstein: a rewriting of the myth of creation, is demonstrate how the English writer Mary Shelley in her novel Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus (1818), created a new kind of myth, renewed the gothic novel and gave origin to a new literary genre - science fiction. The first chapter discusses – the origins, characteristics and main works of the Gothic literature. The second chapter explores the relationships between myth and literature, and analyses which myths are present in the plot of Mary Shelley’s novel, stressing the importance of the Promethean’s story. The third chapter is concerned with the construction of mythic narrative discourse and with the novel’s intertextuality with different kind texts, such as poems, another novels and philosophical and scientific studies. The fourth and last chapter concentrates on Mary Shelley’s rewriting of the myth of creation, on the different ways her novel was interpreted and read, and it finishes with study of the film by the English director Ridley Scott, Blade Runner (1982), that offered a major contribution to update and foster the permanence of the Frankenstein’s myth in our culture
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Williams, Eleanor. "The Divine and Miss Johanna." Ohio : Ohio University, 2006. http://www.ohiolink.edu/etd/view.cgi?ohiou1145555978.
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Thomas, Susan J. "Hideous Progeny: Postcolonial Fiction and the Gothic Tradition." Diss., The University of Arizona, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/344423.
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Hideous Progeny: Postcolonial Fiction and the Gothic Tradition explores the vexed relationship between postcolonial fiction and the Anglo-European-American Gothic mode. Gothic motifs figure abundantly in postcolonial works, but they are not always meant to be taken seriously; often they take a comic and ironic stance toward the subject matter. When horror does appear in these works, it is usually not situated in the abject Other (the pharmakos figure), but in the projecting mindset of the dominant culture. As the title Hideous Progeny implies, such postcolonial novels are the rebellious offspring of the Gothic canon; they can even be dubbed Frankenstein's monsters, created from the disjecta membra of the nineteenth-century Gothic tradition and reassembled into a newly vital, global Gothic literature. Or, to use a different metaphor, they function as inverted mirror images, as photographic negatives, of the nineteenth-century Gothic novel, neutralizing its familiar tropes with an injection of "magical realist" motifs from diverse cultural traditions. This study uses a psychoanalytic methodology to analyze the Gothic source echoes in selected novels by Toni Morrison, Gabriel García Márquez, and Salman Rushdie. Through the lens of post-Freudian theorists Nicolas Abraham, Maria Torok, and Julia Kristeva, in particular, these novels will be depicted as Gothic--suspended between a haunted past and a technologically disorienting present--and also anti-Gothic. If the Gothic novel explored the unconscious anxieties of late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Western culture, as many have suggested, the postcolonial Gothic novel explores the unconscious anxieties of an emerging global culture in the late twentieth century. Unlike its Anglo-American precursor, however, postcolonial Gothic fiction does not recoil from the unknown, but embraces the "liminal" zone, finding in it both "tiger and lady," both terror and potential renewal.
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Knox-Shaw, Peter. "The explorer in English fiction." Doctoral thesis, University of Cape Town, 1985. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/22436.
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Although there have been a number of critical works on the novel given over to topics such as adventure, colonization or the politics of the frontier, a comparative study of novels in which an encounter with unknown territory holds central importance has till now been lacking. My aim in this thesis is to analyse and relate a variety of texts which show representatives of a home culture in confrontation with terra incognita or unfamiliar peoples. There is, as it turns out, a strong family resemblance between the novels that fall into this category whether they belong, like Robinson Crusoe, Coral Island or Lord of the Flies, to the "desert island" tradition where castaways have exploration thrust upon them or present, as in the case of Moby Dick, The Lost World or Voss, ventures deliberately undertaken. There are frequent indications, too, that many of the novelists in question are aware of working within a particular, subsidiary genre. This means, in sum, even when it comes to texts as culturally remote as, say, Captain Singleton and Heart of Darkness that there is firm ground for comparison. The emphasis of this study is, in consequence, historical as well as critical. In order to show that many conventions which are recurrent in the fiction inhere in the actual business of coming to grips with the unknown, I begin with a theoretical introduction illustrated chiefly from the writings of explorers. Travelogues reveal how large a part projection plays in every rendering of unvisited places. So much is imported that one might hypothesize, for the sake of a model, a single locality returning a stream of widely divergent images over the lapse of years. In effect it is possible to demonstrate a shift of cultural assumptions by juxtaposing, for example, a passage that tricks out a primeval forest in all the iconography of Eden with one written three centuries later in which - from essentially the same scene - the author paints a picture of Malthusian struggle and survival of the fittest. And since the explorer is not only inclined to embody his image of the natural man in the people he meets beyond the frontiers of his own culture, but is likely also to read his own emancipation from the constraints of polity in terms of a return to an underlying nature, the concern with genesis is one that recurs with particular persistence in texts dealing with exploration. With varying degrees of awareness novelists have responded, ever since Defoe, to the idea that the encounter with the unfamiliar mirrors the identity of the explorer. Their presentations of terra incognita register the crucial phases of social history - the institution of mercantilism, the rise and fall of empire - but generally in relation to psychological and metaphysical questions of a perennial kind. The nature of man is a theme that proves, indeed, remarkably tenacious in these works, for a reason Lawrence notes in Kangaroo: "There is always something outside our universe. And it is always at the doors of the innermost, sentient soul".
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Jones, Margaret Anne. "The Blackshaw Chord ; Crime fiction, literary fiction : why the demarcation?" Thesis, University of Southampton, 2013. https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/366620/.
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My thesis is in two parts: Part 1 a novel, Part 2 a critical rationale. The novel examines abuse in a range of manifestations – parental power; alcohol; the press; corporate power – all of which combine to perpetrate a catalogue of abuse against my protagonist. But it is the completely innocent protagonist who is perceived as the abuser. The novel quite deliberately has the feel of a crime story although the only serious crime is off-the-page and not connected with any of the characters or locations. This is intentional. The critical rationale seeks to investigate the classification of crime fiction and literary fiction with crime in it, and attempts to examine where the demarcation appears. Much of the critical rationale examines my novel in this regard. Initially I was looking at the debate from the point-of-view of non-whodunnit crime, but my research took me increasingly towards literary authors who have moved into mystery writing, such as, Kate Atkinson, Susan Hill, John Banville (Benjamin Black) and Joanne Harris. I refer to several novels from the crime genre and from novels which occupy a ‘hinterland’ whereby crime is a major element of the narrative but where they are not regarded as crime fiction. I have researched the shelving policies of the local library and bookshops, and interviewed writers with regard to where they wish their work to be placed. I have also considered briefly what is genre and why hinterland novels are placed somewhere outside the classification of any genre. Where appropriate I have quoted from published authors with regard to their position in this debate, and have used four main novels to discuss the development of my novel - John Brown’s Body; Psycho; Rebecca and Brighton Rock.
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Ambrosini, Richard. "Conrad's fiction as critical discourse." Thesis, University of Ottawa (Canada), 1989. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/20971.
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Dalley, Lana Lee. "Writing the economic woman : gender, political economy, and nineteenth-century women's literature /." Thesis, Connect to this title online; UW restricted, 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/1773/9430.
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Dunwell, Lara Dalene. "We make fiction because we are fiction : authorities displaced in the novels of Russell Hoban." Master's thesis, University of Cape Town, 1995. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/21400.
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Russell Hoban, born in Pennsylvania in 1925, is the author of fifty children's books and eight novels. This thesis provides a critical reading of his novels Kleinzeit (1974), The Medusa Frequency (1987), Riddley Walker (1980) and Pilgermann (1983). The thesis argues that the alienation of the protagonist from his society -- a theme common to the novels above -- is the result of the operation of the Derridean process of displacement. Hoban's novels work deconstructively to undermine binary oppositions (such as "reality" versus "fantasy"). I argue that the novels aim to recuperate the marginal by displacing the centre. In Kleinzeit and The Medusa Frequency, reality itself is figured as an absent centre. Through a discussion of magical realism, I show how Hoban questions the idea of a "consensus reality". I argue that by denying authority to the authors in these texts, Hoban privileges the uncertain authority of language itself. Using Derrida's concept of différance, I show that language in Kleinzeit is figured as an endless deferral of meaning. In Chapter II, I turn to an analysis of the invented post-atomic language of Riddley Walker, and examine how the neologisms and futuristic orthography of the text contribute towards significant wordplay. I argue that Riddley's attempts to read his culture's past offer a critique of the contemporary reader's assumptions, both about her present and about reading itself. I rely on Mircea Eliade's The Myth of the Eternal Return (1965) in discussing the nature of myth-making in Riddley Walker. In the final chapter, I discuss in detail the mechanism of displacement in Pilgermann. By examining the role of the grotesque in the novel, I argue that Pilgermann can be read hymeneutically. Derrida's figure of the hymen becomes the emblem of marginalisation. Using the example of the mode of the grotesque {which is prominent in the novel), I argue that the marginal is always already present in the very centre which would expel it. Pilgermann is read as an attempt to recuperate the margin in spite of "the confusion between the present and the non-present" (Derrida, 1984: 212) which is the hymen. Finally, I conclude that Hoban's works, while focussing on displacement, unwittingly displace women, by figuring them as absences whose existence is primarily metaphorical.
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Barker, Anna. "Green fiction : ecocriticism of the contemporary novel." Thesis, University of Huddersfield, 2016. http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/id/eprint/32673/.
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Hensley, Martin. "The Green World of Dystopian Fiction." TopSCHOLAR®, 2006. http://digitalcommons.wku.edu/theses/276.
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Northrop Frye was the first theorist to develop the green world archetype; Frye used the term to refer to a recurring motif in Shakespearean comedy. In several of Shakespeare's comedies, the protagonists leave the civilized world and venture into the green world, or nature, to escape from the irrational law of society, which is the case in such comedies as As You Like It and A Midsummer Night's Dream. Elements of the green world can also be found in Shakespearean tragedy, where the natural retreat serves as a temporary escape for the protagonists. Such a green world exists in three of the most well known examples of dystopian fiction: George Orwell's 1984, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, and Yevgeny Zamyatin's We. In these three novels, the protagonists take flight from the repressive dystopia and journey into nature. In the green world, the protagonists attain individual freedom and identity and experience emotions, passions, beauty, the past, and the power of language. Each of these elements, which are associated with the green world, stand in opposition to the dystopian society's doctrine. The green world, then, becomes an escape, a place where the protagonists can temporarily live a free life away from the tyrannical powers of the dystopic society. The dystopian green world experience follows a pattern of flight, immersion, and departure. In the first segment, the protagonists flee from the oppressive society and into nature; in the second, they immerse themselves within the green world where they experience new sensations, emotions, and gain new insights and understanding; in the third, the protagonists depart the green world and return to the civilized world in order to confront it with the knowledge they have gained while immersed in the green world. This pattern can also be viewed as a symbolic cycle that moves from death to rebirth to death. The first death is the death-like stasis of the dystopia and of the protagonist, who is just a part of the whole and not truly an individual. The symbolic rebirth conies when the protagonists depart the green world as individuals with new know ledge and experiences. Lastly, the second symbolic, or sometimes literal death, comes when the protagonists confront the dystopia with their new knowledge, have that knowledge challenged by an agent of the dystopia, usually in the form of a trial, and, finally, are symbolically or literally destroyed by the dystopian agent.
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Oehling, Richard. "Contemporary Irish Fiction: Lavin and Trevor." W&M ScholarWorks, 1985. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1539625307.
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Herbert, John Richard James. "A revaluation of E.M. Forster's fiction." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2013. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/4184/.
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This thesis seeks to re-examine the nature of E.M. Forster’s fiction and its place within the canon of modernist writers, examining criticism of Forster’s fiction and claims that it is transitional in its relation to modernism, founded on a liberal humanist outlook antithetical to modernist innovation. The thesis contends that this is a misreading of turn of the century Liberalism, taking Forster’s friend Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson as an inspiration for Forster’s political and stylistic beliefs, articulated in the latter’s fiction. Following a survey of New Liberalism, the thesis compares Dickinson’s and Forster’s politics and dialogism, charting how Forster transformed Dickinson’s dialogic method into polyphonic prose. After a survey of other self-reflexive narrative practices in Forster’s prose that might also be considered modernist, the thesis turns to Forster’s dialogic construction of inter-negating discourses at play for dominance throughout his fiction. It uses a model of social intervention derived from New Liberalism as the model for articulating the coercive attempts of discourses to gain dominance as truth over individual subjects, focusing particularly on emerging discourses of homosexual identity and their dialogic relation in Forster’s fiction. The thesis claims that Forster’s fiction is dialogic and liberal in its modernism.
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Alvarez, Heidi Lee. "Regional aspects of Miami crime fiction." FIU Digital Commons, 1999. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/1263.
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This thesis argues that forces of literary regionalism and postmodern culture are behind the explosion of crime fiction being written in and about South Florida by a growing number of resident authors.
Research included four methods of investigation: 1. A critical reading of many of the novels that make up the sub-genre. 2. A study of the theories of regionalism, postmodernism and the genre of the crime fiction. 3. Interviews with a number of the authors and a prominent Miami book seller. 4. Sociological studies of Miami in terms of historical events and their cultural significance.
Today's South Florida crime fiction authors cast their narratives in the old genre of the detective novel where characters are delineated according to traditional definitions of good and evil. Evil characters threaten established order. What makes South Florida crime fiction different from traditional detective fiction is its interest in the exotic, postmodern culture and setting of South Florida. Like the region, the villains are exotic and the order that they threaten is postmodern. There is less of an interest in attributing a larger social meaning to the heroes. Rather, there is an ontological interest in the playing out of good against evil in an almost mythical setting that magnifies economic, environmental and racial issues. There is a unique cultural diversity of the city due to the geographical location of Miami in relationship to Latin America and the Caribbean, and the political forces at work in the region. South Florida's subtropical climate, fragile ecosystem, and elements of frontier life in a cosmopolitan city work to support Miami crime fiction. The setting personifies the unpredictability and pastiche of a postmodern world and may call for a new definition for literature that relies on non-traditional regional characteristics.
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Van, Pletzen Ermina Dorothea. "The language of painting in nineteenth-century English fiction." Doctoral thesis, University of Cape Town, 1995. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/21770.
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Bibliography: pages 322-332.This thesis examines the material and aesthetic sustenance which the novel as developing genre drew from the burgeoning popular interest in the visual arts, particularly the pictorial arts, which took place during the course of the nineteenth century in Britain. The first chapter develops the concept of the language of painting which for the purposes of the thesis refers to the linguistic transactions occurring between word and pictorial image when writers on art formulate their impressions in language. This type of discourse is described as governed by conceptual repetition and firmly established techniques of ekphrasis, as well as by indirect and peripheral modes of reference, not to the concrete stylistic features of the works of art under consideration, but to their effect on the viewer, the metaphors they call to mind, and the processes which can be inferred about their conception. The first chapter also gives a survey of the most important thematic strains and structural developments which had been imported into literature by the end of the eighteenth century. A chapter is then dedicated to each of five nineteenth-century novelists, Jane Austen, William Makepeace Thackeray, Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot, and Henry James, mapping out their individual grasp and knowledge of pictorial art in their particular circumstances, their experience of the art world, and the extent to which their experience of art is mediated by current painterly discourses. Each chapter next considers how pictorial material is appropriated in these novelists' fiction and whether the fiction draws structural support and meaning from pictorial concepts. The thesis furthermore investigates the inverse question of how the fiction itself becomes a context which not only reflects, but also shapes and alters inherited languages of painting. The second chapter approaches Austen's social satire against the background of the aesthetic traditions which she inherits from the eighteenth century. It is argued that her own novelistic aesthetic gains more from the discourses surrounding the practice of picturesque landscape appreciation (and related forms) than from Reynolds's doctrine of the general and ideal dominating the mid to late eighteenth century.
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Holmgren, Lindsay. "Knowing children: telepathy in Anglo-American fiction, 1846-1946." Thesis, McGill University, 2014. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=121144.
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"Knowing Children" describes the means by which telepathic devices present the mind of the child in novels by Charles Dickens, Henry James, William Faulkner, and Carson McCullers. An intellectual interest in the child and childhood flourished not only during the same period as the formal study of telepathy, but also within the same circles. "Telepathy" can be understood for my purposes as a mode of narrative representation of consciousness and knowledge. Because social, linguistic, and cognitive limitations generally prevent child characters from articulating the contours of their surprisingly complex knowledge, their minds can best be rendered through the use of telepathic literary techniques that enable the child figures themselves to influence the course of their narratives. The theoretical core of the thesis illustrates how telepathic techniques in fiction influence causality, characterization, and reader reception. More broadly, the thesis demonstrates how the telepathic mode challenges the historical assumptions, narrative effects, and readerly responsibilities of so-called omniscient narration, showing how characters' minds are revealed through those of other characters, especially those of children, who would properly be sheltered from the discourses of authority. Thus, the thesis also calls into question the conventional category of childhood itself.« Enfants savants » décrit les méthodes par lesquelles les dispositifs télépathiques présentent l'esprit des enfants dans les romans de Charles Dickens, Henry James, William Faulkner, et Carson McCullers. Un intérêt intellectuel pour l'enfant et l'enfance ont proliféré en tant qu'étude formelle de la télépathie, non seulement lors de la même période, mais aussi à l'intérieur des mêmes milieux. Pour mes fins, la "télépathie" peut être comprise en tant qu'un mode de représentation narrative de la conscience et de la connaissance. Puisque les limitations sociales, linguistiques et cognitives empêchent généralement les personnages d'enfant d'articuler les contours de leur connaissance étonnamment complexe, leurs esprits peuvent le mieux être traduits par le biais de dispositifs télépathiques-dispositifs qui permettent fondamentalement aux personnages d'enfants à influencer eux-mêmes le courant de leurs récits. Le principe théorique de ma thèse souligne la manière dont les techniques télépathiques influence la causalité, la caractérisation et la perception du lecteur. D'une manière générale, la thèse démontre la manière par laquelle le mode télépathique remet en question les suppositions historiques, effets narratifs et responsabilités du lecteur lors d'une narration autrefois omnisciente, montrant comment l'esprit des personnages est relevé à travers d'autres personnages, particulièrement ceux des enfants, qui seraient probablement gardés à l'écart des discours de l'autorité.
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Mullen, Amanda. "Mythic migrations: Recreating migrant histories in Canadian fiction." Thesis, University of Ottawa (Canada), 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/29240.
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This thesis examines the work of five Canadian writers who use their fiction to recreate an immigrant past and to mythologize an originary moment in Canada: a migrant's arrival and settlement in a new land. Mordecai Richter's Solomon Gursky Was Here (1989), Sky Lee's Disappearing Moon Cafe (1990), Jane Urquhart's Away (1993), Lawrence Hill's Any Known Blood (1997), and Nino Ricci's trilogy, Lives of the Saints (1990), In a Glass House (1993), and Where She Has Gone (1997) each express a nostalgic longing for an authenticating mythology that will give a previously silenced ethno-cultural group a place in the national narrative. Nostalgia literally means a painful return home, and the narrators of these novels express a bittersweet longing for a Canadian past, for a Canadian home. While nostalgia has traditionally played a central role in ethnic literature, this longing has typically rested on a nostalgic desire to return to a distant homeland. Yet the narrators of this study express a nostalgia for a different kind of origins---for origins in a new land. Richter, Lee, Urquhart, Hill, and Ricci create detailed genealogies in their novels that show how their different groups---Jewish, Chinese, Irish, Black, and Italian---helped build the nation and what roles each of these groups played in Canada's past. This thesis thus reveals that the interrogation of Canada's master narratives is not complete and that, even for later generations of immigrants, there remains a desire to establish their identities as Canadian The five writers of this study are deliberately challenging the authority of Canada's dominant cultural paradigm by recreating the immigrant experiences of their ethno-cultural groups in order to refute the myth of two founding nations and to establish Canada as home for their own particular groups. With their mythologized versions of history, these writers are striving to include neglected and forgotten voices in the story of Canada.
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Woo, Chimi. "Cross-Cultural Encounter And The Novel: Nation, Identity, And Genre In Nineteenth-Century British Literature." Columbus, Ohio : Ohio State University, 2008. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc%5Fnum=osu1204725332.
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Kurata, Kenichi. "Vicissitudes of desire in George Eliot’s fiction." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2010. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/3751/.
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Critics have long recognised the conflicting tendencies towards progress and conservatism in George Eliot, which are reflected in the behaviour of her characters. This study focuses on the oscillating pattern of desire in this behaviour. As the characters alternately fight with and succumb to their desires, these desires seem to be disproportionately intensified, often leading to tragic consequences. The thesis seeks to analyse this process in the light of G. W. F. Hegel's and Jacques Lacan's elaborations on the nature of desire, which provide the theoretical basis for the discussion of the fiction. While Lacan sees desire as seeking its own sustenance and intensification, ultimately converting itself into a desire for an unfulfilled desire, Hegel sees desire as a movement of self-consciousness towards a return to itself that is accomplished by desiring the desire of another self-consciousness, that is, recognition. The thesis will explore several variations on the logic of desire which divert it from its path towards recognition, and these can also be seen as various types of addiction: namely, the art of hunger, Protestantism, money-hoarding, Orphic desire, the vicious circle of writing, the gambling appetite and the dialectic of homecoming. By examining through close reading how these motifs are given vivid illustration in George Eliot's fiction, this thesis will demonstrate that the theme of intensified desire is a prominent feature that runs throughout her works and is of central importance in understanding the complex emotional lives and interactions of her characters. The myth of Orpheus's descent to the underworld, which depicts an intensification of a desire for a structurally unattainable love object that is the dead Eurydice, can be seen as a paradigm that is applicable to Eliot's early works. The ascetic figure of Maggie in The Mill on the Floss is then compared to the hunger artist in Franz Kafka's short story, through analysing the abundant food references in the novel. Her adolescent asceticism can be figuratively understood as a kind of anorexia and later develops into a kind of bulimia in her relationship with Stephen. Silas in Silas Marner, too, can be seen as a hunger artist in his addiction to work, until he is freed from his fixation through raising Eppie. In Middlemarch, there is a continuity between the earlier figure of Maggie and Dorothea, and also between Silas and Casaubon. Dorothea, who marries Casaubon out of her art of hunger, utilises her marital relationship to work out and overcome that same art of hunger, guided by Ladislaw as the advocate of spontaneous enjoyment. In the other unhappy marriage, Lydgate's relationship with Rosamond is examined in relation to his appetite for gambling, and that appetite is then seen to play a central part in Daniel Deronda where it is related to Gwendolen's mode of desire, which feeds off and intensifies the desires of others until it is stifled by Grandcourt. Deronda, on the other hand, finds a tentative solution to the impasses of desire in his commitment to the Jewish cause, which can be understood in relation to the text's references to the myth of Ulysses. The centrality of the problem of desire in Eliot's fiction is finally underlined by its reappearance in the work of one of her important successors in the exploration of the psyche, Henry James, whose The Portrait of a Lady can be seen to inherit its critique of desire from Daniel Deronda.
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Morgan, David Ellis. "Pulp literature a re-evalutation [sic] /." Connect to this title online, 2002. http://wwwlib.murdoch.edu.au/adt/browse/view/adt-MU20040820.122551.
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DeVuono, Adrian. "Before the law: rethinking censorship in late modernist American fiction." Thesis, McGill University, 2011. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=104831.
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This study examines Djuna Barnes' Nightwood, Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer, and William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch within the contextual framework of censorship. In particular, the three texts are studied as providing unique challenges to the way that obscenity has been determined and governed by the trials that defined the modernist period in America. Therefore, the objective of this study is twofold: to investigate the complex, multidirectional and productive mechanisms of censorship; to recuperate the transgressive potential in the obscenity of Barnes, Miller and Burroughs from the afterlife of the legalized text. Situating these texts in the concept of E.S. Burt's "reading pact" – a sociohistoric contract of rules and regulations that governs the way a text is to be received within a given culture – reveals a intricate relationship between aesthetic form and the interconnected methods through which power and knowledge are secured. Within this interpretive scheme, I explore how obscenity ("the unspeakable") operates as a serious violation of the contract, one that works to widen the field of legitimate discourse ("The speakable"). In the first chapter, the "non case" of Barnes' Nightwood is proposed to be a result of the T.S. Eliot's intervention, reflecting a strategic effort to disguise Barnes' obscenity under the legitimating veil forged by Judge Woolsey's verdict in the 1933 Ulysses trial. The second chapter features an analysis of the epistolary origins of Tropic of Cancer and argues that the letter provides Miller with both a material base to dismantle the constraints of 'the well-made work of art' and a space to write the sexual body back into Woolsey's "l'homme moyen sensuel." Finally, an exploration of the monstrous unspeakability of Naked Lunch illustrates how Burroughs employs the figure of the double agent to deconstruct the allegorical method at the foundation of the legal codes that authorize literature under pre-fabricated moral precepts and bring about the end of censorship.Cette étude examine «Nightwood» par Djuna Barnes, «Tropic of Cancer» par Henry Miller, et «Naked Lunch» par William S. Burroughs dans le cadre contextuel de la censure. En particulier, les trois textes sont étudiées en fournissant des défis uniques pour le moyen que l'obscénité a été déterminée et régie par les essais qui ont défini la période moderniste en Amérique. Par conséquent, l'objectif de cette étude est double: d'enquêter les mécanismes complexes, productifs et multidirectionnelle de la censure; de récupérer le potentiel transgressif de l'obscénité de Barnes, Miller, et Burroughs de la vie après la mort légalisée de texte. Situer ces textes dans le concept « pacte de lecture » de E.S. Burt, un contrat socio-historiques de règles et de règlements qui régissent la façon dont la littérature est reçu dans une culture donnée, révèle la relation embrouillé entre la forme esthétique et les méthodes par lesquelles le pouvoir et la connaissance sont fixé. Dans ce cadre, j'explore la façon dont l'obscénité («non dicible») est une violation grave du contrat, qui élargisse le domaine de ce qui peut être inclus dans le domaine du discours légitime («dicible»). Dans le premier chapitre, le «non case» de «Nightwood» de Barnes est proposé d'être à la suite de l'intervention de TS Eliot qui reflète un essai stratégique pour cacher l'obscénité de Barnes sous le voile de légitimation du juge Woolsey's verdict dans le procès historique 1933 Ulysse. Le deuxième chapitre analyse les origines épistolaire du «Tropic of Cancer» et suggère que la lettre fournit Miller avec un matériau de base pour lutter contre les contraintes du «grand art» et un espace pour écrire le corps sexuelle de «l'homme moyen sensuel» de Woolsey dans la littérature. Enfin, une exploration de la indicible monstrueux de «Naked Lunch» illustre comment Burroughs emploie l'agent-double de déconstruire la méthode allégorique à la base des codes juridiques qui a autorisé le roman et aider à amener la fin du contrôle de la censure.
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Holland, Joanne. "Narrating Margaret Nicholson: a character study in fact and fiction." Thesis, McGill University, 2009. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=32373.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis examines the historical and fictional character of Margaret Nicholson (1745-1828), a labouring woman who became notorious for her failed attempt to assassinate King George III in August 1786. After a quick trial, Nicholson was diagnosed as insane and spent the rest of her life in Bedlam. Her story continued to interest readers: she was the subject of multiple biographical chapbooks, the supposed author of a collection of radical poetry actually written by Percy Bysshe Shelley, and a source of mingled terror and fascination for both eighteenth- and nineteenth-century readers. The thesis evaluates how Nicholson's story has undergone fictionalization from her time to the present, and examines how the boundaries between fact and fiction in the case have become so nebulous that history itself has become fictionalized.Ce mémoire examine le personnage historique et fictif qu'est Margaret Nicholson (1745-1828), une ouvrière qui devint notoire pour sa tentative infructueuse d'assassiner le roi George III en août 1786. Lors d'un procès rapide, Nicholson fut déclarée folle et passa ensuite le reste de sa vie à l'Hôpital psychiatrique de Bedlam. Son histoire continua à intéresser les lecteurs: elle fut l'objet de nombreux opuscules biographiques; on la crut l'auteure d'un recueil de poésie radicale dont le véritable auteur était Percy Bysshe Shelley; elle resta une source de terreur et de fascination aux dix-huitième et dix-neuvième siècles. Le mémoire examine la façon dont la vie de Nicholson devint fiction au fil des siècles et la façon dont les limites entre faits et fiction devinrent tellement brouillées que l'Histoire elle-même devint romancée.