Academic literature on the topic 'Identity Crisis in Literature'

This study examines a range of South African speculative novels which situate their narratives in futuristic or ‘alternative’ milieus, exploring how these narratives not only address identity formation in a deeply divided and rapidly changing society, but also the ways in which human beings place themselves in relation to Nature and form notions of ‘ecological’ belonging. It offers close readings of these speculative narratives in order to investigate the ways in which they evince concerns which are rooted in the natural, social and political landscapes which inform them. Specific attention is paid to the texts’ treatment of the intertwined issues of identity, belonging and ecological crisis. This dissertation draws on the fields of Ecocriticism, Postcolonial Studies and Science Fiction Studies, and assumes a culturally specific approach to primary texts while investigating possible cross-cultural commonalities between Afrikaans and English speculative narratives, as well as the cross-fertilisation of global SF/speculative features. It is suggested that South African speculative fiction presents a socio-historically situated, rhizomatic approach to ecology – one that is attuned to the tension between humanistic- and ecological concerns.

This thesis provides a much-needed study of all the major aspects of Unamuno's experience of exile from the Spain of Primo de Rivera (1924-30). It sheds light on the reasons for Unamuno's exile and on his understanding of his public role during exile itself. It shows how Unamuno saw himself at this time as the representative of certain essential Spanish values which he believed were being debased by the Dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, and how he came to feel in Paris that he had a mission to make those values known to his new European audience. A study of this mission helps to illuminate one of Unamuno's more complex exile works, La agonía del cristianismo. The thesis also sheds light on the effects that exile had on Unamuno, both man and writer, showing that he could not function in his usual fashion as a public figure and a writer outside Spain. This state of affairs led to a severe personal crisis which affected the writings he produced in Paris and Hendaye. This thesis has set out to show that Unamuno's exile crisis was principally a writer's crisis. To be able to do this, it has been necessary to set Unamuno's exile works in the context of his lifelong ideas on selfhood, self-creation and writing. It has thus been possible to show how the circumstances of exile forced Unamuno to confront once again his fundamental doubts concerning the effects that playing a public role and writing have on his sense of selfhood. A study of Cómo se hace una novela, the work in which he gives expression to this crisis, serves to reveal how the activity of writing lies at the very heart of his philosophy of self-creation.

A.L. McLeod's comment on the literature of Hong Kong, a former Commonwealth colony of Britain, represents the consensus that Hong Kong has 'produced no literature'. Also pertinent is his view that Hong Kong has 'no sense of national identity, no cause to follow, no common goal'. The Handover in 1997 represented a new era for Hong Kong as it came under a new sovereign with a new identity. It is now time to rethink the relevance of McLeod's assertion, made some four decades ago. Hong Kong has long been regarded as a 'cultural desert', which is not a favorable environment to create any impetus to cultivate development in culture and arts. However, following reunification with China, Hong Kong is now permeated by a Chinese national identity that is less ambiguous and more legitimate than its former colonial counterpart. Decolonisation has, without a shadow of doubt, provided all Hongkongers with a 'common goal' to anticipate, inducing them to question whether recent history has given Hong Kong a new identity; and, whether there are incentives for claiming it. However, the key question is whether present day Hong Kong has given inspiration and 'calligraphic ink' for Hong Kong literature; in particular, how Hong Kong's new identity has been reflected in literary works. This research relates postcolonial thinking to literature emanating from Hong Kong, its thrust is to dissect and explore the implicit meanings evident in the use of the English language by native Hong Kong writers as they expound the identity of Hong Kong. Does Anglophone writing in these instances express the identity of Hong Kong? Addressing the writings of Hong Kong native Xu Xi (writer of Hong Kong Rose), Agnes Lam (Woman to Woman and Other Poems) and Louise Ho (New Ends, Old Beginnings), the research also considers how such adaptations result collaterally in cultural displacements, diasporic experience and a linguistic identity crisis, which leads to the .consideration of whether a uniquely Hong Kong cultural identity may be said to emerge ex post facto from the postcolonial situation, or whether a hybrid identity existed prior to the political upheaval of 1997. The earlier part of the thesis focuses on the investigation of subjects' nostalgic feelings towards their past. Chapter one provides a general overview of the political situation of Hong Kong that gave rise to a special cultural phenomenon which this thesis examines: the special nostalgia in Hong Kong's memory is due to its unique political situation. It discusses the presentation and the perspective on time taken by the three writers. Identifying Xu Xi as idealistic, Agnes Lam as individualistic and Louise Ho as skeptical, this thesis further consider how these different writers deal with the postcolonial experiences of their time in the perception and construction oftheir identity. One of the major focuses of this thesis is the notion of a postcolonial time sense, that is, the perplexing competition between the time and memory of the coloniser and that of the colonised. The focus of this research then turns to language. Pursuing the idea that language creates a voice and an identity, this thesis considers how these three writers deal with the various languages current in Hong Kong and their opinion on languages which empower and disempower them. The capacity of language to marginalise is one of the focuses of discussion. The study of marginal identity will be revisited in the last chapter and the angle will change to bring into view the marginality that is brought about by space. Another primary area of analysis in this thesis is postcolonial geography. Following on from the discussion of nostalgia, the analysis of this feeling of inertia will extend from time to space and in an examination of the significance of 'homeland' in these postcolonial works. In its conclusion, the thesis explores the procedures which these writers have adopted in constructing a postcolonial identity for Hong Kong by examining their dealings with the displacement brought by migration, colonisation and globalisation, together with the attempted transcendence of physical distance and psychological boundaries.

I have written a novel as a prequel and parallel narrative to Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The accompanying critical commentary draws on psychoanalytic and feminist perspectives, interpreted for “the complexities of fin‐de‐siècle British society” (Kucich, 2007, p.35), and examines my novel alongside other adaptations of Jekyll and Hyde. Although my work may invite comparisons with Neo‐Victorian novels such as works by Sarah Waters, Michael Cox’s The Meaning of Night (2006) or Michel Faber’s The Crimson Petal and the White (2002), I would argue that it has more in common with Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) and Sophie Gee’s The Scandal of the Season (2008), both of which are prequels respectively to Jane Eyre and The Rape of the Lock. My research explores the potential origins of Jekyll’s decision to divide himself – the psychological roots of “his desire to reveal himself and his desire to conceal himself” (Laing, 1960, p.37). I have used this premise for both a psychoanalytic and a feminist perspective, drawing on the key works of Freud, specifically his writings on the unconscious and in relation to dreams, and Gilbert and Gubar’s seminal text The Madwoman in the Attic. The decision to use these texts as a framework was made using the rationale of two primary perspectives: Stevenson’s novel was inspired by a dream he had, which led me to Freud, whose theories fit so well with the manifestations of the Jekyll/Hyde personae, and whose analytic attention to sex and gender, with the argument that psychological and social forms of gender oppression cause a manufactured and oppressive role for women, is correlative with a feminist approach. Gilbert and Gubar’s critique analyses nineteenth century female writers, and it is my argument that Stevenson’s novel suggests that Jekyll’s rigid beliefs about his ‘other’ can be seen as both a resistance to the feminine within himself, and as an unconscious identification with women who felt suppressed in a patriarchal society and constrained by that society’s rigid gender expectations. This feature of late Victorian culture which Stevenson’s novel appears – on the surface ‐ to actively resist, is symbolised by the anonymous and one‐dimensional female characters within his novel, therefore this narrative motif is the starting point for my novel.

The period following World War I can be characterized in literature by the trauma and changes that promoted crises of masculinity. These crises, however, are not discussed between the men that suffer similar feelings of insecurity and anxiety; not approached as a tension in need of resolution. Exploring the narrative voices of Nick, Jake, Darl and Anse in The Great Gatsby, The Sun Also Rises, and As I Lay Dying, this thesis addresses the ways in which this unspoken phenomenon is essential to the modernist male narrative. I propose that, despite the widespread nature of this phenomenon, it is the voice of the individual – the preoccupations of his consciousness – that is the most appropriate point through which to examine these crises of masculinity.

Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro de Comunicação e Expressão, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Letras/Inglês e Literatura Correspondente, Florianópolis, 2012.<br>Made available in DSpace on 2016-01-15T14:24:53Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 334128.pdf: 39239460 bytes, checksum: e1a14dfe1c898e418c711be869769c65 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012<br>Abstract : This research presents a comparative analysis between Philip K. Dick s 1977 novel A Scanner Darkly and Richard Linklater s 2006 homonymous film adaptation of it. The focus of this analysis is the theme of postmodern identity, having as a theoretical framework the issues about identity and postmodernism problematized by theorists such a Fredric Jameson and Stuart Hall. This analysis shows how the issue of postmodern identity is ubiquitous both in Dick s novel and in Linklater s film. In order to analyze the issue of adaptation, the ideas of scholars such as Dudley Andrew and Robert Stam, as well as film theorist André Bazin were used. The differences between a novel and a film that narrate the same story are unavoidable. However, what is possible to see in the case of A Scanner Darkly is that the treatment and the emphasis given to the issue of postmodern identity in both works is equivalent. In order to do so, the film takes advantage of the specificities of its medium to represent elements that, due to each medium s nature, cannot be transposed into a film.<br><br>Esta pesquisa apresenta uma análise comparativa entre o romance de Philip K. Dick A Scanner Darkly (O Homem Duplo  1977) e a adaptação cinematográfica homônima feita por Richard Liklater em 2006. O foco desta análise é o tema da identidade pós-moderna, usando como base teórica as questões sobre identidade e pós-modernidade problematizadas por teóricos como Fredric Jameson e Stuart Hall. A partir desta análise, é possivel observar como o tema da identidade pósmoderna é ubíquo e ambas as obras. Para analisar as questões relacionadas a adaptação, foram utilizadas as ideias de acadêmicos como Dudley Andrew e Robert Stam, assim como do teórico André Bazin. As diferenças entre um romance e um filme que narram a mesma história são inevitáveis. Porém, o que é possível ver no caso de A Scanner Darkly é que o tratamento e a ênfase dados ao tema da identidade pós-moderna em ambas as obras é equivalente. Para tanto, o filme utiliza as especificidades do seu meio para representar possíveis elementos que, por conta da natureza de cada meio, não podem ser transpostos para o cinema.

In George R. R. Martin's magnum opus, A Song of Ice and Fire, the fragmentation of the land mirrors a fragmentation of the self as many of Martin's characters lose their grips on their sense of identity due to the chaos caused by the ongoing civil war in Westeros and ultimately undergo an identity crisis. This thesis seeks to explore the ways in which George R. R. Martin utilizes the identity crisis as an instrument for obtaining a sense of agency and autonomy over oneself, particularly through the lens of trauma.