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Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'English literature English language'
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1
Hardman, Frank Christopher. "A-level English language and English literature : contrasts in teaching and learning." Thesis, University of Newcastle Upon Tyne, 1997. http://hdl.handle.net/10443/604.
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This study is an investigation of methods of teaching and learning in the A-level English curriculum consisting both of the traditional A-level English literature and the more recent arrival of A-level English language. It is generally assumed in commentaries on A-level English teaching that language is taught differently from literature because of differences in aims, content and ideology. English language is seen as a deliberate move away from the more 'pure' academic study of literary texts and towards more 'applied' and even partly 'vocational' study in which independent and collaborative forms of learning are strongly encouraged. There is, however, little empirical evidence about how students are taught and how they learn in these different courses. The study addresses these limitations by carrying out an intensive, qualitative study of the teaching styles of ten teachers who teach across the two A-level English subjects. Video recordings of twenty complete lessons (i. e. 10 English language and 10 English literature) were analysed using a formal framework of analysis adapted from the study of discourse analysis. This system identifies the organisation of the classroom discourse so as to allow for a comparison of the patterning of teaching exchanges across the two subjects. The study also investigates, using semi-structured interviews, how the teachers perceive the learning objectives of the two subjects, and the match between those objectives and the teaching and learning methods used to achieve them. The findings suggest that teachers do not vary their teaching style when teaching across the two English subjects at A-levels supporting an extensive statistical study of students' perceptions of the instructional practices employed by teachers which also found a lack of pedagogic distinctiveness between the two subjects. The analysis revealed that teacher-led recitation is a prominent feature of the discourse in both A-level English language and literature.
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Mattsson, Kershaw Anneli. "Teaching Academic English to English Learners : A literature Review on Classroom Practice." Thesis, Högskolan Dalarna, Engelska, 2017. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:du-25394.
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The level of fluency in the genre specific language of schooling, also known as Academic English (AE), determines students’ success in school. Government agencies that legislate school policies therefore give teachers the directive to conduct education in ways that promote communicative abilities in academic English across all curricula. While the acquisition of an AE register entails hard work for native English-speaking students it presents an enormous challenge for English language learners (ELLs) who are faced with the triple burden of leaning basic interpersonal communicative skills (BICS) in addition to content knowledge and academic English. Classroom practices, teachers’ training, and students’ cognitive abilities are predictive factors in the successful acquisition of academic English by ELLs. This literature review, which draws on cognitive theory in addition to systemic functional linguistics theory, contributes to the topic of how to most effectively teach AE to ELLs in English speaking classrooms. The results from seven peer reviewed research sources indicate that teaching practices differ depending on the nature of the subject, but that systemic learning theory, scaffolding, and contextual awareness are reoccurring elements. Furthermore, the results imply that there are challenges including that ELLs constitute a very heterogeneous student body with varying cognitive abilities that require a variety of teaching approaches. In addition educators’ attitudes, competences and training in teaching AE across all curricula pose a challenge to the quality of instruction. Further research on the topic could involve making actual classroom observations in addition to conducting teacher interviews in schools that have content and language integrated learning in Sweden to explore what instructional methods are used to teach AE in CLIL- education.
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Brearey, Oliver James. "Peripheral subjectivity and English-language Hong Kong literature." online access from Digital Dissertation Consortium, 2007. http://libweb.cityu.edu.hk/cgi-bin/er/db/ddcdiss.pl?1451242.
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Forey, Madeleine. "Language and revelation : English apocalyptic literature 1500-1660." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1993. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.241302.
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Saito, Takaharu. "Exploring nonnative-English-speaking teachers' experiences in teaching English at a United States university." Diss., The University of Arizona, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/282909.
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The purpose of this dissertation is to examine how nonnative English teachers' identity constructions develop and influence their pedagogy in U.S. higher education. The research on nonnative teachers of English has not adequately explored their identity constructions. This study relied on a phenomenological case study approach that analyzed the lived experience of nonnative English teachers in relation to wider language ideologies and practices. Data were generated from spring 2003 to fall 2003 through phenomenological in-depth interviews, classroom observations, questionnaires, and autobiographical accounts of research participants. The data were primarily analyzed through the use of the constant comparative method. The study reveals that identity construction among nonnative English teachers, with its dynamic and contradictory nature, remains challenging, changing, and growing over time in relations of wider language ideologies and practices. Thus, the findings reject a fixed, unitary, and monolithic view on the identity construction of nonnative English teachers. In terms of the study's practical and pedagogical implications, university programs should know that nonnative English teachers can practice mutual accommodation through which both nonnative English teachers and their students can collaborate in order to improve the learning of English and enrich diversity within U.S. higher education. University programs should also focus more on what nonnative English teachers can do in collaboration with native English teachers. Finally, this study suggests that language educators should explore the role nonnative English teachers play in language pedagogy in an era of the global spread of English that produces highly proficient nonnative English speaking professionals.
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Iida, Eri. "Hedges in Japanese English and American English medical research articles." Thesis, McGill University, 2007. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=99723.
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The present study analysed the use of hedges in English medical research articles written by Japanese and American researchers. The study also examined the relationship between Japanese medical professionals' employment of hedges and their writing process. Sixteen English medical articles: eight written by Japanese and eight by Americans were examined. Four of the Japanese authors discussed their writing process through questionnaires and telephone interviews.The overall ratio of hedges in articles written by the two groups differed only slightly; however, analyses revealed a number of specific differences in the use of hedges between the groups. For example, Japanese researchers used epistemic adverbs and adjectives less frequently than the American researchers. The results were discussed in relation to the problems of nonnative speakers' grammatical competence, cultural differences in rhetorical features, and the amount of experience in the use of medical English.
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Doubler, Janet M. Fortune Ron. "Literature and composition a problem-solving approach to a thematic literature course /." Normal, Ill. Illinois State University, 1987. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/ilstu/fullcit?p8713214.
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Thesis (D.A.)--Illinois State University, 1987.Title from title page screen, viewed July 26, 2005. Dissertation Committee: Ronald J. Fortune (chair), Glenn A. Grever, Elizabeth E. McMahan, Patricia A. Chesebro, Janice Neuleib. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 170-177) and abstract. Also available in print.
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Jennessen, Vanja. "A Story of English Language Learning – How Can Children’s Literature be Used in Teaching Vocabulary to Young English Language Learners? : - A Literature Review." Thesis, Högskolan Dalarna, Pedagogiskt arbete, 2015. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:du-19870.
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This study aims to find research relating to the use of children’s literature to promote vocabulary development in young children, particularly English language learners in Sweden. The main questions address how (methods) children’s literature can be used and why (reasons) children’s literature is often recommended for the teaching of vocabulary to young learners. The study also aims to explore reasons against the use of children’s literature in vocabulary teaching found in previous research. A systematic literature review was carried out, including results from five empirical studies. The studies involved native speakers, second language learners and foreign language learners from various backgrounds. The results suggest that while research has shown children’s literature to be a good tool to use with young learners, careful lesson planning needs to be carried out. Direct instruction and scaffolding using pictures, technology and gestures is recommended. Hence, the teacher plays an important part for the vocabulary development using children’s literature in the classroom.
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Hamilton, Doreen Dashel. "Voice in English studies /." Thesis, Connect to this title online; UW restricted, 1997. http://hdl.handle.net/1773/9404.
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Beauprez, Nathalie. "Extramural English and English Proficiency : A Teacher’s Perspective on the Influence of Extramural English on the English proficiency of their Students." Thesis, Högskolan Dalarna, Institutionen för språk, litteratur och lärande, 2021. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:du-37804.
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The umbrella term used in research to imply exposure to the English language outside the classroom is “extramural English”. The impact of the engagement in activities by second language learners of English through extramural activities is generally perceived as positive for language development. The aim of this study is to investigate the perceptions of teachers in Swedish lower secondary school on the influence of online extramural English on the written and spoken English proficiency of students, enrolled in years six till nine, learning English as a foreign language.A qualitative study in the form of an online questionnaire, consisting of open- and closed-ended questions, is used to answer three research questions: 1. What is the overall perspective of English teachers on their students’ proficiency in English and the influence of extramural English? 2. What is the perspective of English teachers on their students’ proficiency in written English and the influence of extramural English? 3. What is the perspective of English teachers on their students’ proficiency in oral English and the influence of extramural English? Teachers clearly believe that oral communication and listening skills benefit more than reading and writing skills from online extramural activities in English.
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Roach, William Leonard Brosnahan Irene. "Incorporating American literature into the English as a second language college composition course." Normal, Ill. Illinois State University, 1988. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/ilstu/fullcit?p8901469.
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Thesis (D.A.)--Illinois State University, 1988.Title from title page screen, viewed September 19, 2005. Dissertation Committee: Irene Brosnahan (chair), Ron Fortune, Maurice Sharton, Janet Youga, Ray Lewis White. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 113-126) and abstract. Also available in print.
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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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Vivian, Steven D. Scharton Maurice. "English studies, poststructuralism, and radicalism." Normal, Ill. Illinois State University, 1998. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/ilstu/fullcit?p9835920.
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Thesis (Ph. D.)--Illinois State University, 1998.Title from title page screen, viewed July 6, 2006. Dissertation Committee: Maurice Scharton (chair), Bruce Hawkins, Janice Neuleib. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 251-260) and abstract. Also available in print.
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Pappa, Joseph. "Carnal reading early modern language and bodies /." Diss., Online access via UMI:, 2008.
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Thompson, Clarissa. "Pedagogy and prospective teachers in three college English courses /." Thesis, Connect to this title online; UW restricted, 2002. http://hdl.handle.net/1773/7826.
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Mullen, Kristen. "A Cross-Generational Analysis of Spanish-to-English Lexico-Semantic Phenomena in Emerging Miami English." FIU Digital Commons, 2015. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/1801.
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Sociolinguists have documented the substrate influence of various languages on the formation of dialects in numerous ethnic-regional setting throughout the United States. This literature shows that while phonological and grammatical influences from other languages may be instantiated as durable dialect features, lexical phenomena often fade over time as ethnolinguistic communities assimilate with contiguous dialect groups. In preliminary investigations of emerging Miami Latino English, we have observed that lexical forms based on Spanish lexical forms are not only ubiquitous among the speech of the first generation Cuban Americans but also of the second. Examples, observed in field work, casual observation, and studied formally in an experimental context include the following: “get down from the car,” which derives from the Spanish equivalent, bajar del carro instead of “get out of the car”. The translation task administered to thirty-one participants showed a variety lexical phenomena are still maintained at equal or higher frequencies.
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Harris, Katherine. "I Know Him Not, and Never Will: Moby Dick, The Human and the Whale." Master's thesis, Faculty of Humanities, 2021. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/33711.
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In this thesis, I argue that Herman Melville's Moby Dick depicts the ocean and whales in a way that develops aesthetic theory into a proto-environmentalist message. Melville draws on theories of the mathematical and dynamic sublime as outlined by Edmund Burke and Immanuel Kant, while also employing Goethe's Theory of Colours in his depictions of the ocean setting. Goethe posits that opposing phenomena require one another to signify and to function, and Melville dramatises this idea throughout a complex and often self-contradictory novel. Moby Dick depicts whale hunting in a paradoxical, unstable way which both defends the practice and highlights its cruel nature. In considering this, I trace how depictions and cultural representations of whales have changed over time, shifting from the whale as icon of the monstrously non-human to the whale as touchstone for environmental humanism. Melville, despite the image of Moby Dick as a monster, also portrays whales in a way which humanises them and allows the reader to empathise with them, so allowing for a counter discourse against whaling to emerge. The industrial consumption of marine animals is highlighted in Moby Dick, as Melville notes the various ways in which whales and similar creatures are used for food and other products. Unscrupulous methods of acquiring resources are paid particular attention in the chapter, ‘Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish,' which I use as a guide to the contradictory ideologies at the heart of the text. I argue that the aesthetic theory embedded in the novel enables a nascent environmentalist consciousness, and I place such moments in dialogue with more recent accounts of whales and work from the field of the oceanic humanities.
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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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Wood, David. "Formulaic language in speech fluency development in English as a second language." Thesis, University of Ottawa (Canada), 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/29274.
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This thesis is an investigation of the role of formulaic language in second language (L2) speech fluency development, within a cognitive and information processing framework. Fluency has been studied and defined in terms of temporal variables of speech such as rate of speech, pause frequency and distribution, and the length of fluent runs between pauses. It has been suggested by several researchers that the key to fluency in spontaneous speech is mastery of a repertoire of formulaic language sequences, multiword strings processed mentally as single words (Schmidt, 1991; Towell, Hawkins, and Bazergui, 1996; Chambers, 1998). If formulaic sequences are automatized or stored and retrieved as wholes from long term memory so as to allow longer lexical units to be produced within the limits of controlled processing (McLaughlin, Rossman, and McLeod, 1983; Kahnemann and Treismann, 1984; DeKeyser, 2001) and short term memory (Anderson, 1983; Baddeley, 1988), then they may facilitate spontaneous speech under the constraints of real time. The present study was designed to examine whether this could be so.
The study draws on a synthesis of research from three areas: fluency and its development in second language (L2) speech; formulaic language, multi-word lexical units which are stored and retrieved in long-term memory so as to be retrieved as wholes; social and cultural factors related to fluency development and formulaic language use, including first language and culture, voice, and identity. The research was interpreted in light of psycholinguistic knowledge about mental processes underlying L2 speech production, particularly the growing evidence that formulaic language sequences are fundamental to fluent language production as they allow production to occur despite the restrictions of controlled processing and the constraints of short term memory capacity.
The hypotheses which frame the research centre around the idea that increased use of formulaic language units by learners over time facilitates the development of speech fluency as measured by temporal variables such as speech rate, pause phenomena, and the length of fluent runs occurring between pauses. Specifically, it was hypothesized that, with continued learning and experience, L2 speech would exhibit a faster rate of production, a greater proportion of production time spent speaking as opposed to pausing, longer runs between pauses, and that formulaic sequences would appear more frequently in the longer runs between pauses. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)
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Verde, Erica. "Investigating Miami English-Spanish Bilinguals' Treatment of English Deictic Verbs of Motion." FIU Digital Commons, 2014. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/1229.
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This investigation focused on the treatment of English deictic verbs of motion by Spanish-English bilinguals in Miami. Although English and Spanish share significant overlap of the spatial deixis system, they diverge in important aspects. It is not known how these verbs are processed by bilinguals. Thus, this study examined Spanish-English bilinguals’ interpretation of the verbs come, go, bring, and take in English.
Forty-five monolingual English speakers and Spanish-English bilinguals participated. Participants were asked to watch video clips depicting motion events and to judge the acceptability of accompanying narrations spoken by the actors in the videos.
Analyses showed that, in general, monolinguals and bilinguals patterned similarly across the deictic verbs come, bring, go and take. However, they did differ in relation to acceptability of word order for verbal objects. Also, bring was highly accepted by all language groups across all goal paths, possibly suggesting an innovation in its use.
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Alsarhan, Jawaher. "Gender and Racial Empowerment in Selected Works of Maya Angelou." DigitalCommons@Robert W. Woodruff Library, Atlanta University Center, 2019. http://digitalcommons.auctr.edu/cauetds/162.
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This study examines Maya Angelou as a powerful African-American woman in the twentieth century who impacted generations of African Americans. Her biographies and selected works speak strongly and wisely about gender and racial empowerment. This empowerment was sown in her childhood and could be traced throughout her life. It is also a fact that seldom does the realization of one’s race and gender take place at such an early age as with Maya Angelou. She was highly marginalized not only in terms of gender but also in terms of race with acute consciousness.
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Alwazzan, Aminah. "The Strong Voices of Black Women and Men in the Selected Poetry of Langston Hughes." DigitalCommons@Robert W. Woodruff Library, Atlanta University Center, 2019. http://digitalcommons.auctr.edu/cauetds/161.
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This thesis discusses Langston Hughes’ poetry and details the African-American experience in a discriminatory society which was an essential theme of the Harlem Renaissance. The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural and artistic movement which enriched American life. Hughes’ body of work covers the entire range of the human experience, especially the experience of ordinary people. He believed that the role of the artist was to cover and illuminate every aspect of people’s lives. Part of this expansive philosophy towards art included giving a voice to African-American women and men who experienced both racist and patriarchal oppression.
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Shaheen, Muhammad. "Theories of translation and their applications to the teaching of English/Arabic-Arabic/English translating." Thesis, Connect to e-thesis, 1991. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/637.
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Prillaman, Barbara. "Conversations to help make meaning ELLs and literature circles /." Access to citation, abstract and download form provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company; downloadable PDF file, 202 p, 2008. http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=1500060691&sid=33&Fmt=2&clientId=8331&RQT=309&VName=PQD.
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Malton, Sara. "Commanding language, linguistic authority and female autonomy in Thomas Hardy's fiction." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 2000. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/ftp01/MQ58482.pdf.
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Berthrong, Andrew. "Hold, Hold, My Heart." DigitalCommons@USU, 2010. https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/etd/764.
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This thesis consists of a traditional introduction followed by a first-person, fictional story told in seven chapters. The story begins with the protagonist in his apartment preparing to write, a brief account of his stalling, and then his beginning to write. Those chapters taking place in the vicinity of the apartment are in the present tense and those relating past adventures are written in third person, one chapter for each adventure: Africa, sailing, and Navajo Mountain. After each adventure, the narration returns to the apartment. This piece is the embodiment of both the vigorous internal work in search of understanding and the story of that work, told as a fictional account. The structure, therefore, mimics the journey: the dialogue between his present, cloistered searching and his past, external searching. Therefore, the combination of his solitary internal life and his failed adventures point to an urge to be involved and the awareness of his separateness, of the great solitude of human existence, to be both connected and isolated.
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Sutton-Linderman, Chelsi Joy. "Lessons in Humanity: A Memoir." DigitalCommons@USU, 2008. https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/etd/158.
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In the opening pages of his work, Dog Years; A Memoir, Mark Doty explains: Love for a wordless creature, once it takes hold, is an enchantment, and the enchanted speak, famously, in private mutterings, cryptic riddles, or gibberish. This is why I shouldn't be writing anything about the two dogs that have been such presences for sixteen years of my life. How on earth could I stand at the requisite distance to say anything that might matter? (1) In this thesis I argue that Doty, among other respected contemporary writers, is saying something that matters when he writes of his relationship with his dogs. Such words and ideas matter much in the genre of creative nonfiction and particularly memoir, they matter as models of narrative craft, and they matter as works that examine the nature of personal trauma in narrative and the importance of connections to the natural world in the healing process. "Lessons in Humanity: A Memoir" appears as a creative work examining the nature of trauma and healing in memoir. The narrative addresses childhood trauma and the effects it has on our adult lives, the recovery from marital abuse between a husband and wife, the impact of a severe health crisis, and the importance of connections to the natural world, particularly dogs, in the healing process.
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Aguirre, Laura Maria. "Imaginative Ecosystems: Clamoring for Visibility and Opacity in Miami's Climate Justice Movement." FIU Digital Commons, 2018. https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/3783.
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Though Miami is one of the places most vulnerable to climate change, climate change threats are not at the forefront of most citizen’s worries. Furthermore, though all Miamians are vulnerable in the face of climate change, they are stratified into communities that will bear the consequences of that threat with different intensities, including frontline communities that struggle to bring visibility to themselves and their concerns. Activist-citizens need to connect the dots between ethical, social, political, economic, and environmental issues and create kinship networks that break through compartmentalized communities. The purpose of this thesis is to explore how climate justice initiatives, like the Miami People’s Climate March, catalyze action and subvert institutional narratives that preclude change by collaboratively reimagining communities as communal ecosystems. These initiatives foreground the relationality between human and nonhuman subjects, demand visibility for frontline communities, and unite diverse populations in solidarity while simultaneously acknowledging and celebrating difference.
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Howell, Patrick. "Alexander the Great and the English novel." Master's thesis, University of Cape Town, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/11948.
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Includes bibliographical references.This work focuses on the manner in which Alexander the Great is received and reconfigured within the confines of the contemporary English-language novel. The Macedonian king has held the attention of writers and artists throughout the centuries; this dissertation seeks to investigate how modern authors, working at a remove of centuries, with limited evidence, have contrived to fashion coherent literary narratives from his life, and how this process is influenced by the authors and the society for which they write. The theoretical backbone of this approach is provided by reception theory, which provides a useful technical vocabulary and outlook by which to approach the phenomena which affect the comprehension of, and subsequent re-appropriation, of cultural artifacts.
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Clower, Shannon Montoya. "Using literature circles to improve literacy skills of English language learners." [Denver, Colo.] : Regis University, 2006. http://165.236.235.140/lib/SClower2006.pdf.
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Maciel, Carla Maria Ataíde Hawkins Bruce Wayne Kalter Susan. "Bantu oral narratives in the training of EFL teachers in Mozambique." Normal, Ill. : Illinois State University, 2007. http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?index=0&did=1390280981&SrchMode=1&sid=1&Fmt=2&VInst=PROD&VType=PQD&RQT=309&VName=PQD&TS=1202917314&clientId=43838.
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Thesis (Ph. D.)--Illinois State University, 2007.Title from title page screen, viewed on February 13, 2008. Dissertation Committee: Bruce Hawkins, Susan Kalter (co-chairs), Kristin Dykstra. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 258-275) and abstract. Also available in print.
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Higgins, John Anthony. "Raymond Williams : literature, Marxism and cultural materialism." Doctoral thesis, University of Cape Town, 1998. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/23241.
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The guiding principle of this study is that Williams's engagement with English studies cannot be understood in terms purely internal to the discipline of English. As well as writing against the official culture of liberal and conservative literary studies, Williams also wrote in opposition to what he read as the orthodoxies of Marxist thinking on literature, culture and politics. Arguing first against Marxist literary criticism as he knew it from the 1930s, he maintained an ever sceptical and ever critical stance towards the later trends of Althusserian and poststructuralist theory, while at the same time continuing his always defining commitment to socialist politics. While the terms of this larger argument are necessarily present throughout, Chapter Five focuses on them more narrowly, and traces their development in Williams' thinking from the late 1950s through to the development of the concept of cultural materialism in Marxism and Literature in 1977.
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Mattar, Karim. "The Middle Eastern novel in English : literary transnationalism after Orientalism." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2013. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:dae20213-59d9-4889-9cc2-e64c66668115.
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This thesis focuses on the production, circulation, and reception of contemporary Middle Eastern literatures in Britain and the United States. I'm particularly interested in the novel form, and in assessing how both translated Middle Eastern novels and anglophone novels by migrant writers engage with dominant Anglo-American discourses of politics, gender, and religion in the region. In negotiation with Edward Said's Orientalism, I develop a materialist postcolonial critical model to analyse how such discourses undergird publishing and marketing strategies towards novels by Ibrahim Nasrallah, Hisham Matar, Yasmin Crowther, Orhan Pamuk, and others. I argue that as Middle Eastern novels travel, whether via translation or authorial acts of migration, across cultures and languages, they are reshaped according to dominant audience expectations. But, I continue, they also retain traces of their source cultures which must be brought to the surface in critical readings. Drawing on the work of David Damrosch, Pascale Casanova, Franco Moretti, and Aamir Mufti, I thus develop a reading practice, what I call 'post-Orientalist comparatism', that allows me to read past the domesticating strategies framing these novels and to newly reveal their more local, thus potentially transgressive, takes on Middle Eastern socio-political issues. I cumulatively suggest that Middle Eastern novels in English formally embody a dialectic of 'East' and 'West', of the local and the global, thus have important implications for our understanding of the English and world novel traditions. I conceive of my thesis as a dual intervention into the fields of postcolonial studies and world literature. I am primarily concerned to reorient postcolonial theory around questions of Middle Eastern literary and cultural production, areas that have been traditionally neglected due to an entrenched, but unsustainable, anglophone bias. To do so, I turn to the work of Edward Said, and rethink the foundational problematic of Orientalism with an eye towards political, material, and cultural developments since 1978, the year in which Orientalism was first published, and towards the unique transnational positionality of the genre of the Middle Eastern novel in English. I also turn to theorists of world literature such as David Damrosch in order to develop a reading practice thoroughly attentive to issues of circulation, but, along the lines set out by Aamir Mufti, seek to interrogate their work for its occlusions of the impact of orientalist discourse in the historical development of the category of 'World Literature'. My thesis thus not only draws on postcolonial and world literary theory to analyse its object, the Middle Eastern novel in English, but also demonstrates how proper attention to this object necessitates a theoretical recalibration of these fields.
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Napier, Amelia Carroll. "Generational Tension in Middle English Lais." W&M ScholarWorks, 1992. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1539625740.
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Hlebnikovs, Pjotrs. "Extramural English: Swedish upper secondary students’ beliefs on using and learning English outside the classroom." Thesis, Högskolan Dalarna, Engelska, 2017. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:du-27347.
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The present study examines students’ use, attitudes and preferences, when it comes to EE (Extramural English). EE is defined as English language activities that learners are engaged in outside their ordinary language class, such as reading books, reading newspapers/magazines, watching TV, watching films, surfing the Internet, playing video games, listening to music, etc. The results of the study are based on data that was collected from Swedish upper secondary-school learners of English over a period of one term on several occasions. Information about students’ EE activities was collected by quantitative questionnaires, including both multiple-choice and open-ended questions. The results showed that Swedish upper-secondary school students were engaged in many different extramural activities. The extramural activity that the students were most often engaged in, was watching English language movies. The second most popular extramural activity was watching TV-programs in English with Swedish subtitles. Furthermore, according to the surveyed upper-secondary students, most of their language skills they develop with the help of their Extramural contacts with the English language. These are for example understanding of spoken English, speaking English, understanding of English vocabulary and understanding written English. However, when it comes to the written English and the development of English grammar, it appears that the students see themselves as developing these language skills more successfully within the language classroom than in their free time. The results also showed that, whereas the above-mentioned extramural activities were preferred by both boys and girls, there were also some differences in their use of extramural activities. Whereas boys rather preferred such activities as "English-speaking role-playing or computer games", girls, according to their answers, preferred such activities as "reading texts in English". The results of this study have shown that, according to the students’ responses, there is no strong gender difference when it comes to attitudes about learning English in school versus outside the school.
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Koussouhon, Leonard Assogba. "Enhancing English literacy skills through literature : a linguistics-oriented Francophone African perspective /." Access Digital Full Text version, 1995. http://pocketknowledge.tc.columbia.edu/home.php/bybib/11791500.
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Thesis (Ed.D.)--Teachers College, Columbia University, 1995.Typescript; issued also on microfilm. Sponsor: Clifford A. Hill. Dissertation Committee: Jo Anne Kleifgen. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 160-169).
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Holoch, Adele Marian. "The serious work of humor in postcolonial literature." Diss., University of Iowa, 2012. https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/1632.
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This dissertation examines the role of humor in contemporary South Asian and African postcolonial literature, arguing that humor opens new spaces for historically marginalized individuals to be heard. I argue that in addition to its unique capacities to question and rebel against colonial authority, humor helps those who deploy it to resist victimhood and enact a psychological rebellion against the circumstances of colonialism and its legacies, and facilitates a sense of community through laughter among both those who deploy it and those who enjoy it as audience members. I establish a theoretical framework based in the work of Aristotle, Henri Bergson, Sigmund Freud and Mikhail Bakhtin, then analyze four modes of humor-- satire, irony, black humor, and the grotesque--as they are incorporated in Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's Wizard of the Crow (Kenya, 2007); Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things (India, 1997); Bapsi Sidhwa's Cracking India (Pakistan; first published in 1988 as Ice-Candy Man); Manjula Padmanabhan's play Harvest (India, 1997); Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger (India, 2008); Indra Sinha's Animal's People (India, 2008) and Ousmane Sembène's Xala (Senegal, 1973). By reading these literary narratives within a unifying framework of "humor," even as I pay close attention to the differences between them--differences such as their geographical locations, the political situations they engage, the specific cultural codes with which they play, and their unique incorporations of particular humorous modes--I contend that humor ultimately performs very significant work in postcolonial literature, opening many destabilizing and subversive possibilities that more ostensibly serious forms of writing do not share.
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Wang, Pan. "Chinese students' English name practices and their identities." Thesis, McGill University, 2009. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=66903.
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This qualitative study explores the relationship between Chinese students' practice of adopting and/or using an English name and their identities. I am concerned with why Chinese students agreed or refused to adopt an English name at the inception, how their attitudes towards their English name(s) have changed over time, what criteria they used when choosing their English names, and what the relationship is between their English name(s) and their identities. I understand participants' practice of adopting an English name as the result of the habits of adopting ming and zi in the Chinese naming culture. Participants' English name practice is also in accordance with the collectivist culture that is dominant in China. Participants use an English name in the effort to avoid being a problem for the group in which they are involved because they view the content of self as social categories. Examining the social and political contexts, the social influence from Hong Kong and Taiwan and the carrying out the Reform-and-Open-up policy in mainland China are also important factors that have contributed to the popularity of adopting and/or using English names among Chinese people. From the second language learning perspective, participants' English name(s) sometimes may be their investment in imagined communities. Participants' criteria for choosing an English name are similar to some common criteria for choosing a Chinese name. Participants' narratives reveal that there is a direct and close relationship between participants' English names and their identities. They associated their English name with their actualities and realities, such as their life goals and their ideal personality qualities.Cette étude qualitative explore la relation entre la coutume des étudiants chinois d'adopter ou d'employer un nom anglais et leurs identités culturelles. L'objet de l'étude concerne surtout pourquoi les étudiants acceptent ou refusent l'adoption d'un nom anglais, quels sont les critères qui influencent leurs choix, comment leurs attitudes à l'égard de leurs noms anglais ont changées à travers le temps et comment qualifier la relation entre leurs noms chinois et leurs identités propres. Je comprends la pratique des participants d'adopter un nom anglais comme étant la réflexion de la coutume de faire l'usage de ming et zi dans la culture de la nomenclature chinoise. Cette tradition est aussi en accord avec la culture collectiviste qui est dominante en Chine. Les participants font l'usage d'un nom anglais afin d'éviter d'être un problème pour le groupe dans lequel ils sont, parce qu'ils ont une perception d'eux-mêmes comme étant étroitement lié à des catégories sociales. En examinant de plus près le contexte sociopolitique chinois, on s'aperçoit que le Hong Kong, le Taiwan et les réformes chinoises concernant l'Ouverture sur l'Occident ont beaucoup contribué à la popularité d'adopter ou d'utiliser un nom anglais dans la Chine continentale. Du point de vue des étudiants de langues étrangères, leurs noms anglais sont parfois un investissement dans des communautés imaginées. Les critères pour choisir un nom anglais sont semblables à leurs critères pour choisir un nom chinois. Les témoignages des participants révèlent qu'il y a un lien étroit et direct entre leurs noms anglais et leurs identités. Ils associent leurs noms anglais à leurs réalités personnelles et à leurs rêves, tel que leurs objectifs de vie et leurs traits de personnalités idéaux.
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Mitsigkas, Neophytos. "Using novels in English language teaching in Cyprus." Thesis, University of Essex, 2016. http://repository.essex.ac.uk/19316/.
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This thesis reports on a mixed-methods descriptive study concerning the students and teachers’ perceptions of the role of literature – and novels in particular – in English language teaching and learning. Literature has always been a perpetual feature of language learning, and the transition from the aesthetic study of literature to its use as a resource for linguistic development in the language classroom has marked its implementation and use. For many decades, the use of literature for language teaching was marginalised because of the advent of communicative language teaching. Nevertheless, the current trend favours a resurgence of interest in using literature for language purposes, appreciating its valuable contribution in English language teaching. However, very limited empirical research has been done to examine the use of novels in language teaching. The quantitative component of this research involved 144 students of an English-speaking private school in Cyprus and 26 English language teachers. Both groups responded to a distinct self-completed questionnaire. A follow-up qualitative investigation was carried out with five of the teachers who completed the questionnaire. Lastly, twelve unstructured, non-participant observations were organised with the students who completed the questionnaire, in their classrooms. For a statistical analysis, IBM SPSS Statistics 19 was used, while the qualitative data analysis was done with NVivo 10 and the results from the quantitative and qualitative enquiry were then integrated in order to respond to six research questions. The findings of the study present the students and teachers’ beliefs on the role of novels in ELT and elucidate the acceptance of novels as an invaluable source of motivating and stimulating activities that can contribute to the increase of students’ language awareness. Additionally, the findings resulting from an examination of the students and teachers’ beliefs substantiate and promote the catalytic role of novels in developing an intercultural awareness, where language and culture are seen as interrelated entities and novels are perceived as vivid cultural representations.
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Lalor, Doireann P. "Italian postwar experimentalism in the wake of English-language modernism." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2012. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:238508c2-eb42-460a-b8c1-a01d58f15630.
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After World War II in Italy the cultural scene was in need of resuscitation. Artists searched for tools with which to revifify their works. Central to this, for many key figures in the fifties and sixties, was an engagement with English-language Modernism. This phenomenon has been widely recognised, but this thesis is its first sustained analysis. I draw together the receptions of three English-language Modernist authors – T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound and James Joyce – who, as a triad, were instrumental in the radicalisation of the arts in Italy in the fifties and sixties. I show that their works were elevated as models of an experimental approach to language that was revisited by Italian artists – most notably by poets associated with the Neoavantgarde. The specific Modernist linguistic techniques which were adopted by the Italians that we will consider here are the mingling of languages and styles, the use of citations, and the perversion and manipulation of single words and idioms. The poets considered in most depth to exemplify this phenomenon are Edoardo Sanguineti, who was a major exponent of the Neoavantgarde, and Amelia Rosselli, who was more peripherally and problematically associated with the movement. Both poets desecrated the traditional language of poetry and energised their own poetry with recourse to Modernist techniques which they consciously and deliberately adopted from Eliot, Pound and Joyce. An unpicking of the mechanics of these techniques in Sanguineti's and Rosselli's poetry reveals that their texts necessitate an active mode of reading. This aligns with the intellectual ideas propounded by Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes and Umberto Eco, all of whom grounded their theories on readership in analyses of the linguistic experiments of Modernism. Sanguineti's and Rosselli's poetry fulfil the characteristics of Eco's “open” work, Barthes' “polysemous” work, and bring about Benjamin's “shock-effect” in the reader. These radical linguistic techniques, appropriated from the Modernists, contribute to each poets' overall poetic projects – they enact Edoardo Sanguineti's anarchic and revolutionary impulses, and stage Amelia Rosselli's thematic conflicts.
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Svensson, Maria. "Extramural Gaming and English Language Proficiency : The potential benefits of extramural gaming as a tool for learning English." Thesis, Högskolan Dalarna, Engelska, 2018. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:du-27450.
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Today the majority of children and teenagers in many countries spend a great deal of time doing extramural English activities, where playing games is included. It is therefore important to study how extramural English activities affect students’ proficiency. This thesis aims to investigate how games as an extramural activity, and extramural English activities in general could benefit upper secondary EFL and ESL students’ English language proficiency. The method used was that of a systematic literature review where six studies from varying places and with participants of varying ages and levels of education were analyzed and compared. The results show that five of the articles found a positive correlation between time spent on extramural English activities and English grades and/or vocabulary, while on study showed that there was no correlation between time spent on extramural English activities and development of academic vocabulary in students who had already reached a high level of proficiency. More research is needed in the field, particularly studies establishing causation rather than just correlation, longitudinal studies, as well as studies investigating whether gender is an important factor affecting the potential benefits of extramural English activities.
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Silver, Jeremy. "Language, power and identity in the drama of Ben Jonson." Thesis, Royal Holloway, University of London, 1986. http://repository.royalholloway.ac.uk/items/afe5e26d-221e-437c-bffd-ead6585af447/1/.
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The thesis explores the relationships between language, power and identity in the drama of Ben Jonson. The approach is primarily through linguistic analyses of the plays, but frequent reference is made to other texts which illuminate the social, and cultural conditions out of which the drama emerges. The first three chapters deal, respectively, with Jonson's Humour plays, Poetaster, and both tragedies. Four subsequent chapters deal individually with Volpone, Epicoene, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair. Two final chapters deal with Jonson's late plays. The thesis analyses the way in which characters reflect on each other's' uses of language and make artificial use of language themselves in order to acquire power over others, raise their social status, and confirm, deny or alter their identities. This involves the analysis of the numerous discourses which are contained in the plays (e.g. those characterized by origins in the Classics, in English Morality plays, or in contemporary sources such as the literature of duelling, or the idiom of the Court). The playwright's self-conscious use of language games, plays-within-plays, disguises, and deceptions is studied with close attention to the self-reflexive effects of these dramatic techniques. Jonson's plays, by using mixed modes of drama, set off dramatic conventions against one another in ways which often undermine the artifice. The moral views in the plays, inconsequence, fail to find any single basis and are also set in conflict with one another. Thus, it is argued, the plays, contrary to certain orthodox views, do not offer simple moral positions for the audience, but demand of the spectators a re-examination of their own frames of moral reference. It is suggested that the view of the world implicit in the earlier plays is one where language seems to offer the possibility of access to an ultimate truth, whereas in the later plays, language increasingly constructs its own truths.
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Armenteros, Katrina. "Gender Benders: Shakespeare's Rosalind and Woolf's Orlando." FIU Digital Commons, 2014. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/1622.
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English Renaissance playwright, William Shakespeare and twentieth century modernist author, Virginia Woolf’s works, “As You Like It” (1599) and “Orlando” (1928), respectively posit a vision of gender that transcends the physical sex of the body. The play’s heroine, Rosalind, and the novel’s protagonist, Orlando, each challenge the stability of the binary categories of male and female, demonstrating how gender is not absolute but rather a constantly adapting and evolving construct. This thesis traces the development of Rosalind and Orlando by analyzing and comparing both protagonists’ journeys towards concordia discors, considering how gender transformation plays a pivotal role in helping both figures transcend prescribed gender roles and restraints placed upon them by family and society. Both Rosalind and Orlando mount challenges to prescribed gender norms during periods when conservative gender roles were strictly enforced. By doing so, each character positions themselves as pivotal and progressive representations of gender performance for their time.
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Norgren-Bergström, Tobias. "English Grammar Instruction in English 5 Three Swedish upper-secondary school English Teachers’ Perspectives on Grammar Instruction." Thesis, Örebro universitet, Institutionen för humaniora, utbildnings- och samhällsvetenskap, 2018. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:oru:diva-67737.
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This paper presents a qualitative study investigating 1) whether ESL teachers teaching English 5 in Swedish upper-secondary schools take an explicit or implicit grammar approach to grammar instruction in their lessons, and, 2) which aspects they choose to prioritise. My initial hypothesis, based on prior, personal observation was that the ESL teachers sampled in my study would reveal preferences and tendencies more closely indicative of an implicit approach, and that this would be due to their beliefs about grammar and their own experience learning grammar as students. To find out which method ESL teachers use to instruct grammar, and to inform future practice on how to teach grammar and which aspects to prioritise, three ESL teachers participated in semi-structured interviews. The findings show that, contrary to what was hypothesised, they instruct grammar with explicit-deductive approaches, and the teachers prioritise the same grammatical aspects, of which irregular verbs and tenses were identified as being the most important. These findings are discussed, and it is proposed that it is primarily a teacher’s experience from teaching grammar that influences his/her choice of teaching practice, and that it is the students’ specific needs that determine which grammatical aspects to prioritise.
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Bellis, Joanna Ruth. "Language, literature, and the Hundred Years War, 1337-1600." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2011. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.609852.
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Van, Vuuren Kathrine. "A study of indigenous children's literature in South Africa." Master's thesis, University of Cape Town, 1995. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/21491.
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Bibliography: pages 151-159.Whilst an accepted area of investigation in most other English speaking countries, indigenous children's literature is a relatively new area of academic study in South Africa. Traditionally, South Africa children's literature has been targeted for a white middle class audience. In addition, most of the fiction for children that was available in South Africa, with the exception of fiction in Afrikaans, tended to be imported children's literature, which meant that there was little by way of indigenous children's literature being produced. However, since the mid-1970s there has been a considerable increase in the local production of children's literature, much of which in the last five years has been intended for a wider and more comprehensive audience and market. This study considers various issues relevant to the field of children's literature in South Africa, through both traditional means of research as well as through a series of interviews with people involved in the field itself The focus of this dissertation is a sociological study of the process whereby children's literature is disseminated in South Africa. International theories of children's literature are briefly considered in sq far as they relate to indigenous children's literature. Of particular interest to this study are current thoughts about racial and gender stereotypes in children's literature, as well as the recently developed theory of 'antibias' children's literature. The manner in which people's attitudes to and about children's literature are shaped is explored in detail. Traditional methods of publishing and distributing children's literature, as well as the current and uniquely South African award system are considered. The need to broaden the scope of current publishing methods is highlighted and the ways in which publishers foresee themselves doing this is considered. The limitations of current methods of distribution are highlighted, and some more innovative approaches, some of which are currently being used in other parts of Southern Africa, are suggested. The gap between the 'black' and the 'white' markets are considered, and possible methods of overcoming this divide are considered. The indigenous award system is considered in relation to international award systems, and criticisms of the South African award system are discussed. The issue of whether or not children should read indigenous children's literature is considered. The debate about this issue centres around a belief in the importance of children having something with which to identify when they read, as opposed to a belief in the culturally and ideologically isolating effects of providing children with mainly indigenous children's literature to read. Finally, the current belief in children's literature as a means of bridging gaps in South African society is considered through a study of three socially aware genres- namely, folktales, historical fiction and socially aware youth fiction. By way of conclusion, some of the issues raised in the body of this study are highlighted and discussed.
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Daly, Marlene Y. "A guide for best practices in English 9 essentials: literature strand." [Denver, Colo.] : Regis University, 2008. http://165.236.235.140/lib/MDaly2008.pdf.
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James, Timothy John. "Articulating class : language and conflict in English literature from Gaskell to Tressell." Doctoral thesis, University of Cape Town, 1992. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/22494.
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Bibliography: pages 304-318.Concentrating on English literary texts written between the 1830s and 1914 and which have the working class as their central focus, the thesis examines various ways in which class conflict inheres within the textual language, particularly as far as the representation of working-class speech is concerned. The study is made largely within V. N. Voloshinov's understanding of language.
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Parker, Eleanor Catherine. "Anglo-Scandinavian literature and the post-conquest period." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2013. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:18aa9912-85f6-4cba-b4d6-4f8f7453402f.
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This thesis concerns narratives about Anglo-Scandinavian contact and literary traditions of Scandinavian origin which circulated in England in the post-conquest period. The argument of the thesis is that in the eleventh century, particularly during the reign of Cnut and his sons, literature was produced for a mixed Anglo-Danish audience which drew on shared cultural traditions, and that some elements of this largely oral literature can be traced in later English sources. It is further argued that in certain parts of England, especially the East Midlands, an interest in Anglo-Scandinavian history continued for several centuries after the Viking Age and was manifested in the circulation of literary narratives dealing with Anglo-Scandinavian interaction, invasion and settlement. The first chapter discusses some narratives about the reign of Cnut in later sources, including the Encomium Emmae Reginae, hagiographical texts by Goscelin and Osbern of Canterbury, and the Liber Eliensis; it is argued that they share certain thematic concerns with the literature known to have been produced at Cnut’s court. The second chapter explores the literary reputation of the Danish Earl of Northumbria, Siward, and his son Waltheof in twelfth-century sources from the East Midlands and in thirteenth-century Norwegian and Icelandic histories. The third chapter deals with an episode in the Middle English romance Guy of Warwick in which the hero helps to defeat a Danish invasion of England, and examines the romance’s references to a historical Danish right to rule in England. The final chapter discusses the Middle English romance Havelok the Dane, and argues that the poet of Havelok, aware of the role of Danish settlement in the history of Lincolnshire, makes self-conscious use of stereotypes and literary tropes associated with Danes in order to offer an imaginative reconstruction of the history of Danish settlement in the area.
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Reeve, Daniel James. "Romance and the literature of religious instruction, c.1170-c.1330." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2014. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:00ff0d43-6ace-49e2-a80f-cf5b6c9553fc.
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This thesis investigates the relations between romance and texts of religious instruction in England between c.1170–c.1330, taking as its principal textual corpus the exceptionally rich literary traditions of insular French romance and religious writing that subsist during this period. It argues that romance is a mode which engages closely with religious and ethical questions from a very early stage, and demonstrates the discourses of opposition in which both kinds of text participate throughout the period. The thesis offers substantial readings of a number of neglected insular French religious texts of the thirteenth century, including Robert Grosseteste's Chasteau d'Amour, John of Howden's Rossignos, and Robert of Gretham's Miroir, alongside new readings of romances such as Gui de Warewic and Ipomedon. This juxtaposition of romance narrative and religious instruction sheds new light onto both kinds of text: romance emerges as a mode with deep-rooted didactic qualities; insular French religious literature is shown to be intensely concerned with the need to compete with romance’s entertaining appeal in literary culture. This oppositional discourse profoundly affects the form of instructional writing and romance alike. The discussion of the interactions between insular French romance and instructional literature presented here also serves as a new pre-history of Middle English romance. The final chapter of the thesis offers several new readings of texts from the Auchinleck manuscript, including the canonical romance Sir Orfeo and the neglected, puzzling Speculum Gy de Warewyk. These readings demonstrate that fourteenthcentury romance intelligently adapts the material it inherits from Francophone literature to a new cultural situation. In these acts of reformation, Middle English romance reveals itself as a discursive space capable of accommodating a wide range of ethical and ideological affiliations; the complex negotiations between romance and instructional literature in the preceding centuries are an important cultural condition for this widening of possibilities.