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Maserow, Joshua. "Responsible responding: the ethics of a literary criticism of the Other." Master's thesis, University of Cape Town, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/13939.
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Derek Attridge’s insight that, ‘Coetzee’s works both stage, and are, irruptions of otherness into our familiar worlds, and they pose the question: what is our responsibility towards the Other?’ (Attridge 2005: JM Coetzee and the Ethics of Reading: Literature in the Event, xii), is conceptually rooted in Attridge’s tour de force on the theory of literary invention, The Singularity of Literature. In it he spins a complex, nuanced and powerful idea about the nature of literature as event in which the notion of otherness, or alterity, plays a primordial part in the advent of the literary. In this thesis, I develop a critique of the way in which a particular strand of literary criticism, which has blossomed in the field of Coetzee Studies, appropriates the ethical philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas in its creation of an ethics-based, theme-reliant interpretive framework. While Derek Attridge, Mike Marais and Stefan Helgesson have each contributed greatly to this critical outlook, which I abbreviate as the ‘Levinasian Approach’, I choose to focus my research on the work produced by Attridge. My argument unfolds across two main sections. Section 1 contains a disquisition on pertinent aspects of Levinas’s ethical philosophy to literary aesthetics (Chapter 1). Section 2 consists of two chapters where the first (Chapter 2) is a study of the interface of Levinasian ethics with Attridge’s theory of literature in the event. There, I begin with an exposition of Attridge’s theory of literature, exploring its conceptual bearing on Levinas’s ethics. I make apparent the extent of his indebtedness to Levinas’s ethics by closely examining how and where, in the gestation of his theory, he borrows from Levinas’s ethical writings to develop a discourse on the nature of literature. This I follow up with a look at the nodes of divergence, unveiling the ways in which Attridge departs from Levinasian conceptions in his deployment of Levinasian terms. In conscripting the pseudo-phenomenological and transcendental ethics developed by Levinas into a hermeneutics of aesthetic evaluation and literary judgment, Attridge’s position diverges with undesirable consequence from Levinasian ethics. In the second chapter of Section 2 (Chapter 3) I reveal how Attridge’s method of textual analysis in J.M. Coetzee and the Ethics of Reading goes against the grain of the theory of literary invention he elucidates in The Singularity of Literature. Furthermore, I argue that, in converting ethics into an applicative analytic for the audit of texts, with a view to exploring their literariness, he responds irresponsibly in Levinasian terms to Levinasian ethics. If his position is regarded as Levinasian, certain conceptual problems arise for his critical method. Should Levinas’s ethics be regarded as the source of Attridges’s notion of otherness and alterity, then Attridge’s selective appropriation is methodologically at odds with the source of its possibility, with Levinasian ethics.
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Brown, Joanne Elizabeth. "Reinterpreting Troilus and Cressida : changing perceptions in literary criticism and British performance." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2017. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/7359/.
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Troilus and Cressida is the unusual instance of a Shakespearean play which had long been read and commented upon before stage practitioners explored it in the theatre. My thesis examines the changing perceptions of the play’s characters, paying attention to the chronological relationship between revisions in literary criticism, much of which was written with little proximity to performance, with reinterpretations during its British stage history. The thesis has a particular focus on issues of gender and sexuality. Both the theatre and literary criticism reflected and responded to social change in their dealings with this play, but they did so at different moments. By using the case of Troilus and Cressida, I examine whether theatrical practice or academic literary criticism has acted as the more efficient cultural barometer. Revisions of Cressida are my central example and I also examine the reinterpretations of eight other characters. The delayed acceptance of the play into the theatre means that the claims of relevance become especially acute. Despite the perceived progressive potential of performance, I conclude that theatrical representations of characters in this play have been slow to change in relation to the revisions seen on the pages of literary criticism.
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Smith, Mark Ryan. "The literature of Shetland." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2013. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/3938/.
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This thesis is the first ever survey of Shetland’s literature. The large body of material the thesis covers is not well known, and, apart from Walter Scott’s 1822 novel The Pirate, and Hugh MacDiarmid’s sojourn in the archipelago, Shetland is not a presence in any account of Scottish writing. ‘The Literature of Shetland’ has been written to address this absence. Who are Shetland’s writers? And what have they written? These are the fundamental questions this thesis answers. By paying close attention to Shetland’s writers, ‘The Literature of Shetland’ extends the geographical territory of the Scottish canon. ‘The Literature of Shetland’ covers a chronological period from the early nineteenth century to the present day. Virtually no creative poetry or prose, either written or oral, survives in Shetland from before this time so, after a brief discussion of the fragmentary pre-nineteenth century sources, the thesis discusses the archipelago’s literature in eight chronologically arranged chapters. Chapter One concentrates on a group of three obscure early nineteenth-century Shetland authors – Margaret Chalmers, Dorothea Primrose Campbell, and Thomas Irvine – and also explores Scott’s involvement with the northern isles. Chapters Two and Three discuss an important period at the end of the nineteenth century, in which books and newspapers were published in Shetland for the first time, and in which a number of pioneering and influential local writers emerged. Jessie M.E. Saxby became the first professional writer from Shetland and, in the work of George Stewart, James Stout Angus, Basil Anderson, and especially J.J. Haldane Burgess, the Shetland dialect developed as a serious literary idiom. These writers laid down foundations for much of what came next. Chapter Four discusses the end of this period of growth, with James Inkster posed as the last significant figure of his generation, and the war poet John Peterson as the first local writer to depart from the literary principles which developed in the Victorian era. Chapter Five looks at the work Hugh MacDiarmid did in Shetland from 1933-1942. MacDiarmid is not really part of the narrative of the thesis, but the work he produced in the isles is vast. Because he does not need to be introduced in the way the other writers do, this chapter takes a different approach to the rest of the thesis and looks at MacDiarmid’s Shetland-era work alongside that of Charles Doughty. Doughty was a crucial presence for MacDiarmid during his time in the isles, and considering their work together opens up a better understanding of the work MacDiarmid did in Shetland. Chapters Six and Seven discuss the second major period of growth in Shetland’s literature, focussing on the writers associated with the New Shetlander magazine, an important local journal which emerged in 1947. The final chapter then looks at contemporary Shetland authors and asks how they negotiate the literary tradition the thesis has worked through. This chapter also discusses the Shetland-related work of several non-native authors, Jen Hadfield being the most well known. In moving through these authors, as well as providing necessary introductory material, several general questions are asked. Firstly, because almost all the writing studied emerges from the isles, the question of how each writer engages with those isles is consistently relevant. How do local writers find ways of writing about their native archipelago? Do writers who are not from Shetland write about the islands in different ways than local people? The thesis shows how Scott and MacDiarmid, the two most famous non-native authors dicussed here, draw on earlier literary sources – the sagas and the work of Doughty – to construct their respective creative visions of the isles. And, in discussing the work of local authors, it will be shown that, in the early period covered in Chapter One, landscape is the most prominent idea whereas, from the Victorian era to the present day, the croft provides the central imaginative space for Shetland’s writers. A second question that runs through the thesis is one of language. Almost every local author has written extensively in Shetland dialect, and this study explores how they have developed that language as a literary idiom. The thesis shows how Shetland dialect writing gets underway in the 1870s, and how writers have continued to expand and diversify that literary tradition. The two most innovative figures to emerge are J.J. Haldane Burgess and William J. Tait and, after demonstrating how the corpus of writing in Shetland dialect has grown, the thesis concludes by examining the ways in which contemporary writers engage with the vernacular legacies their predecessors have left. Extensive use of the local language gives Shetland’s writing a regional distinctiveness, and this thesis shows how some writers have been enabled and inspired by that idiom, how some have taken dialect writing in exciting new directions, but also how some have felt limited by it and how, by not using the language, some writers have been unfairly ignored by local editors and critics. The thesis also shows that, in its two main eras of development – at the end of the nineteenth century and in the middle of the twentieth – Shetland’s writers took their cues from the general movements in Scottish writing. In the Victorian period, developments in local letters paralleled the interest in regionality and upsurge in vernacular writing that are marked characteristics of Scottish writing at the time. And, in discussing the emergence of the New Shetlander and the writers associated with it, the thesis demonstrates how the second period of flourishing in Shetland’s literature is part of the wider cultural movement of the Scottish Renaissance. The picture of Shetland’s literature the thesis offers is a self-consciously heterogeneous one. Despite the marked use of the vernacular, the thesis resists moving towards an encompassing definition of the large body of work covered, preferring to celebrate the diversity of the writing that Shetland has inspired during the last two centuries. Questions of engagement with the local environment and the use of the local language are constantly asked, but the primary scholarly contribution offered by ‘The Literature of Shetland’ is a realignment of Scotland’s northern literary border.
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Murphy, Katharine Anne. "Pio Baroja and English literature : a comparative approach to the novels." Thesis, University of Exeter, 1998. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.267209.
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Nyambi, Oliver. "Nation in crisis : alternative literary representations of Zimbabwe Post-2000." Thesis, Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/85652.
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Thesis (PhD)-- Stellenbosch University, 2013.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The last decade in Zimbabwe was characterised by an unprecedented economic and political crisis. As the crisis threatened to destabilise the political status quo, it prompted in governmental circles the perceived 'need‘ for political containment. The ensuing attempts to regulate the expressive sphere, censor alternative historiographies of the crisis and promote monolithic and self-serving perceptions of the crisis presented a real danger of the distortion of information about the situation. Representing the crisis therefore occupies a contested and discursive space in debates about the Zimbabwean crisis. It is important to explore the nature of cultural interventions in the urgent process of re-inscribing the crisis and extending what is known about Zimbabwe‘s so-called 'lost decade‘. The study analyses literary responses to state-imposed restrictions on information about the state of Zimbabwean society during the post-2000 economic and political crisis which reached the public sphere, with particular reference to creative literature by Zimbabwean authors published during the period 2000 to 2010. The primary concern of this thesis is to examine the efficacy of post-2000 Zimbabwean literature as constituting a significant archive of the present and also as sites for the articulation of dissenting views – alternative perspectives assessing, questioning and challenging the state‘s grand narrative of the crisis. Like most African literatures, Zimbabwean literature relates (directly and indirectly) to definite historical forces and processes underpinning the social, cultural and political production of space. The study mainly invokes Maria Pia Lara‘s theory about the ―moral texture‖ and disclosive nature of narratives by marginalised groups in order to explore the various ways through which such narratives revise hegemonically distorted representations of themselves and construct more inclusive discourses about the crisis. A key finding in this study is that through particular modes of representation, most of the literary works put a spotlight on some of the major talking points in the political and socio-economic debate about the post-2000 Zimbabwean crisis, while at the same time extending the contours of the debate beyond what is agreeable to the powerful. This potential in literary works to deconstruct and transform dominant elitist narratives of the crisis and offering instead, alternative and more representative narratives of the excluded groups‘ experiences, is made possible by their affective appeal. This affective dimension stems from the intimate and experiential nature of the narratives of these affected groups. However, another important finding in this study has been the advent of a distinct canon of hegemonic texts which covertly (and sometimes overtly) legitimate the state narrative of the crisis. The thesis ends with a suggestion that future scholarly enquiries look set to focus more closely on the contribution of creative literature to discourses on democratisation in contemporary Zimbabwe.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die afgelope dekade in Zimbabwe is gekenmerk deur ‗n ongekende ekonomiese en politiese krisis. Terwyl die krisis gedreig het om die politieke status quo omver te werp, het dit die ‗noodsaak‘ van politieke insluiting aangedui. Die daaropvolgende pogings om die ruimte vir openbaarmaking te reguleer, alternatiewe optekenings van gebeure te sensureer en ook om monolitiese, self-bevredigende waarnemings van die krisis te bevorder, het 'n wesenlike gevaar van distorsie van inligting i.v.m. die krisis meegebring. Voorstellings van die krisis vind sigself dus in 'n gekontesteerde en diskursiewe ruimte in debatte aangaande die Zimbabwiese krisis. Dit is gevolglik belangrik om die aard van kulturele intervensies in die dringende proses om die krisis te hervertolk te ondersoek asook om kennis van Zimbabwe se sogenaamde 'verlore dekade‘ uit te brei. Die studie analiseer literêre reaksies op staats-geïniseerde inkortings van inligting aangaande die sosiale toestand in Zimbabwe gedurende die post-2000 ekonomiese en politiese krisis wat sulke informasie uit die openbare sfeer weerhou het, met spesifieke verwysing na skeppende literatuur deur Zimbabwiese skrywers wat tussen 2000 en 2010 gepubliseer is. Die belangrikste doelwit van hierdie tesis is om die doeltreffendheid van post-2000 Zimbabwiese letterkunde as konstituering van 'n alternatiewe Zimbabwiese 'argief van die huidige‘ en ook as ruimte vir die artikulering van teenstemme – alternatiewe perspektiewe wat die staat se 'groot narratief‘ aangaande die krisis bevraagteken – te ondersoek. Soos met die meeste ander Afrika-letterkundes is daar in hierdie literatuur 'n verband (direk en/of indirek) met herkenbare historiese kragte en prosesse wat die sosiale, kulturele en politiese ruimtes tot stand bring. Die studie maak in die ondersoek veral gebruik van Maria Pia Lara se teorie aangaande die 'morele tekstuur‘ en openbaringsvermoë van narratiewe aangaande gemarginaliseerde groepe ten einde die verskillende maniere waarop sulke narratiewe hegemoniese distorsies in 'offisiële‘ voorstellings van hulself 'oorskryf‘ om meer inklusiewe diskoerse van die krisis daar te stel, na te vors. 'n Kernbevinding van die studie is dat, d.m.v. van spesifieke tipe voorstellings, die meeste van die letterkundige werke wat hier ondersoek word, 'n soeklig plaas op verskeie van die belangrikste kwessies in die politieke en sosio-ekonomiese debatte oor die Zimbabwiese krisis, terwyl dit terselfdertyd die kontoere van die debat uitbrei verby die grense van wat vir die maghebbers gemaklik is. Die potensieel van letterkundige werke om oorheersende, elitistiese narratiewe oor die krisis te dekonstrueer en te omvorm, word moontlik gemaak deur hul affektiewe potensiaal. Hierdie affektiewe dimensie word ontketen deur die intieme en ervaringsgewortelde geaardheid van die narratiewe van die geaffekteerde groepe. Nietemin is 'n ander belangrike bevinding van hierdie studie dat daar 'n onderskeibare kanon van hegemoniese tekste bestaan wat op verskuilde (en soms ook openlike) maniere die staatsnarratief anngaande die krisis legitimeer. Die tesis sluit af met die voorstel dat toekomstige vakkundige studies meer spesifiek sou kon fokus op die bydrae van kreatiewe skryfwerk tot die demokratisering van kontemporêre Zimbabwe.
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Zhang, Dandan. "F.R. Leavis and T.S. Eliot : literary criticism, culture and the subject of 'English'." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2018. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/8408/.
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The purpose of this thesis is to look into the Leavis-Eliot relationship, connecting it with the broader discourse of English Studies as a university subject that developed in the first half of the twentieth century. It surveys all the many writings of Leavis on Eliot, to see how Eliot is formative for the theory and practice of Leavis’s literary criticism in both positive and negative ways. It conducts a detailed investigation of D. H. Lawrence’s significance in relation to Leavis’s changing attitude to Eliot, and examines how profound differences in social, cultural, religious and national thinking strengthened Leavis’s alliance with Lawrence to the detriment of his relationship with Eliot. These differences are presented as dichotomies between nationalism and Europeanism or internationalism, ruralism or organicism and industrialisation or metropolitanism, and relate to the differences between the two men’s views about literary education, the subject of English and the position of the classics in the curriculum. Leavis’s increasingly conflicted feelings towards a figure to whom he owned an enormous critical debt and inspiration, but whose various beliefs and literary affiliations caused him much misgiving, results in a deep sense of division in Leavis himself which he sought to transfer onto Eliot.
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Lu, Lian. "Penelope Fitzgerald's fiction and literary career : form and context." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 1999. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/1773/.
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The investigation of Fitzgerald's equivocal success, of the decisive change in Britain's recent cultural perspective, involves raising questions around canon-formation, the consolidation of a national identity, strategies of writing, and the politics of reading. I have found it necessary to examine aspects of theme, form, genre and context in Fitzgerald's writing, focusing successively on convention and subversion in her work. This 'doubleness' has generated the two-part structure of the present thesis, the first book-length study of Fitzgerald's work. Part One examines the canonical literariness of Fitzgerald's novels through studying literary conventions and thematic preoccupations. It aims to elucidate Fitzgerald's fiction through the tradition of liberal humanism. The canon of English literature is more than a settled corpus, it involves a set of prescribed criteria which, I argue, is the cornerstone of Fitzgerald's literary success as a novelist, biographer, and literary critic. Contemporary British fiction has undergone a focal sea-change seen in its preoccupation with linguistic experimentation, typographical innovation, and topical engagement with current issues. Fitzgerald's fiction is out of step with current critical paradigms, and thus tends to get caught between the canonical and the contemporary. Part Two explores the impact of postmodern approaches on Fitzgerald's fiction, and examines the ways in which age, race, gender, identity and the nation have impinged on her writing. The scope of this study, therefore, comprises gender, writing, and the culture industry. In view of the scarcity of criticism on Fitzgerald's work, and apart from the more obvious critical concerns regarding authorship and periodisation, this thesis draws on a variety of critical perspectives in order to achieve a historical and contextual understanding of Fitzgerald's fiction and literary career in relation to contemporary British fiction.
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Goldie, David W. S. "John Middleton Murry and T.S. Eliot : tradition versus the individual in English literary criticism, 1919-1928." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1991. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.314917.
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Neidorf, Leonard. "The Origins of Beowulf: Studies in Textual Criticism and Literary History." Thesis, Harvard University, 2014. http://dissertations.umi.com/gsas.harvard:11366.
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Beowulf is preserved in a single manuscript written out around the year 1000, but there are many reasons to believe that the poem was composed several centuries before this particular act of manual reproduction. Most significantly, the meter of Beowulf reveals that the poet regularly observed distinctions of etymological length that became phonologically indistinct before 725 in Mercia. This dissertation gauges the explanatory power of the hypothesis that Beowulf was composed about three centuries before the production of the extant manuscript. The following studies test the hypothesis of archaic composition by determining whether it is able to accommodate independent forms of evidence drawn from the fields of linguistics, textual criticism, and literary history.
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Brown, Luke. "Tension between artistic and commercial impulses in literary writers' engagement with plot." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2014. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/5158/.
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This thesis explores whether plot and story damage a literary writer’s attempt to describe ‘reality’. It is in two parts: a critical analysis followed by a complete novel. The first third of the thesis is an essay which, after distinguishing between story and plot, responds to writer critics who see plot as damaging to a writer’s attempt to describe ‘the real’. This section looks at fiction by Jane Austen, Henry James, Jeffrey Eugenides, Julian Barnes, Tom McCarthy and Zadie Smith, against a critical background of James Wood, Roland Barthes, David Shields and others including Viktor Shklovsky and Iris Murdoch. It then examines my own novel which makes up the second part of the thesis and looks at whether my advocacy of plot has compromised my literary ambitions, and to what extent my advocacy of plot prioritises the commercial over the artistic. The discussion is set against the extra context of my eight years working as a commissioning editor of literary fiction. It is also set against the process of being edited by a publisher who brought to bear commercial imperatives as well as artistic ones on the redrafting process. The second part of the thesis is the novel, My Biggest Lie, due for publication in April 2014.
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Nash, Andrew. "Kailyard, Scottish literary criticism, and the fiction of J.M. Barrie." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 1998. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/15199.
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This thesis argues that the term Kailyard is not a body of literature or cultural discourse, but a critical concept which has helped to construct controlling parameters for the discussion of literature and culture in Scotland. By offering an in-depth reading of the fiction of J.M. Barrie - the writer who is most usually and misleadingly associated with the term - and by tracing the writing career of Ian Maclaren, I argue for the need to reject the term and the critical assumptions it breeds. The introduction maps the various ways Kailyard has been employed in literary and cultural debates and shows how it promotes a critical approach to Scottish culture which focuses on the way individual writers, texts and images represent Scotland. Chapter 1 considers why this critical concern arose by showing how images of national identity and national literary distinctiveness were validated as the meaning of Scotland throughout the nineteenth century. Chapters 2-5 seek to overturn various assumptions bred by the term Kailyard. Chapter 2 discusses the early fiction of J.M. Barrie in the context of late nineteenth-century regionalism, showing how his work does not aim to depict social reality but is deliberately artificial in design. Chapter 3 discusses late Victorian debates over realism in fiction and shows how Barrie and Maclaren appealed to the reading public because of their treatment of established Victorian ideas of sympathy and the sentimental. Chapter 4 discusses Barrie's four longer novels - the works most constrained by the Kailyard term - and chapter 5 reconsiders the relationship between Maclaren's work and debates over popular culture. Chapter 6 analyses the use of the term Kailyard in twentieth-century Scottish cultural criticism. Discussing the criticism of Hugh MacDiarmid, the writing of literary histories and studies of Scottish film, history and politics, I argue for the need to reject the Kailyard term as a critical concept in the discussion of Scottish culture.
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la, Ruelle Marc De. "The tangible, the local and the know: the ideology of english literary criticism." Doctoral thesis, Universite Libre de Bruxelles, 1993. http://hdl.handle.net/2013/ULB-DIPOT:oai:dipot.ulb.ac.be:2013/212770.
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Barlow, Lauren Nicole. "Criticism as Redemption: Jonathan Safran Foer's Theory of Meaning." BYU ScholarsArchive, 2010. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/2123.
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Not long after the release of his first novel, Everything is Illuminated, critics and authors alike began showering Jonathan Safran Foer with both praise and disparagement for his postmodern style. Yet, this large body of criticism ignores the theoretical work taking place within Foer's fiction. This thesis attempts to fill this gap by highlighting specific aspects of Foer's theoretical work as it relates to the creation of meaning in a text and to explore what this work might imply for the broader literary community. Much of Foer's work toys with the capacity of language to express meaning, indulging in the playfulness of language throughout his work to highlight the place where at written language blurs the line between word and flesh, or language and experience. In this playfulness, Foer seems to assert that meaning is created in the space between language and experience through the act of metaphor. This theory of metaphor places the individual, the author, and the critic all in a creative position and the narrative content of Foer's works examines how this creative power is used by individuals to create a world of meaning out of experiences that seem to have none. In this way, Foer argues that the creative act of metaphor is a redemptive act—an act of saving one's self from the void. Such a conclusion can be applied to all who use the word to create, particularly authors and critics, wherein the creative act as well as the interpretive act become acts of redemption.
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Moore, Lindsay Emory. "The Laureates’ Lens: Exposing the Development of Literary History and Literary Criticism From Beneath the Dunce Cap." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2015. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc822784/.
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In this project, I examine the impact of early literary criticism, early literary history, and the history of knowledge on the perception of the laureateship as it was formulated at specific moments in the eighteenth century. Instead of accepting the assessments of Pope and Johnson, I reconstruct the contemporary impact of laureate writings and the writing that fashioned the view of the laureates we have inherited. I use an array of primary documents (from letters and journal entries to poems and non-fiction prose) to analyze the way the laureateship as a literary identity was constructed in several key moments: the debate over hack literature in the pamphlet wars surrounding Elkanah Settle’s The Empress of Morocco (1673), the defense of Colley Cibber and his subsequent attempt to use his expertise of theater in An Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber (1740), the consolidation of hack literature and state-sponsored poetry with the crowning of Colley Cibber as the King of the Dunces in Pope’s The Dunciad in Four Books (1742), the fashioning of Thomas Gray and William Mason as laureate rejecters in Mason’s Memoirs of the Life and Writings of William Whitehead (1788), Southey’s progressive work to abolish laureate task writing in his laureate odes 1813-1821, and, finally, in Wordsworth’s refusal to produce any laureate task writing during his tenure, 1843-1850. In each case, I explain how the construction of this office was central to the consolidation of literary history and to forging authorial identity in the same period. This differs from the conventional treatment of the laureates because I expose the history of the versions of literary history that have to date structured how scholars understand the laureate, and by doing so, reveal how the laureateship was used to create, legitimate and disseminate the model of literary history we still use today.
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Caddy, Scott A. "(Mis)appropriating (Con)text: Jane Austen's Mansfield Park in Contemporary Literary Criticism and Film." Bowling Green State University / OhioLINK, 2009. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1245361134.
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Richter, Yvonne Nicole. "A Critic in Her Own Right: Taking Virginia Woolf's Literary Criticism Seriously." Digital Archive @ GSU, 2009. http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/english_theses/56.
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Considered mostly ancillary to her fiction, Virginia Woolf’s prolific career in literary criticism has rarely been studied in its entirety and in its own right. This study situates her in the common critical practices of her day and crystallizes basic tenets and a critical theory of sorts from her critical journalism published 1904–1928: the author argues that Woolf does not advocate a policing role for the critic, but rather that critics foster art in collaboration with readers and writers. Finally, this work discusses Woolf’s appeal to writers to invest all their energy in improving their skills in character portrayal to adequately depict all classes and genders in order to invent a new kind of psychological fiction.
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MacDonald, Deneka C. "Locating resistance/resisting location : a feminist literary analysis of supernatural women in contemporary fantastic fiction." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2003. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/5344/.
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In this thesis I examine the ways in which feminist and human geographies intersect with contemporary women-centred fantasy fiction. In particular, I consider space and place to be significant to female characters in their role as a physical presence as well as an intangible location. Thus I explore the forest, the body and the mind as territories occupied by the supernatural women. These various spatial themes, I suggest, outline distinctive locations for supernatural female characters and enable them to engage in a position of resistance from patriarchal ideologies. Through a spatial analysis of selected fiction, I reflect on challenges to notions that construct identity, gender and sexuality as well as conflict among women. I argue that the supernatural woman in fiction has been frozen in one-dimensional representation within traditional male-centred texts. This one-dimensionally, I suggest, hinges on the juxtaposition of the overly simplistic good/bad binary that has often illustrated female characters within fantasy fiction. As fantasy is a genre typically more concerned with worlds than characters, the women-centred fantasy text is unique in its exploration and pursuit of the literary character. Given the contemporary and interdisciplinary nature of this thesis, I have drawn upon filmic adaptations of texts at times to illustrate a further level of cultural awareness. The main emphasis is, however, on literary texts and, thus, reference to film is meant to supplement my textual analysis.
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Barga, Rachel M. "Sex Theory: Theology of the Body as Literary Criticism." Miami University Honors Theses / OhioLINK, 2011. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=muhonors1304527876.
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Jackson, Simon John. "The literary and musical activities of the Herbert family." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2012. https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/283892.
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Mogoboya, Mphoto Johannes. "African indentity in Es'kia Mphahlele's autobiographical and fictional novels : a literary investigation." Thesis, University of Limpopo, Turfloop Campus, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10386/972.
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Thesis (Ph.D. (English studies)) -- University of Limpopo, 2011This thesis explores the theme of identity in Es’kia Mpha-hele’s fictional and autobiographical novels, with special attention given to the quest for the lost identity of Afri-can cultural and philosophical integrity. In other words, the revival of the core African experience and the efforts to preserve and promote things African. Mphahlele wrote most of his novels during the time when Africa was under colonial influence. His native land was under the abhorred apartheid system which sought to relegate the African expe-rience to the background. In this sense, he was the voice of the people, reminding them of their past and giving them direction for the future. Chapter One of the thesis outlines the background to the study, defines concepts and gives a survey of African lit-erary identity. It also probes salient aspects which have influenced Mphahlele’s perspective on African identity dur-ing his early years as a writer and socio-cultural activ-ist. Approaches and methodology employed to examine Mphahlele’s writings are also outlined. Chapter Two synthesises the theoretical underpinnings of the study. The thesis adopts Afrocentricity as the basis of analysis, looking at aspects such as the African worldview, humanism (ubuntu) and collectivism. Views by different Af-rican literary critics on what African literature should entail in its distinctive definition are also discussed. Two main literary traditions, orality and the contemporary tradition, which give African literature its unique charac-ter as well as its phases are identified and brought to the fore.Identity in African literature is discussed in detail in Chapters three and four where Mphahlele’s literary works are closely examined. Chapter Five concludes the study and recommends that in order for Africa to forge ahead in her attempt to reclaim and promote her cultural identity, a new perspective must be cultivated and Mphahlele proposes hy-bridity, which is a harmonious co-existence of two or more cultural beliefs without one oppressing the other.
The University of Limpopo
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Young, Sharon. "The country house in English women's poetry 1650-1750 : genre, power and identity." Thesis, University of Worcester, 2015. http://eprints.worc.ac.uk/6439/.
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This thesis examines the depiction of the country estate in English women’s poetry, 1650-1750. The poems discussed belong to the country house genre, work with or adapt its conventions and tropes, or belong to what may be categorised as sub-genres of the country house poem. The country house estate was the power base of the early modern world, authorizing social status, validating political power and providing an economic dominance for the ruling elite. This thesis argues that the depiction of the country estate was especially pertinent for a range of female poets. Despite the suggestive scholarship on landscape and place and the emerging field of early modern women’s literary studies and an extensive body of critical work on the country house poem, there have been to date no substantial accounts of the role of the country estate in women’s verse of this period. In response, this thesis has three main aims. Firstly, to map out the contours of women’s country house poetry – taking full account of the chronological scope, thematic and formal diversity of the texts, and the social and geographic range of the poets using the genre. Secondly, to interrogate the formal and thematic characteristics of women’s country house poetry, looking at the appropriation and adaptation of the genre. Thirdly, to situate the selected poetry both within and against the extensive and formally published male-authored canon and the more general literary and historical contexts of the early modern period. Across these related strands of discussion, the study has two important implications for our understanding of late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century poetry: it adds to our knowledge of women’s poetic practices of the period and extends and complicates our understanding of the country house genre. Each chapter highlights a particular engagement with the genre responding to a complex of historical contexts, literary trends and personal circumstance. Chapter one will explore the contexts which prompt the emergence of the country house poem and the shape and detail of the genre, 1600–1650. It also examines where the specific gendered contexts of women’s writing practices are relevant to the selection of texts. Chapter two focuses on the thematic and formal interplay in Katherine Austen’s manuscript miscellany ‘Book M’ and role the country house genre plays in exploring and negotiating women’s relationship to property. Chapter three shares many of the same historical and literary contexts but from a different religio-political standpoint and focuses on Lucy Hutchinson’s manuscript collection ‘Elegies’. Chapter four examines the appropriation and re-positioning of the country house genre in the poetry of Anne Finch and Jane Barker, arguing that as the post- Restoration period began, the motivation to explore the country house as a symbol of legitimate political power, a location and symbol of retirement and retreat and the site of financial and cultural investment did not wane, but was reworked by Finch and Barker to explore their political sympathies for the Stuart monarchy. Chapter five explores the use of the country house genre by poets associated with Whig political sympathies: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Anne Ingram. Largely unaffected by socio-economic or political marginalisation, both Montagu and Ingram enter into a public, and politically inflected, debate on the importance of taste. Chapter six explores two writers, Mary Leapor and Mary Chandler, who belong to an emerging body of writers of mercantile or labouring class. The discussion will focus on Leapor’s ‘Crumble-Hall’ and Chandler’s A Description of Bath and the contexts of consumerism and tourism to which both poems respond.
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Zhang, Yu. "The Effect of Employing Cultural Criticism in the Teaching of British Literature for Chinese Undergraduate English Majors." FIU Digital Commons, 2017. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/3198.
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The traditional literature teaching methods for Chinese English majors are formalism and biographical criticism. These criticisms use an objective approach focused on details about the author, historical context and literary mechanics to analyze literature. These methods neglect the fact that literature comprehension involves readers’ active participation. Cultural criticism, as a critical approach, considers influences that readers bring to their engagement with a given literary text. This approach is supposed to fit the classroom settings for cross-cultural literature teaching and learning.
This study was conducted to examine the effect of utilizing cultural criticism to teach British literature among Chinese undergraduate English majors. The effect of employing cultural criticism was reflected in two aspects: students’ cultural understandings of literary texts and their literature comprehension. In this study, students’ awareness of cultural influences in literary texts from cultural perspectives was evaluated as their cultural understandings; literature comprehension was assessed from students’ understanding in context, themes, and textual meaning of literary texts.
In this study a pedagogy of cultural criticism was developed and implemented in the teaching of a British literature course. Students received instruction through cultural criticism lens for two hours per week over a period of 14 weeks. The instruments included two essay tests concerning the cultural analysis of literary works, and three literature comprehension tests. A quasi-experimental design and a repeated measure mixed-design were used to compare the performance for students in two experimental groups (cultural criticism approach) and one control group (formalist and biographical approach). Various statistical models were applied to data analysis.
The experimental results showed that the cultural criticism approach resulted in better cultural understandings of literary texts and better literature comprehension than the traditional formalist and biographical approach. Another finding is the different performance in cultural understandings of literary texts between the two experimental groups, as the instructor had different proficiency levels in using the cultural criticism approach.
This study has provided evidence that cultural criticism could be a valuable approach to help Chinese undergraduate English majors bridge cultural gaps in their understandings of literature and facilitate literature comprehension.
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Youngkin, Molly C. "Men Writing Women: Male Authorship, Narrative Strategies, and Woman's Agency in the Late-Victorian Novel." Connect to this title online, 2002. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc%5Fnum=osu1037376119.
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Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2002.Document formatted into pages; contains ix, 322 p. Includes bibliographical references (p. 303-322). Abstract available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center; full text release delayed at author's request until 2006 Sep. 25.
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Kenny, Tobias. ""Coming home to roost" : some reflections on moments of literary response to the paradoxes of empire." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1998. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk1/tape11/PQDD_0023/NQ50200.pdf.
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Ticha, Ignatius Khan. "Evocations of poverty in selected novels of Meja Mwangi and Roddy Doyle : a study of literary representation." Thesis, Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/85650.
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Thesis (PhD)-- Stellenbosch University, 2013.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The study explores fictional representations of poverty in selected novels of Meja Mwangi and Roddy Doyle, respectively Kenyan and Irish – examining techniques of literary representation and how the two authors make imaginative use of various stylistic techniques and verbal skills in a selection of their texts to achieve compelling representations of poverty. The study recognizes that poverty is one of the most recurrent subjects of discussion in the world, that it is a complex and multifaceted concept and condition and that it affects societal, political and economic dimensions of life. The study considers the (broad) United Nations definition of poverty as: “… a human condition characterised by the sustained or chronic deprivation of the resources, capabilities, choices, security and power necessary for the enjoyment of an adequate standard of living and other civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights” (United Nations High Commission for Human Rights, 2002). Rather than suggest that fiction replaces other approaches in the study of poverty, the study calls for a complementary “conversation” between fiction and the social sciences in depictions of the condition of poverty. However, the study notes the advantage that fiction has in its nuanced exploration of the subject of poverty. In fact, fiction reflects social reality in interestingly subversive but also empowering ways – showing a unique way of dealing with difficult situations. Fiction is equipped with the subtle instruments and complex power of literary devices to articulate multiple layers of possible meanings and human experiences and conditions vividly and movingly – in ways that are accessible to a variety of readers. While giving a voice to the voiceless – the poor – narrative fiction opens inner feelings and thoughts of the depicted poor and enables the reader to probe deeply into the inner feelings of characters depicted; allowing the reader to develop a deeper understanding of the condition of poverty, but also allowing the reader to bring his or her interpretation to bear on what is represented. The five main chapters of the thesis are thematically arranged, but the analysis draws on a variety of theoretical paradigms including but not limited to those of Maria Pia Lara and Mikhail Bakhtin. Significant to the study is Maria Pia Lara’s ideas of literature as a “frame for struggles of recognition and transformation” (Lara, 1998: 7) and of the “illocutionary force” (1998: 5) of literature – its ability to articulate aspects of a human condition (such as poverty) vividly and compellingly. Bakhtin’s suggestion that “language is not self-evident and not in itself incontestable” (Bakhtin, 2004: 332) is important – capturing the idea of a distinctive flexibility of discourse in the novel and rejecting simplistic ideas that there is a single truth concerning a particular situation such as poverty.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie tesis onderneem ‘n studie van literêre voorstellings van armoede in geselekteerde romans van Meja Mwangi en Roddy Doyle, respektiewelik ‘n Keniaanse en ‘n Ierse outeur. Die analise sentreer rondom die literêre tegnieke waarvan die skrywers gebruik maak en ondersoek hul verbeeldingryke gebruik van verskillende stilistiese tegnieke en verbale kunste in ‘n seleksie van hul tekste om sodoende indrukwekkende voorstellings van armoede te boekstaaf. Die studie erken dat armoede een van die mees bespreekte onderwerpe in die wêreld is, dat dit ‘n komplekse en veelkantige konsep en tipe lewenservaring is en dat dit by sosiale, politiese en ekonomiese lewensdimensies aansny. Die studie maak gebruik van die breë definisie van armoede soos verskaf deur die Verenigde Volke: “… ‘n menslike kondisie wat gekenmerk word deur die langdurige of kroniese ontneming van die bronne, kapasiteite, keuses, sekuriteit en mag wat nodig is ten einde ‘n adekwate lewensstandaard en ander siviele, kulturele, ekonomiese, politiese en sosiale regte te kan geniet” (Verenigde Volke Kommissie van Menseregte, 2002). Instede daarvan om te suggereer dat fiksie ander maniere om oor armoede te bestudeer, behoort te vervang, stel hierdie studie voor dat ‘n komplementerende “gesprek” tussen fiksie en die sosiale wetenskappe behoort plaas te vind aangaande die toestand van armoede. Nogtans meld hierdie studie die voordeel aan waaroor fiksie beskik in die genuanseerde ondersoek aangaande die onderwerp van armoede. Fiksie reflekteer sosiale werklikhede op interessante, selfs subversiewe maar ook bemagtigende maniere – sodoende manifesteer dit ‘n unieke metode van omgaan met moeilike situasies. Fiksie beskik oor subtiele instrumente en die komplekse krag van literêre metodes om die veellagige moontlike betekenisse en toestande waardeur armoede gekenmerk word, te artikuleer – op heldere asook aandoenlike maniere wat terselfdertyd weerklank kan vind by ‘n verskeidenheid van lesers. Terwyl dit ‘n stem verskaf aan die stemloses – die armes – open narratiewe fiksie die dieper gevoelens en gedagtes van die armes en maak sulke werke dit vir die leser moontlik om deur te dring tot die binneste gevoelslewe van die karakters. Op hierdie manier maak fiksie dit vir die leser moontlik om ‘n beter begrip van die ervaringswêreld van armoedige mense te bekom, maar word dit ook vir die leser moontlik om sy of haar eie interpretasie te maak van die voorgestelde toestand van armoede. Die vyf hoofstukke van die tesis is tematies gestruktureer, maar die analise maak gebruik van ‘n paar teoretiese perspektiewe wat díe van Maria Pia Lara en Mikhail Bakhtin insluit. Lara se idees aangaande letterkunde as “[a] frame for struggles of recognition and transformation” en oor die “illocutionary force” (Lara, 1998: 7, 5) van letterkunde – m.a.w. die mag van literêre voorstellings om aspekte van menslike ervaring (bv. armoede) op duidelike en kragtige maniere uit te beeld – en Bakhtin se suggestie: “language is not self-evident and not in itself contestable” (Bakhtin, 2004: 332) is belangrik omdat dit die kenmerkende buigsaamheid van diskoers in die roman saamvat en simplistiese idees dat daar ‘n enkelmatige waarheid i.v.m. ‘n komplekse toestand soos armoede kan wees, verwerp.
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RIS, CYNTHIA NITZ. "IMAGINED LIVES." University of Cincinnati / OhioLINK, 2003. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1054222125.
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Hanson, Scot A. "Ruling Powers." BYU ScholarsArchive, 2003. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/6102.
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While the fantasy genre is one of the most widely read modes of writing, literary criticism and academic discussion of the genre takes place at a much lower level. This imbalance has developed in part because of a misconception that fantasy genre writings cannot accomplish significant, literary purposes. This thesis first offers an argument for why the fantasy genre should receive more attention in scholarly circles, then presents an excerpt of a fantasy novel. The argument draws from the limited amount of existing criticism to highlight the strengths of the fantasy genre, building a case that, in most respects, works of heroic fantasy deserve thoughtful critical attention, and concluding with a proposal that further attention will elevate the acknowledged weaknesses. The excerpt from the novel is not intended as an exemplary model of what fantasy can accomplish; it is merely a first step on the long journey to those goals.
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Pittock, Murray. "Decadence and the English tradition." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1986. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:6fa01d5c-e900-4ee8-9fb6-a8c3645e0bdd.
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The thesis sets out to do two things. It seeks first of all to describe the revival of interest in the Caroline era which defines the nature of an "English Tradition" in the Eighteen Nineties. Secondly, in doing so it seeks to reappraise three significant poets of that era, Ernest Dowson, Lionel Johnson, and Francis Thompson, in terms of their participation in this revival. The first chapter, "Craving Viaticum", deals with the general background of the Eighteen Nineties period. It suggests that the Symbolist movement equates with the Decadent one in a more direct way than has often been allowed, and deals with the era's enthusiasm for nostalgia and past ages as part of its reaction against current society. It also explores the period's allegiance to hero-figures. The second chapter, "The French Connection: Pater's Part", deals with Walter Pater, and evaluates him in terms of his art and criticism, suggesting how these develop from a nostalgic desire to re-create past ages in the image of his present ideals. The more exaggerated claims made by critics of his work for the influence of French writers on him are questioned, and Pater's relation to the "English Tradition" is discussed. In the third chapter, "The French Connection: Other Approaches", the tendentiousness of those critics who attempt to define the entire Decadent era in Britain in terms of French influences is discussed and exposed. The fourth chapter, "New Births of Decadence: The English Tradition and the Seventeenth Century", deals with the relation of the literature of the period to the Caroline era in detail, and the fifth chapter, "Of Academic Interest", is concerned with analysing this relationship through discussion of both contemporary and present-day critics, adducing statistical evidence to prove a resurgence of interest in the writers of the Caroline era in the period 1880-1910. The sixth chapter, "By the Statue of King Charles: The Jacobite Revival" deals with the political and religious aspects of the Caroline revival, and charts the growth of neo-Jacobitism in the Eighteen Nineties and its relation to literary history. The seventh chapter, "Against Nature: Defining Decadence", suggests that the root of Decadent thinking is myth, and that the counterpart of Symbolism in the world of decadent nostalgia was the iconic religious and political culture of the court of King Charles I, a convenient archetype for Decadent myths of ritual, aristocracy, and martyrdom. This discussion closes the first part of the thesis. "Francis Thompson, Faithful Decadent: Catholics and Criticism" is Chapter Eight. It discusses Francis Thompson in relation to his critics, and the manner in which views of his work have been polarised between two main schools of criticism. Chapter Nine, "Faithful in my Fashion", suggests a resolution of this historically polarised critical discussion by assessing Thompson's poetry in close relationship with the work of the seventeenth-century sacred poets. The tenth chapter, "Waif of Romance: The Poetry of Ernest Christopher Dowson", assesses Dowson in relation to Herrick and the Cavalier lyrists, discussing also how he stands as a type in relation to his age. The eleventh chapter, "Lionel Johnson: One of Those Who Fall: His Life and Ideas", is concerned with the crisis in Johnson's thought over the natures of guilt and beauty, and how this is illustrated in his poetry. The twelfth and final chapter, "The Life and Work of Lionel Johnson: A Long Blast Upon the Horn: His Work and Themes", assesses Johnson's nostalgia for the Stuart era in terms of a resolution of his present poetic crisis through past values. His intellectual and intertextual relationships with Ben Jonson and Marvell are also discussed. The thesis closes with an assessment of Johnson's achievement based on his allegiance to the Caroline revival with which the argument throughout has been concerned.
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Buntin, Melanie Clare. "The mutual gaze : the location(s) of Allan Ramsay and James Thomson within an emerging eighteenth-century British literature." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2015. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/6461/.
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The primary aim of this thesis is to bring Allan Ramsay (1684-1748) and James Thomson (1700-1748) into close critical contact for the first time and, in so doing, deconstruct the paradigm of opposition which has previously attached to these two contemporaries. The thesis posits that the separation of Ramsay and Thomson has been effected, retrospectively, by the twentieth-century Scottish critical tradition. The narrow, cultural essentialism exhibited by this body of scholarship has been effectively challenged in recent decades by the work of Gerard Carruthers, and revisionary ‘Four Nations’ approaches to late eighteenth-century British literature have done much to reinstate the importance of what were previously viewed as marginal or peripheral literary locations. Ramsay and Thomson, however, have never been fully united in literary and cultural terms. This thesis demonstrates that Ramsay and Thomson shared, not only a chronological context, but also a creative context informed by a reciprocal engagement with the work of the other and posits that the relationship between these two lowland Scottish writers can be conceived of in terms of a sustained mutual gaze. James Thomson remains entrenched within an English literary canon, despite the efforts of Mary Jane Scott to reclaim him for his native country. Conversely, Allan Ramsay remains firmly rooted in his native Scottish soil as the father of the vernacular revival and the epitome of literary and cultural resistance to a supposed English cultural hegemony in the wake of the 1707 Act of Union between Scotland and England. It is true that Ramsay’s and Thomson’s creative trajectories exemplify the literary choices and cultural paths available to a Scottish writer in the years immediately following the Union of Parliaments, but to set them in creative opposition as a result of these choices is a critical commonplace which this thesis challenges. Thomson spent the greater part of his literary career in and around London, whilst Ramsay remained in Edinburgh until his death; clearly the corpora of these two writers were conditioned by the locations of their production. Hence, the thematic structure of this thesis relies on the notion of location, both physical and literary. The first two chapters of this thesis, ‘Edinburgh’ and ‘London’, illustrate the urban contexts of both writers; in so doing they suggest that a mutual gaze was sustained, not only between Ramsay and Thomson, but that a similarly reciprocal relationship and network of influence existed between the literary and cultural centres of Edinburgh and London. The third chapter of this thesis, ‘Nation’, traces the fluid and nuanced literary responses to the concept of nation in a period when national and literary boundaries were in a state of flux. The fourth and final chapter of this thesis, ‘Land’, explores the shifting aesthetic landscape of the period and, with an emphasis on mode and genre, demonstrates Ramsay’s and Thomson’s original contribution to an emerging British poetic, elucidated by an extended analysis of their poetry of place.
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Westover, Daniel. "R. S. Thomas: A Stylistic Biography." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2011. http://a.co/0Kggfyi.
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Daniel Westover traces Thomas's poetic development over six decades, demonstrating how the complex interior of the poet manifests itself in the continually shifting style of his poems.https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu_books/1100/thumbnail.jpg
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Gallagher, Maureen. "Thinking Back through Our Fathers: Woolf Reading Shakespeare in Orlando and a Room of One's Own." unrestricted, 2008. http://etd.gsu.edu/theses/available/etd-07112008-152735/.
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Thesis (M.A.)--Georgia State University, 2008.Title from file title page. Randy Malamud, committee chair; Meg Harper, Paul Schmidt, committee members. Electronic text (61 p.) : digital, PDF file. Description based on contents viewed Oct. 3, 2008. Includes bibliographical references (p. 58-61).
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Lamborn, Erin Alice. "From Darwin to Dracula: A study of literary evolution." CSUSB ScholarWorks, 2005. https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/etd-project/2836.
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Argues that, without the publication of Charles Darwin's "Origin of Species," Bram Stoker's novel "Dracula" and Oscar Wilde's novel "The Picture of Dorian Gray" would not have been written with their distinct style and themes, as evolution clashes with degeneration and female power (and the sexuality derived from that power) clashes with the new science. Stoker and Wilde combine the science of the late 19th century with the characters of their imaginations. Natural and sexual selection plays a part in these characters' core development. The mixture of sexuality, science and power in these two novels all combine to formulate what is known as Victorian sexology.
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Glover, Jayne Ashleigh. "The Harry Potter phenomenon literary production, generic traditions, and the question of values." Thesis, Rhodes University, 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002243.
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This thesis is a study of the first four books of J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. It accounts for the widespread success of the novels by examining their publication and marketing histories, and their literary achievement as narratives including a sophisticated mix of generic traditions. Chapter One looks at the popularity of the novels, comparing their material production and marketing by Rowling’s English language publishers: Bloomsbury in Britain and Scholastic in the United States of America. The publisher’s influence on the public perception of each book is demonstrated by comparative study of its mode of illustration and layout. Further, the design of the books is linked to their strategic marketing and branding within the literary world. The second chapter considers Rowling’s debt to the school story. It concentrates first on the history of this relatively short-lived genre, briefly discussing its stereotypical features and values. Traditional elements of setting and characterisation are then examined to show how the Harry Potter novels present a value system which, though apparently old-fashioned, still has an ethical standpoint designed to appeal to the modern reader. Chapter Three focuses on the characterisation of Harry as a hero-figure, especially on how the influence of classical and medieval texts infuses Rowling’s portrayal of Harry as a hero in the chivalric mode. The episodes of “quest” and “test” in each book illustrate specifically how he learns the values of selflessness, loyalty, mercy and fairness. Chapter Four surveys the contribution of modern fantasy writing to the series. It shows how Rowling creates a secondary world that allows us to perceive magic as a metaphorical representation of power. This focus on the relationship between magic and power in turn has a bearing on our assessment of the author’s moral stance. The thesis concludes by suggesting that Rowling’s unusual mix of genres is justified by the values they share, and which are inscribed in her work: the generic combination forms a workable, new and exciting mode of writing that helps to account for the phenomenal popularity of the series.
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Neufeld, Christine Marie. "Xanthippe's sisters : orality and femininity in the later Middle Ages." Thesis, McGill University, 2001. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=38251.
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This dissertation contributes to medieval feminist scholarship by forging new insights into the relationship between gender theory and developing notions of orality and textuality in late medieval Europe. I examine three conventional satirical depictions of women as deviant speakers in medieval literature---as loquacious gossips, scolding shrews and cursing witches---to reveal how medieval perceptions of oral and textual discursive modes influenced literary representations of women. The dissertation demonstrates that our comprehension of the literary battle between the sexes requires a recognition and understanding of how discursive modes were gendered in a culture increasingly defining itself in terms of textuality. My work pursues the juxtaposition of the rational, literate male and the irrational, oral female across a wide range of texts, from Dunbar and Chaucer's courtly literature, to more socially diffused works, such as carols, sermon exempla and the Deluge mystery plays, as well as texts, like Margery Kempe's autobiography and witchcraft documents, that pertain to historical women. I demonstrate the social impact of this convention by anchoring these literary texts in their socio-historical context. The significance of my identification of this nexus of orality and femininity is that I am able to delineate an ideology profoundly affecting the way women's speech and writings have been received and perceived for centuries. This notion of gendered discourse can also redefine how we perceive medieval literature. Mikhail Bakhtin's discursive principles---ideas that stem from his application of the dynamics of oral communication and performance to the literary text---help to liberate new meanings from old texts by allowing us to read against the grain of convention. Both Bakhtin's theory of dialogism and Walter Ong's summary of the psychodynamics of orality suggest that orally influenced discourse is less interested in monolithic truth than in the art of tellin
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Linnemann, Emily Caroline Louise. "The cultural value of Shakespeare in twenty-first-century publicly-funded theatre in England." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2011. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/1355/.
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This thesis argues that in the plural cultural context of the twenty-first century the value of Shakespeare resides in his identity as a free and flexible resource. This adaptable Shakespeare is valuable to theatres because they are dialectical spaces. Free-resource Shakespeare is able to contain a range of different cultural values and theatres provide a space for producers and consumers of culture to negotiate between them. It has been established that tensions of cultural value, for example innovation/tradition or commercial/non-commercial govern the production, dissemination and critique of culture. Building on this idea, this work shows that when tensions are dealt with as negotiations rather than confrontations, new cultural value is generated. It identifies Shakespeare as a site for the debate of value tensions and contends that he can be simultaneously commercial and non-commercial, traditional and innovative. Cultural value is thus created because Shakespeare is reinvigorated and redefined through a process which negotiates between tensions. In publicly-funded theatre this process manifests itself in an ambiguous relationship to the market, myriad adaptations and a move towards event-theatre. The cultural value of Shakespeare in publicly-funded theatre mirrors the continual redefinition of the Shakespearean object and, rather than being a concrete ‘thing’, is better defined as a constant process.
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Mbao, Wamuwi. "Unavowable communities : mapping representational excess in South African literary culture, 2001-2011." Thesis, Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/80124.
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Thesis (PhD)--Stellenbosch University, 2013.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis takes as its subject matter a small field of activity in South African fiction in English, a field which I provisionally title the post-transitional moment. It brings together several works of literature that were published between 2004 and 2011. In so doing, it recognises that there can be no delineation of the field except in the most tenuous of senses: as Michael Chapman asserts, such “phases of chronology are ordering conveniences rather than neatly separable entities” (South African Literature 2). In attempting to take a reading of this field, I draw on discussions of the innumerable post-transitional flows and trajectories of meaning advanced by critical scholars such as Ashraf Jamal, Sarah Nuttall, Louise Bethlehem and others. In this thesis, I trace the “enigmatic and acategorical” (Jamal, “Bullet Through the Church” 11) dimension of this field through several works by South African authors. These works are at once singular and communal in their expression: they are singular in the sense that they are unique literary events1; they are communal because they share a particular force in their writing, a force that resists thematic bestowing. The schism between these conflicting/contiguous poles forms the basis of this thesis. I examine the works of a diverse selection of South African authors, finding in them a common, if discontinuous, seam in their treatment of excess, by which I mean the irreducible surplus that always demarcates the limits of representation. I find that these works each engage a movement towards the aporetic moment opened up by their characters’ experience of the traumatic. To be sure, these particular works of literature are notable for their exploration of ideas of alterity, loss and the capacity for survival in the routines of ‘South African’ lives. I use literature as the primary site of navigation for this enquiry because, as the scholars cited above have observed, literature is often a generator of meanings and a space where complex ideas about identity are explored and played out through the medium of the everyday. I recognise here that in the post-transitional moment, literature’s affective capacity in the world of action is limited – in Simon Critchley’s terms, it is ‘almost nothing.’ My thesis seizes this almost as the site of exploration. Taking as its starting point the existential question ‘have we learnt to imagine ourselves in other ways?’ I propose a number of positions from which these post-transitional works of literature might be read. The first chapter attempts to give account of the theoretical problem that attends to the reading of that which exceeds language’s capacity to invest with meaning. I use works by Diane Awerbuck, Annelie Botes, Shaun Johnson and Kgebetli Moele to inform my argument. In the next chapter, I explicate the problem of excess via a reading of Mark Behr’s Kings of the Water (2009). I then trace the aporetic nature of Otherness as it occurs in J.M. Coetzee’s Summertime (2009), paying particular attention to the ways in which that novel performs a refusal of meaning. Finally, I read Ishtiyaq Shukri’s The Silent Minaret (2005) as a work that posits the failure of alterity as a launching point for future ethical action. The burden of this thesis, as I see it, lies in the apophastic nature of its subject matter. In embarking upon an exploration of the incommensurable, my argument is for an ethics of reading that seeks to explicate the ways in which literature works by thinking through its affective capacity the better to affirm its performative dimensions.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die onderwerp van hierdie proefskrif behels ‘n klein veld in Engelse Suid-Afrikaanse fiksie wat ek voorlopig met die term “post-oorgangsmoment” sal aandui. Dit bring verskeie letterkundige werke byeen wat tussen 2004 en 2011 gepubliseer is. Hierdie kunsmatige afbakening hou rekening met Michael Chapman se stelling dat “phrases of chronology are ordering conveniences rather than neatly separable entities” (South African Writing 2). In ‘n poging om hierdie aangeduide veld te lees, put ek heelwat uit besprekings wat tans gevoer word oor die ontelbare betekenistrajekte van die post-oorgangsmoment deur kritici soos Meg Samuelson, Leon de Kock, Ashraf Jamal, Sarah Nuttall, Louise Bethlehem en andere. In hierdie proefskrif skets ek die “enigmatic and acategorical” (Jamall, “Bullet” 11) aspekte van die aangeduide veld soos dit uiting vind in verskeie werke van Suid-Afrkaanse outeurs. Hierdie werke is terselfdertyd alleenstaande en gemeenskaplik in hul uitdrukking: hulle is alleenstaande omdat hulle unieke literêre gebeurtenisse verteenwoordig en gemeenskaplik omdat hulle ‘n spesifieke impuls deel, ‘n impuls wat tematiese kategorisering teenstaan. Die kloof tussen hierdie opponderende/naburige pole vorm die grondslag van hierdie proefskrif. Ek ondersoek die werk van ‘n diverse seleksie Suid-Afrikaanse outeurs en vind ‘n gemene, dog diskontinue, soom in die manier waarop hulle oorskot hanteer, dit wil sê, die onreduseerbare surplus wat alle representasie begrens. Ek vind dat hierdie werke elkeen ‘n weg na die aporetiese moment oopskryf deur die karakters se ervarings van trauma. Hierdie letterkundige werke word ook gekenmerk deur hulle verkenning van idees soos alteriteit, verlies en die oorlewingskapasiteit in die roetines van ‘Suid-Afrikaanse’ lewens. Ek gebruik literêre werke as die primêre navorsingsveld vir hierdie ondersoek aangesien die letterkunde dikwels as ‘n genereerder van betekenis dien en as ‘n ruimte funksioneer waar komplekse idees rondom identiteit deur die medium van die alledaagse verken kan word. Ek is bewus dat die letterkunde ‘n beperkte affektiewe kapasiteit in die wêreld van handeling in die post-oorgangsmoment besit – dit is bykans niks, soos Simon Critchley dit stel. My proefskrif betrek hierdie bykans as brandpunt vir die ondersoek. Ek stel verskeie posisies voor vanwaar hierdie post-oorgang literêre werke gelees kan word deur die beantwoording van die eksistensiële vraag of ons geleer het om onsself op ander maniere te verbeel as uitgangspunt te gebruik. Die eerste hoofstuk poog om die teoretiese probleem te omskryf wat ontstaan as ‘n mens probeer om die oorskot van taal se betekenisgewende vermoë te lees. In die daaropvolgende hoofstuk belig ek die probleem van oorskot deur Mark Behr se Kings of the Water (2009) te lees. Daarna skets ek die aporetiese aard van Andersheid soos dit in JM Coetzee se Summertime (2009) voorkom, deur spesifiek ook aandag te skenk aan die maniere waarop die roman ‘n weiering van betekenis aanbied. Laastens lees ek Ishtiyaq Shukri se The Silent Minaret (2005) as ‘n werk wat die mislukking van alteriteit as ‘n beginpunt gebruik om toekomstige etiese handelings te rig. Die hooftema van hierdie proefskrif lê myns insiens in die apofastiese aard van die onderwerpsmateriaal. Deur ‘n ondersoek na die onmeetbare te onderneem, staan ek ook ‘n bevrydings-etiek van lees voor wat poog om die manier waarop literêre tekste werk te verhelder deur die affektiewe vermoë van literêre tekste te bedink.
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De, Bruin-Molé Megen. "Frankenfiction : monstrous adaptations and Gothic histories in twenty-first-century remix culture." Thesis, Cardiff University, 2017. http://orca.cf.ac.uk/106947/.
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In the twenty-first century, the remix, the mashup, and the reboot have come to dominate Western popular culture. Consumed by popular audiences on an unprecedented scale, but often derided by critics and academics, these texts are the ‘monsters’ of our age—hybrid creations that lurk at the limits of responsible consumption and acceptable appropriation. Like monsters, they offer audiences the thrill of transgression in a safe and familiar format, mainstreaming the self-reflexive irony and cultural iconoclasm of postmodern art. Like other popular texts before them, remixes, mashups, and reboots are often read by critics as a sign of the artistic and moral degeneration of contemporary culture. This is especially true within the institutions such remixes seem to attack most directly: the heritage industry, high art, adaptation studies, and copyright law. With this context in mind, in this thesis I explore the boundaries and connections between remix culture and its ‘others’ (adaptation, parody, the Gothic, Romanticism, postmodernism), asking how strong or tenuous they are in practice. I do so by examining remix culture’s most ‘monstrous’ texts: Frankenfictions, or commercial narratives that insert fantastical monsters (zombies, vampires, werewolves, etc.) into classic literature and popular historical contexts. Frankenfiction is monstrous not only because of the fantastical monsters it contains, but because of its place at the margins of both remix and more established modes of appropriation. Too engaged with tradition for some, and not traditional enough for others, Frankenfiction is a bestselling genre that nevertheless remains peripheral to academic discussion. This thesis aims to address that gap in scholarship, analysing Frankenfiction’s engagement with monstrosity (chapter one), parody (chapter two), popular historiography (chapter three), and models of authorial originality (chapter four). Throughout this analysis, Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein remains a touchstone, serving as an ideal metaphor for the nature of contemporary remix culture.
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Walker, Victoria Jane. "The literary paradigm and the discourses of culture, contexts of Canadian writing, 1759-1867." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1997. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk3/ftp05/nq21020.pdf.
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Banks, Gemma. "Impressions of an analyst : reassessing Sigmund Freud's literary style through a comparative study of the principles and fiction of Ford Madox Ford, Henry James, Virginia Woolf & Dorothy Richardson." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2018. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/8368/.
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The connection between Sigmund Freud and modernism is firmly established and there is an increasing (though still limited) body of scholarship that adopts methods of literary analysis in approaching Freud's texts. This thesis adds depth and specificity to a broad claim to literariness by arguing that Freud can be considered a practitioner of modern literary impressionism. The claim is substantiated through close textual analysis of key texts from James Strachey' s Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, alongside theory and fiction by significant impressionist authors Ford Madox Ford, Henry James, Virginia Woolf and Dorothy Richardson. The authors' respective approaches to various aspects of literary impressionism are considered, such as the methods of textual development, the instability of genre, and the stylised techniques utilised to convey the impression. This research illustrates that whilst each of the chosen novelists engages with literary impressionism differently, Freud's texts share common practice with each, facilitating the reassessment of the analyst as a specifically 'impressionist' author.
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Hamlin, Sarah Elizabeth. "Poetic politics : writers and the 2014 Scottish Independence Referendum." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2016. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/8902/.
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This thesis considers the works of six major literary figures in the context of their engagement with the 2014 Scottish Independence Referendum. These writers are, in order of analysis, Edwin Morgan, J.K. Rowling, Liz Lochhead, Alasdair Gray, Kathleen Jamie, and John Burnside. Each has produced a significant literary oeuvre which is examined here in relation to each other's work and to the Referendum debate. The multifaceted relationship between literature and politics is investigated through the lens of the Referendum, utilising these six figures as interrelated case studies. Chapter One explores Edwin Morgan and J.K. Rowling in relation to each other and the concept of nationalism as manifested in the Referendum period. Chapter Two focuses on postcolonialism and the work of Alasdair Gray and Liz Lochhead in that same context. The third and final chapter is concerned with Kathleen Jamie's and John Burnside's preoccupation with ecopoetics, and how that concern overlapped with Referendum discourse. This thesis provides new readings of these six writers in the context of the Referendum. It sets out to establish that, while their published literary works are often connected to the spectrum of stances these writers took regarding the Referendum, these works need to be considered with respect to the nuanced attention all six had previously given to key themes of the Referendum debate in the decades leading up to that political moment.
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Jeffery, Thomas Carnegie. "The location of meaning in the postmodernist literary text: a reading of Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves and related material." Thesis, Rhodes University, 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002238.
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In House of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski has produced a text which epitomises the traits and concerns of postmodernist literature. Through his attention to aspects such as metafiction, intertextuality and parody, Danielewski develops a narrative structure which is best understood as a literary labyrinth. It is a structure intended to reflect the social conditions of the twenty-first century and comment on the experience of people living at this time. Some of the meaning-making strategies within the book’s labyrinthine structure are thus discussed in detail in order to demonstrate the relevance and importance of House of Leaves as social commentary. House of Leaves is an exemplary postmodernist text, but it is also one that seeks to guide the reader beyond the intellectual impasse of the postmodernist paradigm toward a renewed ethical and political engagement with the world. One of the most important goals of both Danielewski’s novel and this thesis is to attempt to redefine the postmodernist perspective in such a way as to insist on the necessity of what I call a new realism. This is founded upon an awareness of the pervasiveness of the self-perpetuating ideology of capitalism, even in the perspective of postmodernism (which purports to subvert all authoritative ideologies). Playing a crucial role in perpetuating the status quo of capitalism is the growth of entertainment culture, which works to sideline crucial political issues by replacing information with infotainment. The result is an intensification of the processes of commodification. Such an intensification, it is argued, may be countered by a radical scepticism which draws upon the methods and insights of contemporary science.
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Van, Hove Hannah Jean. "'How to begin to find a shape?' : situating the mid-twentieth century fiction of Anna Kavan, Alexander Trocchi and Ann Quin." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2017. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/8199/.
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This thesis is concerned with situating the works of Anna Kavan (1901-1968), Alexander Trocchi (1925-1984) and Ann Quin (1936-1973) within a discussion of British mid-twentieth century fiction. The relative neglect of these authors in academic criticism may be due to the fact that much British experimental writing has previously been ignored in surveys of this period. This thesis argues that a study of their work warrants a more nuanced understanding of the mid-twentieth century literary landscape than conventional accounts have allowed for. In that sense, it aims to contribute to research undertaken in more recent years which is concerned with revising dominant accounts of this period. The broader framework for the thesis is provided in Chapter 1 which examines past and present accounts and categorizations of mid-twentieth century British fiction. The remaining three chapters then focus on the 1940s work of Kavan, the fiction written during the 1950s by Trocchi and Quin’s novels of the 1960s. As well as contributing to research concerned with overviews of this period, this thesis furthers individual studies of each of the novelists presented here. By drawing on archival material and reading their works in conversation with their time and place, it attempts to understand the ways in which the experimental fiction of these three authors responded to the social, cultural and historical forces at work in Britain between the forties and the sixties. Whilst all three authors started out from a strategy of subjectivity, rooting their experimentation in a turn inwards, their works, as this thesis suggests, can be construed of as political in their concern with drawing attention to the osmotic effects of exteriority on interiority.
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Kan, Tabitha G. "Renderings of the abyss : some changing nineteenth-century literary perceptions of the animal/human divide." Thesis, University of Essex, 2016. http://repository.essex.ac.uk/19458/.
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The aim of this thesis is to amalgamate philosophy and history of science with literature to achieve an overview of changing ideas of the animal/human divide during the nineteenth century. Drawing on the ideas of Jacques Derrida, Friedrich Nietzsche, Julia Kristeva and Giorgio Agamben. I consider this divide and its contents, often regarded as an abyss. The study is written like a time line, starting at the beginning of the nineteenth century and finishing at the end. I split the nineteenth century into four time periods centred around the emergence of Darwinian theory, considered by this study to be the single most prolific scientific event to have occurred during the nineteenth century. These time frames are the pre-Darwinian, the early Darwinian, the late Darwinian and the post-Darwinian. The study is split into four chapters which coincide with these time frames, covering four different novels which exemplify contextually relevant ideas of the abyss. These are Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, Moby-Dick by Herman Melville, Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky and The Island of Doctor Moreau by H.G. Wells. During the course of this study I consider various ideas applied by the authors about the abyssal limits and what they consist of. These include considerations on reason, society, morality and spirituality, all ideas used in various different manners to attempt to explain the abyss. From these various deliberations I formulate a conclusion which takes into account the various nuances which would have effected each of the writer’s formulations of the abyss.
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Allendorf, Kalina. "'Fixed fate, free will' : fate, natural law, necessity, providence, and classical epic narrative in Paradise Lost." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2017. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:c8ac2f44-d77a-466c-b107-2be71916eb93.
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The present thesis considers the allusive and narrative function of fate and its associated concepts of providence, free will, necessity, and natural law in Paradise Lost. It argues that the narrative function of these concepts is shaped by Milton's allusions to classical epic, and assesses their impact on the Christian theology of the poem. It identifies unnoted allusions to well-known epic models (Homer, Vergil, Lucan), and examines how Lucretius' account of natural laws and post-Vergilian representations of epic aftermath influence Milton's own depiction of transgression and its aftermath in Paradise Lost. Chapter 1 considers Satan and other fallen angels' definition of fate as a materialist alternative for the personal rule of the Father. It traces several allusions to fate in cosmological and ethical settings, in Lucretius, Vergil, Lucan, and Statius, and analyses how these allusions interact with the Hesiodic mythical material in the opening books of Milton's epic. Chapter 2 focuses on a pattern of previously unnoted allusions to Lucretius' De Rerum Natura in the narrative of the Fall, culminating in Book 9. It argues that in his temptation of Eve, Milton's Satan subverts Lucretian teachings about the boundaries governing the physical universe as he persuades Eve to transgress her natural state in Eden. Chapter 3 discusses the appearance of the Father in an allusive epic council scene in Book 3. In the dialogue between Father and Son, I suggest, Milton evokes negotiations between the Homeric and Vergilian deities, depicting his God as surpassing his pagan epic counterparts who can only delay the fate of mortals, but not change them. Chapter 4 suggests that Milton's depiction of the aftermath of the Fall is indebted to post-Vergilian epic narratives of 'aftermath'. The final Books of Paradise Lost and the portrayal of Adam and Eve's moral freedom as they leave paradise, with providence their guide, should be read, I posit, against the backdrop of scenes and imagery from Lucan's Bellum Civile and Statius' Thebaid.
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Parker, Louise Jane. "Shadows, struggles and poetic guilt : Glyn Jones, his literary doubles and the Welsh-language tradition." Thesis, Swansea University, 2011. https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa42983.
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An 'Anglo Welsh' writer who emerged in the 1930s to considerable acclaim in Wales and London, Glyn Jones was a contemporary and friend of Dylan Thomas. An innovative Welsh Modernist, he found the genres of poetry and the short story best suited to the exhibition of his concise, imagist and often grotesque experimentalism. Unlike Thomas, he wrote two novels, was a 'gentle' satirist of Welsh culture, and was deeply embroiled in the 'post-colonial' cultural conflicts of his nation. Jones struggled to find expression between two languages and worked insistently (often antagonistically) in the Welsh literary scene throughout its most controversial century, when it fought to save the Welsh language and resolve its conflicting cultural factions into a consolidated national identity. Jones was, to adopt the rubric of Bhabha, stranded in the cultural margins at the intersection of the English and Welsh languages, and this thesis situates itself accordingly. The first of six chapters examines the ways in which the Welshlanguage culture of Wales engaged Glyn Jones, and explores how a liminal voice can establish its cultural validity via rewriting autobiography into a 'mythical' history. The second chapter adopts Harold Bloom, the concept of intertext and psychological notions of the 'other', to address Jones's conflicted relationship with Dylan Thomas. The third attempts to analyse his twentieth-century dialogue with Dafydd ap Gwilym as he seeks affirmation from his fourteenth-century double. The fourth continues this 'othering' of Welsh ancients and considers how Wales is refracted in some of his work through the literary excavation of Llywarch Hen, tenth-century defender of his princedom, but willing forfeiter of his sons. The fifth chapter considers how Jones inherited but re-invented the role of the cyfarwydd (storyteller), and the sixth explores how Hen Benillion (Welsh folk poetry) fostered his peculiarly Welsh Modernism.
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Robbeson, Angela. ""A sense of wider fields and chances": Towards a literary history of English-Canadian satiric fictions of the nineteenth century." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1998. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/tape15/PQDD_0023/NQ36792.pdf.
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Grimes, Jodi Elisabeth. "Rhetorical Transformations of Trees in Medieval England: From Material Culture to Literary Representation." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2008. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc12130/.
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Literary texts of medieval England feature trees as essential to the individual and communal identity as it intersects with nature, and the compelling qualities and organic processes associated with trees help vernacular writers interrogate the changing nature of this character. The early depiction of trees demonstrates an intimacy with nature that wanes after the tenth-century monastic revival, when the representation of trees as living, physical entities shifts toward their portrayal as allegorical vehicles for the Church's didactic use. With the emergence of new social categories in the late Middle Ages, the rhetoric of trees moves beyond what it means to forge a Christian identity to consider the role of a ruler and his subjects, the relationship between humans and nature, and the place of women in society. Taking as its fundamental premise that people in wooded regions develop a deep-rooted connection to trees, this dissertation connects medieval culture and the physical world to consider the variety of ways in which Anglo-Saxon and post-Norman vernacular manuscripts depict trees. A personal identification with trees, a desire for harmony between society and the environment, and a sympathy for the work of trees lead to the narrator's transformation in the Dream of the Rood. The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Junius 11 manuscript, illustrated in Genesis A, Genesis B, and manuscript images, scrutinizes the Anglo-Saxon Christian's relationship and responsibility to God in the aftermath of the Fall. As writers transform trees into allegories in works like Genesis B and Geoffrey Chaucer's Parson's Tale, the symbolic representations retain their spontaneous, organic processes to offer readers a visual picture of the Christian interior-the heart. Whereas the Parson's Tale promotes personal and radical change through a horticultural narrative starring the Tree of Penitence and Tree of Vices, Chaucer's Knight's Tale appraises the role of autonomous subjects in a tyrannical system. Forest laws of the post-Norman period engender a bitter polemic about the extent of royal power to appropriate nature, and the royal grove of the Knight's Tale exposes the limitations of monarchical structures and masculine control and shapes a pragmatic response to human failures.
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Tagwirei, Cuthbeth. "Should I stay or should I go : Zimbabwes white writing, 1980 to 2011." Thesis, Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/95815.
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Thesis (PhD)--Stellenbosch University, 2014.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis finds its epistemological basis in two related motives: the re-conceptualisation of white writing in Zimbabwe as a sub-category of Zimbabwean literature, and the recognition of white narratives as necessarily dialogic. The first motive follows the realization that writing by Zimbabwean whites is systematically marginalized from “mainstream” Zimbabwean literature owing to its perceived irrelevance to the postcolonial Zimbabwean nation. Through an application of Even-Zohar’s polysystem theory, this thesis argues for a recognition of white writing as a literary sub-system existing in relation to other literary and non-literary systems in Zimbabwe’s polysystem of culture. As its second motive, the thesis also calls for a critical approach to white Zimbabwean narratives built on the understanding that the study of literature can no longer be left to monologic approaches alone. Rather, white narratives should be considered as multiple and hence amenable to a multiplicity of approaches that recognize dialogue as an essential aspect of all narratives. The thesis attempts, by closely reading nine white-authored narratives in Zimbabwe, to demonstrate that white Zimbabwean literature is characterized by multiplicity, simultaneity and instability; these are tropes developed from Bakhtin’s understanding of utterances as characterized by a minimum of two voices. To consider white writing in Zimbabwe as a multiplicity is to call forth its numerous dimensions and breadth of perceptions. Simultaneity posits the need to understand opposites/conflicts as capable of existing side by side without necessarily dissolving into unity. Instability captures the several movements and destabilizations that affect writers, characters and the literary system. These three tropes enable a re-reading of white Zimbabwean narratives as complex and multi-nuanced. Such characteristics of the literary system are seen to reflect on the experiences of “whiteness” in postcolonial Zimbabwe. The white narratives selected for examination in this thesis therefore exhibit crises of belonging that reflect the dialogic nature of existence. In sum, this thesis is meant as a dialogue, culminating in the proposition that calls for a decentred and redemptive literary experience.
AFRIKKANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie tesis vestig sy epistemologiese basis in twee verwante motiewe: die herkonseptualisering van skryfwerk deur wit skrywers in Zimbabwe as ’n sub-kategorie van Zimbabwiese letterkunde, en die erkenning van wit narratiewe as onontkombaar dialogies in aard en wese. Die eerste motief volg die argument dat die skryfwerke van wit Zimbabwieërs stelselmatig gemarginaliseer is uit “hoofstroom” Zimbabwiese literatuur, as gevolg van dié skryfwerke se beweerde irrelevansie tot die koloniale Zimbabwiese nasie-staat. Deur Even-Zohar se polisisteem teorie toe te pas, pleit hierdie tesis vir die erkenning van letterkunde deur wit skrywers as ’n literêre sub-stelsel wat bestaan in verhouding tot ander literêre en nie-literêre sisteme in Zimbabwe se polisisteem van kultuur. As sy tweede motief, vra die tesis ook vir ’n kritiese benadering tot wit Zimbabwiese narratiewe, gebou op die verstandhouding dat die studie van letterkunde nie meer suiwer aan monologies benaderings oorgelewer behoort te word nie. Inteendeel, wit narratiewe moet as veelsydig beskou word, en dus vatbaar vir ’n verskeidenheid benaderings wat dialoog as ’n noodsaaklike aspek van alle verhale erken en verken. Deur nege wit outeurs se verhale in Zimbabwe noukeurig te lees, dui hierdie tesis aan dat wit Zimbabwiese literatuur gekenmerk word deur veelvuldigheid, gelyktydigheid en onstabiliteit; hieride is teoretiese konsepte wat ontleen is aan Bakhtin se begrip van uitsprake (“utterances”) as bestaande uit ’n minimum van twee stemme. Om wit lettere in Zimbabwe as veelvuldig te verklaar is om die talle dimensies en breedtes van persepsie in letterkundige korpus te erken. Gelyktydig postuleer die tesis die moontlikheid dat teenoorgesteldes/konflikte langs mekaar kan en móét bestaan, sonder om noodwendig in ’n eenheid te ontaard. Onstabiliteit, soos dit hier verstaan word, omvat die verskillende bewegings en ontstuimige roeringe wat skrywers, karakters en die literêre sisteem beïnvloed. Hierdie drie konsepte laat ’n herlees van wit Zimbabwiese verhale toe wat as kompleks en multi-genuanseerd bestempel kan word. Sulke kenmerke van die literêre sisteem moet in ag geneem word om die ervaring van “witheid” in post-koloniale Zimbabwe effektief uit te beeld. Die wit verhale wat gekies is vir herlees in hierdie tesis beeld dus krisisse van bestaan uit wat die dialogiese aard van die menslike bestaan omvat. Ter afsluiting is hierdie tesis bedoel as ’n dialoog wat kulmineer in ’n oproep vir gedensentraliseerde en verlossende ervarings van die letterkunde in sy geheel.
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Court, Andrew John. "Development of H.G. Wells's conception of the novel, 1895 to 1911." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/7777.
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In his writing on the nature and purpose of the novel between 1895 and 1911, Wells endorses artistic principles for their social effects. His public lecture on “The Contemporary Novel,” written in 1911 in response to a debate with Henry James, is the most lucid articulation of his artistic principles, and his later autobiographical reflections on the debate obscure the clarity of the earlier version. Wells’s artistic principles emerge in his reviews of contemporary fiction for the Saturday Review (1895–1897), where he extends Poe’s concept of “unity of effect” to the novel and justifies his preference for social realism with a theory of cultural evolution. His views develop further in the context of sociological and philosophical debates between 1901 and 1905. Wells commenced the century with a sceptical view on the social effects of literature, but his exposure to British Pragmatism encouraged him to revive the principles developed in his reviewing. The view on Wells’s conception of the novel presented in this thesis challenges the prevailing view that he began his career with a set of purely artistic principles, adding sociological and intellectual apparatus after the turn of the century.
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Hartig, Andrea S. "Literary Landscaping: Re-reading the Politics of Places in Late Nineteenth-Century Regional and Utopian Literature." Connect to this document online, 2005. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc%5Fnum=miami1133485531.
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Thesis (Ph. D.)--Miami University, Dept. of English, 2005.Title from second page of PDF document. Document formatted into pages; contains [3], iv, 143 p. Includes bibliographical references (p. 132-143).