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1

Collin, Mélanie. "La charnalité rédemptrice : discours idéologique dans His dark materials de Philip Pullman." Thèse, Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, 2010. http://depot-e.uqtr.ca/6851/1/030518116.pdf.

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Mikaela, Ehn Svensson. "Dæmoner, katter och talande björnar : Icke-mänskliga karaktärer i Philip Pullmans His Dark Materials." Thesis, Södertörns högskola, Institutionen för kultur och lärande, 2020. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:sh:diva-41096.

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Fantasy literature has a long history of including a wide array of non-human characters, each more fantastical than the other. But can these characters also be used to question anthropocentric beliefs or are their portrayal just a way to reinforce those ideas? Because fantasy literature, especially earlier examples in the fantasy canon, tend to include a lot of allusions to religion in general and Christianity in particular, is the question more complex than it first might seem. This thesis therefore aims to examine the portrayal of non-human characters in the works of one of the last 25 years most bestselling fantasy authors, Philip Pullman. It’s a well-known fact that Pullman isn’t a fan of organized religion, which sometimes is very noticeable in his trilogy His Dark Materials (1995-2000). The trilogy includes several kinds of non-human characters and one of the most central aims of the thesis is to examine how these portrayals relate to the undermining or reproduction of anthropocentric ideas. Because Pullmans alternative theology is so central to the trilogy’s narrative, it will also play a part in my examination.
Denna uppsats är en undersökning av de icke-mänskliga karaktärer som figurerar i Philip Pullmans fantasytrilogi His Dark Materials (1995–2000). Litteratur inom fantasygenren har en lång historia av att inkludera en stor mängd av icke-mänskliga karaktärer, den ena mer fantastisk än den andra. Kan dessa karaktärer användas för att problematisera den antropocentrism som genomsyrar det västerländska samhället eller är deras gestaltande endast exempel på hur dessa föreställningar reproduceras? Eftersom fantasy, speciellt äldre exempel, ofta har allusioner till religion i allmänhet och kristendom i synnerhet, är frågan mer komplex än den först verkar. Pullman är känd för sin kritik av organiserad religion och i His Dark Materials skriver han fram en alternativ teologi. Denna uppsats undersöker således inte bara gestaltningen av de icke-mänskliga karaktärerna och hur de relaterar till eventuell problematisering och/eller återskapande av antropocentriska normer, utan också den roll Pullmans teologi spelar i relation till detta. I slutändan är också förhoppningen att denna uppsats kan visa hur litteratur, och framför allt den som faller inom fantasygenren, kan vara ett verktyg för att diskutera och problematisera antropocentriska föreställningar.
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Waddell, Heather. "Reading with thought and effort : Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, and its connections to the works of John Milton and William Blake /." Connect to online version, 2007. http://ada.mtholyoke.edu/setr/websrc/pdfs/www/2007/245.pdf.

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4

Chau, Ka-wah Anna. "Imaginary spaces in children's fantasy fiction a psychoanalytic reading of Lewis Carroll's Alice Books and Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials Trilogy /." Click to view the E-thesis via HKUTO, 2004. http://sunzi.lib.hku.hk/hkuto/record/B31364986.

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Fisher, Rebecca Maree. "An Exploration into the Use of the Biblical Narrative of the Fall within the children’s series The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis and His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman." Thesis, University of Canterbury. Culture, Literature and Society, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10092/1786.

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In this thesis, I explore the uses to which children’s authors C.S. Lewis and Philip Pullman put the major biblical theme of the Fall (with passing commentary on Temptation, the precursor to the Fall) in their seminal children’s series The Chronicles of Narnia and the His Dark Materials trilogy. I argue that each author uses the subject of the Fall as a central theme in his series in order to inflect the dominant message of this biblical story (that humanity has fallen from perfection into sin) with their personal opinions on fundamental human questions concerning the nature of God, the difference between good and evil, and the metaphysical ‘rules’ that structure the universe and mankind’s place in it.1 In exploring these issues, I point out the ways in which Pullman and Lewis, in their drastically differing opinions as to the legitimacy of the worldview implicit in the original Bible story, are nevertheless both heavily dependant on the overwhelming influence that the Fall narrative has had on Western culture.
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Nordlén, Lisa. "The Journey from Innocence to Experience : Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials as a female Bildungsroman." Thesis, Högskolan i Gävle, Institutionen för humaniora och samhällsvetenskap, 2009. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hig:diva-4396.

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In this essay the main aim is to consider Philip Pullman’s trilogy His Dark Materials with its female protagonist as a Bildungsroman. The principal source of the study is Jerome Buckley’s Season of Youth – The Bildungsroman from Dickens to Golding. Buckely’s presentation of the significant characteristics of the Bildungsroman will be applied to Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials in order to explore if these characteristics are present, modified or not, in the trilogy.   The second aim is to investigate how His Dark Materials relates to the patterns of the hero’s journey. In order to approach this question, Joseph Campbell’s work The Hero with a Thousand Faces is applied as a main source.    Since most material concerning both the Bildungsroman and the hero’s journey are from a male point of view and concern males, the female perspective will be represented by Susan Fraiman and Linda Wagner who both write about females and the bildung narrative.   In the section called The Story of Lyra, the trilogy is summarized briefly in order to give the reader a chance to understand what the trilogy is about. In the conclusion, Lyra’s development and (hero)-journey are discussed.     The final claim of the study is that His Dark Materials can be considered a Bildungsroman and the patterns of the hero journey are found in the story about Lyra, but with some differences from her male counterparts.
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7

Tso, Wing Bo. "A comparative study of gender representations in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials and its Chinese translation." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2010. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/1163/.

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Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials has caused controversy as well as enjoyed great popularity among readers worldwide. Its influence has created a great impact in the field of children’s literature. The purpose of this thesis is two-fold. Firstly, the thesis analyzes gender representations in Pullman’s trilogy in the context of how he rewrites female archetypes through the subversive re-inscription of Eve, the invention of daemons, the reinvention of ‘femme fatale’, and the new portrayal of Gypsy women. Secondly, the thesis aims at comparing and examining how gender representations in the source text are translated, transformed or / and manipulated in its Chinese translation. With reference to Chinese gender ideology, which includes the Chinese concept of the ying-yang polarities, Buddhist notions of gender, the notion of the femme fatale, and the stereotypical image of Chinese grannies, the syntactic and semantic alterations made by the Chinese translator are investigated. Issues regarding how Chinese gender views may influence and alter the translation product are discussed in detail. By studying the similarities and differences in gender representations between the texts, the thesis attempts to shed light on the gender ideology of both English and Chinese contemporary cultures.
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Hsu, Hsiao-Hsien. "In between materiality and meaning : world, dust and daemon in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy." Thesis, University of Essex, 2017. http://repository.essex.ac.uk/19669/.

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This thesis investigates materiality, meanings and the use of three crucial elements, World, Dust, and Daemon in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials Trilogy. Together, the three novels Northern Lights (1995), The Subtle Knife (1997) and The Amber Spyglass (2000) juxtapose and represent not only Philip Pullman’s counter-interpretation of Biblical representation, Genesis in particular, but also his worries about religious absolutism and story-telling based in Christian belief. As a New Atheist fantasy fiction written to young adult and adult readers, Pullman’s enthusiasm for playing with and materializing obscure religious concepts and relating them to our real life through story-telling is remarkable. This research is aimed to analyse the methodologies and further to understand how Pullman can fulfill his unique cosmology, as well as the problems and paradoxes these elements could have brought together with. The first chapter, World, composes etymological, philosophical and constitutive studies of Pullman’s World system in His Dark Materials. That system takes an organic tuber-like form in its arrangement of worlds in time and space. The thesis attempts to suggest that Pullman’s atheistic cosmology is, paradoxically, constructed in terms of a heavily theological materiality. The research in the second chapter, Dust, focuses on the transformation of Dust. It attempts to argue that Pullmanic Dust is a process of becoming rather than a status of being. The whole process is divided into three stages, and my critique observes how Dust is materially changed in meaning in each stage. The research also provides detailed studies of how Dust can be metaphorically related to the doctrine of original sin and, in consequence, the work’s close relation to the very Christianity that it seeks to eschew. Daemon, as the most materialized entity made of Dust, is at the crux of Pullman’s understanding of the human soul. It is also a starting point for high fantasy in His Dark Materials. By studying the materiality and meaning of Daemon, my research into what is termed the laws of “settlement” finds that they violate the ontological foundation of Pullman’s realism and of his psychological (and philosophical) understanding of the soul. This chapter suggests that Pullman’s animalization of the human soul and, conversely, his anthropomorphism of daemons together make for a significant contradiction in his cosmology.
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Theodoropoulou, Athanasia. "Stories of initiation for the modern age : explorations of textual and theatrical fantasy in Jules Verne's Voyage à travers l'impossible and Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/4294.

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While the theatrical works of Jules Verne have gathered some critical attention over recent years, the text of the Voyage à travers l’Impossible has remained an obscure space in the author’s oeuvre or deemed unworthy by Vernian scholars. Jules Verne has predominantly been seen as a writer of adventure novels whereas the fantastic elements in his work have commonly been overlooked by critics. This thesis examines the ways in which the Voyage à travers l’Impossible amalgamates ideas that are representative not only of the Vernian work in general but also of the pre-freudian spirit of the nineteenth century. By viewing the play within the context of theatrical fantasy, this thesis opens up new paths of analysis in the genre. Part of this endeavour consists of a comparison with a seemingly disparate text: Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials, which, similarly to Verne’s play, facilitates an exploration of the function of fantasy both in literary and theatrical terms as it was first adapted for the stage in 2003. During the course of this thesis I offer an analysis of the trilogy and proceed to cover new ground by comparing this to an analysis of the adapted text. For the purpose of my examination I establish a connection between the two texts by regarding the Voyage à travers l’Impossible and His Dark Materials as dominated by the literary motif of initiation according to the model introduced by Vernian specialist Simone Vierne. I subsequently interweave an array of theories on fantasy, psychoanalysis, topography and the body as part of my analysis of the literary fantastic. Texts by Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, Tzvetan Todorov, Irène Bessière, Mircea Eliade, Judith Butler and Vernian critics such as William Butcher are amply used in my readings of Verne and Pullman before I proceed to examine their relevance to the theatrical experience of the fantastic. An analysis of the adaptation of His Dark Materials offers the opportunity for fresh critical insights by creating new perspectives on the function of fantasy in its fluctuation from page to stage and vice-versa. It is through these different perspectives that I revisit old questions and introduce new ones such as the difference between fantasy and the fantastic, their regressive or progressive character, the modification of ii fantastic elements on the passage from the literary to the theatrical and from pre-modernism to post-modernism. Basing my analysis on stories of initiation, I suggest that fantasy evades exclusive association with either progress or regress and only remains faithful to the notions of passage and blurring of frontiers.
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10

Chau, Ka-wah Anna, and 周嘉華. "Imaginary spaces in children's fantasy fiction: a psychoanalytic reading of Lewis Carroll's Alice Booksand Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials Trilogy." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2004. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B31364986.

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11

Requier-Ulrich, Sabine. "L' évolution de l'image de l'enfant personnage et de l'enfant lecteur entre les "Alice" de Lewis Carroll, "Le Hobbit" de J. R. R. Tolkien et "His Dark Materials" de Philip Pullman." Montpellier 3, 2009. http://www.biu-montpellier.fr/florabium/jsp/nnt.jsp?nnt=2009MON30052.

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La littérature pour la jeunesse connaît un essor extraordinaire depuis une vingtaine d'années, notamment grâce à des œuvres transcendant les catégories littéraires. Des récits-fleuves battent des records de vente, tels "His Dark Materials" de Philip Pullman (1995-2000). Cet engouement pour la lecture chez les enfants est un phénomène qui date de la naissance de la littérature pour la jeunesse, en 1865 avec la publication d'"Alice au pays des merveilles" de Lewis Carroll. En 1937, "Le hobbit" de J. R. R. Tolkien créa un nouveau genre, la "Fantasy", et rencontra un succès international. Dans une période où l'on s'interroge de plus en plus sur les compétences et l'appétit de lecture des enfants, la destinée de ces récits paraît singulière. Comment ont-ils, chacun à leur époque, réussi à attirer un jeune public aussi nombreux ? Quels sont les procédés narratologiques et esthétiques mis en place par les auteurs ? Quelles compétences leur lecteur peu expérimenté doit-il mettre en œuvre pour parvenir à faire du sens en cours de lecture ? Comment ces textes sucitent-ils et mettent-ils en œuvre ces compétences ? Enfin, après avoir été didactique pendant des siècles, la littérature pour la jeunesse est devenue pédagogique, mais elle est restée, hier comme aujourd'hui, un vecteur privilégié de valeurs pas nécessairement doxiques. Les positions axiologiques présentes dans chaque récit révèlent l'image qu'une société se fait des enfants et la place qu'elle leur accorde. A travers la philosophie éducative en filigrane derrière la présence de l'enfant personnage et dans la description en négatif que nous offre chaque récit de l'enfant lecteur se définit le portrait d'une société à une époque donnée
For about twenty years, children's literature has enjoyed an extraordinary boom, particularly thanks to crossover books which bridge the gap between adults and teenagers. Some sagas have become best-sellers, like "His Dark Materials" by Philip Pullman (1995-2000). Since the birth of children's literature in 1865 with the publication of "Alice in Wonderland" by Lewis Carroll, young readers have been infatuated with some narratives. In 1937, Tolkien created a new genre, Fantasy, with "The Hobbit", which became successful worlwide. At a time when we are questioning children's reading skills - as well as their desire to read - the destiny of these novels seems quite remarkable. How have they managed to appeal to so many young readers for years ? What are the narratological and aesthetic devices used by their authors ? What skills are inexperienced readers supposed to use in order to understand the meaning of a text while reading it ? How do such texts bring out and implement these reading skills ? Moreover, after being didactic for centuries, children's literature has become pedagogical, but has always remained an ideal way to transmit values which are not necessarily doxic. The axiological positions in each narrative reveal the idea a society gets of its children and the importance it gives them. Through the educational philosophy embodied in the presence of child characters and the indirect description of the child reader given by each text, we can delineate the portrait of a society at a given time
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12

Waugh, Kirsty. "Mixing memory and desire: recollecting the self in Harry Potter and His Dark Materials : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in English at Massey University, Auckland, New Zealand." Massey University, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/10179/1006.

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Just as memory pervades our everyday lives, it pervades the lives of the characters and readers of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series and Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. Acts of recall or recollection occur in almost every chapter as the characters in these novels devote much of the present to keeping in touch with some aspect of the past. Memory is integral to Harry Potter and His Dark Materials, highlighting the following problematic questions: Who are we and how do we relate to the past? How is what we wish for the future grounded in the past and the present? Memory is at the core of constructivism, the active construction of reality by the individual through the use of mental activity. In this thesis I maintain that the central protagonists in Harry Potter and His Dark Materials, Harry Potter and Lyra Belacqua, actively construct their "selves" from memories and narratives – their own and those of others – just as the novels' readers negotiate their own identities in the world outside of the novels. The constant recalling of the past to confirm and amply one's present creates a complex web of remembering and forgetting, assimilating and discarding, which we attempt to explicate through the use of culturally appropriate metaphors. The thesis comprises three chapters that correlate memory with genre, narrative, and technology respectively. I commence the thesis by exploring the idea of genre as collective memory. I position Harry Potter and His Dark Materials within the genre of heroic fantasy and examine how the monomyth provides readers with the memory triggers they require to decode the structure of these texts. The novels conform to and yet manipulate the preconceived patterns present in the heroic or "high" fantasy genre, where narrative, memory and identity are all linked by the desires of the stories' participants. Chapter Two applies Freud's concept of Nachtraglichkeit, which supposes the process of memory is one of incessant reconsideration or "retranslation", the reworking of memory traces in the light of later knowledge and experience. This conceptualisation of memory is compared to the common, but less productive, tendency to describe memory through objectifying metaphors, such as the idea that memory works analogously to a photograph. Chapter Three addresses how knowledge and experience in Harry Potter and His Dark Materials are furnished by prosthetic memory devices, such as photographs, the Pensieve, the alethiometer and the Amber Spyglass, “that permit us to transcend "raw" biological limits – for example, the limits on memory capacity or limits on our auditory range” (Bruner, Acts of Meaning 34). The novel's protagonists are then armed with these devices in trying to make sense of the landscapes they inhabit. Ultimately, we are all story-tellers (for better or for worse), weaving our self-narratives from material gleaned from the collective memories and prosthetic memory devices of the society we belong to, our own experiences, and the tales of others, trying to achieve the uniformity of consciousness and an awareness of the connection between the actions and events of the past, and the experience of the present, which are fundamental to a sense of individual identity.
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Niskala, J. (Johanna). "”And the eyes of them both were opened, and they saw the true form of their daemons”:daimoni Lyran persoonallisuuden ja individuaatioprosessin symbolina Philip Pullmanin His Dark Materials -trilogiassa." Master's thesis, University of Oulu, 2015. http://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:oulu-201505211575.

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Tutkimukseni tarkoitus oli selvittää, mitä Philip Pullmanin His Dark Materials -trilogian daimoni symboloi ja merkitsee päähenkilön Lyran individuaatio- eli yksilöitymisprosessin osana. Analyysini pohjalla käytin C. G. Jungin analyyttisen psykologian käsitteitä piilotajuinen, tietoinen, symboli ja arkkityyppi. Analyysini rakenne pohjautuu Sisko Ylimartimon tutkimuksessaan käyttämään jungilaiseen kolmivaiheeseen individuaatioprosessin tulkintamalliin. Sisko Ylimartimon väitöskirjatutkimus Lumikuningattaren valtakunta. H. C. Andersenin satu sisäisen kasvun kuvauksena (2002) on Jungin ajatuksen rinnalla perustelemassa omia tulkintojani, sillä Ylimartimo tutkii Andersenin sadussa tapahtuvaa yksilöitymisprosessia. Suomessa Pullmanin trilogiaa on tutkinut vain Maria Ihonen lisensiaatintyössään Philip Pullmanin His Dark Materials fantastisena, mahdollisena ja intertekstuaalisena maailmana (2009), joten suomalaista tutkimusta trilogiasta on tarpeellista tehdä. Vertasin analyysissäni Pullmanin trilogian päähenkilön yksilöitymisprosessissa ilmeneviä tapahtumia ja arkkityyppien kohtaamisia Ylimartimon tulkintaan Andersenin sadun päähenkilöiden tekemään yksilöitymisprosessiin ja arkkityyppien kohtaamiseen. Lisäksi pohdin arkkityyppisten symbolien merkityksiä Lyran yksilöitymisprosessin osana. Oletuksena oli, että daimoni ilmentää Lyran piilotajuista, ja yksilöitymisprosessin aikana Lyra alkaa tiedostaa daimoninsa ilmentämät piilotajuiset viestit arkkityyppien kohtaamisen kautta. Analyysissä selvisi, että daimoni ilmentää jungilaista piilotajuntaa ja sielun ideaa. Daimonin rooli näyttäytyi oletusteni mukaan merkittäväksi Lyran yksilöitymisprosessissa. Daimonin kautta toteutuivat Ylimartimon tulkintamallin kaikki kolme vaihetta. Tästä päättelin, että daimonin rooli Lyran prosessissa on tärkein, mutta ilman arkkityyppejä Lyra ei tunnistaisi piilotajunnan viestejä. Lisäksi tutkimus osoitti, että trilogian toinen päähenkilö Will toteuttaa Lyran kanssa trilogian etsintämatkan langettaman syntiinlankeemuskohtalon parin rakastuessa toisiinsa. Syntiinlankeemuksen tapahtuminen toteuttaa prosessin viimeisen vaiheen, jossa Lyra löytää piilotajuntaa ilmentävän daimoninsa uudelleen. Viimeisen vaiheen toteutumiseen vaikuttivat selvästi Maria Ihosen tutkimuksessaan esittelemät neljä seksuaalisen tiedon porrasta. Tämän olen tulkinnut merkitsevän Lyran kasvaneen piilotajuntaansa tiedostamattomasta lapsesta piilotajuntansa selvemmin näkeväksi nuoreksi aikuiseksi.
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Wang, Ling. "Animal Daemon, Armored Bear, and Ecological Eden: Animal-Human Relationships in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials." 2008. http://www.cetd.com.tw/ec/thesisdetail.aspx?etdun=U0001-3101200816301300.

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Hale, Talia Joy. "“Every Atom of Me and Every Atom of You”: Relationships Between Authority, Family, and Gender in His Dark Materials and Paradise Lost." 2012. http://scholarworks.gsu.edu/english_hontheses/9.

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This thesis project examines Philip Pullman’s controversial trilogy, His Dark Materials (1995-2000), and its relationships in theme and content to John Milton's Paradise Lost (1667). Though Pullman has publicly discussed the influences of Paradise Lost on his trilogy, very little academic work has been published examining the similarities and differences between the two. Specifically, I analyze the paradigms of gender, family, and authority as they are represented by each text. I contrast Pullman's Lyra to Milton's Eve, drawing conclusions about the inherent meanings and differences in the two female protagonists and, consequently, the narrative worlds surrounding them. References cited include works examining His Dark Materials, Paradise Lost, and children's literature.
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Manning, Chloe. "LIONS AND POLAR BEARS AND GENDER ROLES, OH MY! The Treatment of Women and Femininity in C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia and Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials." Thesis, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/1885/222875.

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From the earliest works of the genre, fantasy fiction has had a complicated relationship with gender and feminism. C. S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia is seen by many as a prime example of fantasy's patriarchal roots, with its strong adherence to traditional gender roles and controversial treatment of the character Susan. In contrast, Philip Pullman's 'anti-Narnia' His Dark Materials is often cited as an instance of pro-feminist fantasy, due to its engaging heroine, compelling female villain, and large cast of secondary female characters. When situated within the workings of the wider fantasy genre, however, the two series' seemingly oppositional stances on women, femininity, and gender roles are called into question. Using close textual analysis, this thesis examines the contrasts and continuities in the portrayal of female characters between Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia and Pullman’s His Dark Materials, in order to demonstrate how authors can unwittingly repeat patriarchal and misogynistic themes and narratives, even when their aim is to refute them.
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Fisher, Rebecca Maree. "An exploration into the use of the biblical narrative of the fall within the children's series The chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis and His dark materials by Philip Pullman : a thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in English by the University of Canterbury /." 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10092/1786.

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Hsu, Hsiao-Hsien, and 徐孝先. "Can an Alternative Cosmology Save Our World?-A Study of Aspects of Soul and Worlds in Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials Trilogy." Thesis, 2012. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/48324353746605478961.

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碩士
國立暨南國際大學
外國語文學系
100
The thesis questions the aspect of souls and worlds in Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Material Trilogy, which he expected to fulfill his atheistic world and the universe of probablism, namely “Republic of Heaven.” In Pullman’s setting, the disciplines of the New World originated from Dust, an atom-like element that constructed all the materials, souls and numberless parallel universes; even God was the concentration of Dust. Under this setting, Pullman waged a war between the two powers, the Magisterium and the Truth suitors in the novel. Pullman’s ultimate goal was to prove the being of God a lie without denying His existence. The methodologies applied in the novel somehow became the central and the most disputing theme of the story. The study showed that the two important elements that support Pullman’s world, Daemon and Dust were facing their contradictions in both phenomenological and metaphysical ways of defining them. Take Dust as an example, I inducted what Dust was by its essence and function then found this overloaded “super element” was inexpertly overestimated than a godly cause. With too many extra values added, at the same time it was made the only element that created the whole world; its holiness was ignored and turned into a monster. Moreover, the study found that Pullman’s idea of Dust was very similar to the Greek atomism (founded in 450 B.C.), a theory that was already abandoned by theology and science two thousand years ago because its lack of reasoning logic. In His Dark Material trilogy, the theory was restored with Pullman’s motive of anti-Christianity and denying of the Creator, but its lack of logic remained unsolved. The second support of Pullman’s world was his setting of Daemon and its legitimacy of existence. Simply, Daemon is Pullman’s view on soul. Soul had been always a sensitive and complicated subject, but Pullman visualized and externalized it as an animal-shaped partner called Daemon. Daemon represented its human’s characteristic and was inseparable with its human. The study found an unexplainable conflict in the relationship between the Daemon and its human based on their psychological interactions. According to Martin Heidegger’s ideas of existentialism and Aristotle’s Metaphysics, emotional expressions are the projections of one’s mind and soul. Since in the story the souls had been embodied as Daemon, where or what does the owner originate his or her feeling and anxiety toward their Daemon? Apparently, the projector and the projected both had souls and being metaphysically individuals, whilst they were physically as one. It is to say Pullman’s ambition of essentially symbiotic multiple souls did not fulfill successfully in the story. The conclusion of the study was based on the defects of the Dust and Souls then questioned Pullman’s critics in whether a fantasy literature can or should really be realistic. By evaluating Pullman’s works, it is to proved that an imitation of the reality still remain fictional and unreal in the world of His Dark Materials. Besides, his setting of “Republic of Heaven” is proved not better than the overthrown “Kingdom of Heaven” that readers are encountering, while the basic two elements Dust and Daemons being in lack of logical and correct theological explanation. However, the study also found that this is not Pullman’s or any other fantasy writers’ fault, but that they were limited by the genre itself.
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