Dissertations / Theses: 'Myth in literature'

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Dorman, Daniel. "Creation Myth." Cleveland State University / OhioLINK, 2017. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=csu1493918336967034.

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Subramani. "South Pacific literature : from myth to fabulation /." Suva : University of the South Pacific, 1985. http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb35508666f.

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Trott, Vincent Andrew. "The First World War : history, literature and myth." Thesis, Open University, 2014. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.664476.

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This thesis explores the role literature played in the creation and subsequent development of the mythology of the First World War in Britain. In this thesis, the term 'mythology' is used to denote a set of dominant symbols and narratives which characterise how the past is represented and understood. Many historians consider literature to be the source of the British mythology of the First World War, but it is argued here that previous historical approaches have paid insufficient attention to the processes by which books were published, promoted and received. Drawing on Book History methodologies, this thesis therefore also examines these processes with reference to a range of literary works, whilst employing theoretical models advanced in the field of memory studies to interrogate further the relationship between literature and evolving popular attitudes to the First World War. Through a series of case studies this thesis demonstrates that publishers, hitherto overlooked by scholars in this context, played a crucial role in constructing the mythology of the First World War between 1918 and 2014. Their identification of texts, and promotional strategies, were key processes by which this mythology was developed across the twentieth century and beyond. By examining critical and popular responses to literature this thesis also problematizes the linear narrative by which the mythology of the war is often taken to have evolved. It demonstrates that myths of the war have been constructed and contested by various groups at different times, and that the evolving memories of veterans were not always in alignment with those of the wider public. In doing so it provides a powerful counterargument to the assumption that a mythology of the First World War has become hegemonic in recent decades.

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Kowalewski, Ludwik Marian. "The Jason theme in classical literature." Thesis, University of Southampton, 1988. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.328273.

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Trigg, Susan Elizabeth, and mikewood@deakin edu au. "Mermaids and sirens as myth fragments in contemporary literature." Deakin University. School of Communication and Creative Arts, 2002. http://tux.lib.deakin.edu.au./adt-VDU/public/adt-VDU20051125.104438.

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This thesis examines three works: Margaret Atwood's The Robber Bride and Alias Grace, and Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus. All three novels feature female characters that contain elements or myth fragments of mermaids and sirens. The thesis asserts that the images of the mermaid and siren have undergone a gradual process of change, from literal mythical figures, to metaphorical images, and then to figures or myth fragments that reference the original mythical figures. The persistence of these female half-human images points to an underlying rationale that is independent of historical and cultural factors. Using feminist psychoanalytic theoretical frameworks, the thesis identifies the existence of the siren/mermaid myth fragments that are used as a means to construct the category of the 'bad' woman. It then identifies the function that these references serve in the narrative and in the broader context of both Victorian and contemporary societies. The thesis postulates the origin of the mermaid and siren myths as stemming from the ambivalent relationship that the male infant forms with the mother as he develops an identity as an individual. Finally, the thesis discusses the manner in which Atwood and Carter build on this foundation to deconstruct the binary oppositions that disadvantage women and to expand the category of female.

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Muhlstock, Rae Leigh. "Literature in the labyrinth| Classical myth and postmodern multicursal fiction." Thesis, State University of New York at Buffalo, 2014. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=3640823.

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The labyrinth is a powerful image, turning up throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in modernist, high modernist, postmodern, experimental, and digital fictions. Some authors taking up the image of the labyrinth in the latter half of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first consider it more than a mere metaphor or a setting before which plots and characters unfold; it offers instead a poetics, a way to discover, explore, and conquer labyrinths constructed of the experiences of everyday life—the city, the home, the library, the computer, the mind, even the book itself. Throughout this thesis I examine a small selection of their fictions—Michael Ayrton's The Maze Maker, Alain Robbe-Grillet's In the Labyrinth, Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves, Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, Shelley Jackson's Patchwork Girl, Steve Tomasula's TOC, and selections by Jorge Luis Borges and Ovid—each of whom deploys the labyrinth simultaneously in the diegesis and discourse of their texts in order to discover the shifting boundaries of the page and narrative form. Non-sequential narrative techniques in the spatial, formal, linguistic, and typological structures of these fictions implicitly propose the labyrinth as a model for the unique complexities of writing and reading in the modern world, one that in fact demonstrates the very labyrinth that it describes.

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Molyviati-Toptsi, Urania. "Aeneid VI 724-899 : the myth of the Aeterna Regna /." Connect to resource, 1992. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc%5Fnum=osu1225387318.

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Aitches, Marian A. (Marian Annette). ""Beowulf": Myth as a Structural and Thematic Key." Thesis, University of North Texas, 1990. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc330758/.

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Very little of the huge corpus of Beowulf criticism has been directed at discovering the function and meaning of myth in the poem. Scholars have noted many mythological elements, but there has never been a satisfactory explanation of the poet's use of this material. A close analysis of Beowulf reveals that myth does, in fact, inform its structure, plot, characters and even imagery. More significant than the poet's use of myth, however, is the way he interlaces the historical and Christian elements with the mythological story to reflect his understanding of the cyclic nature of human existence. The examination in Chapter II of the religious component in eighth-century Anglo-Saxon culture demonstrates that the traditional Germanic religion or mythology was still very much alive. Thus the Beowulf poet was certainly aware of pre-Christian beliefs. Furthermore, he seems to have perceived basic similarities between the old and new religions, and this understanding is reflected in the poem. Chapter III discusses the way in which the characterization of the monsters is enriched by their mythological connotations. Chapter IV demonstrates that the poet also imbued the hero Beowulf with mythological significance. The discussion in Chapter V of themes and type-scenes reveals the origins of these formulaic elements in Indo-European myth, particularly in the myth of the dying god. Chapter VI argues that both historical and mythological layers of meaning reflect traditional man's view of history as cyclic, a temporal period with a beginning and an end. At the juncture between end and beginning is conflict, which is necessary for regeneration. The interlacing of Christian, historical and mythic elements suggests the impossibility of extricating the individual and collective historical manifestations from the cosmic imperative of this cycle. The Beowulf poet perhaps saw in the ancient myths which permeated his cultural traditions the basis of meaning of human existence.

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Formby, Zoë. "The myth of 9/11." Thesis, University of Nottingham, 2011. http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/11900/.

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Conceptualisations of modern literary history are premised upon a series of dynastic successions, whereby one is able to trace, albeit simplistically, the evolution of the novel through its realist, modernist and postmodernist manifestations. Considered in this linear manner, the emergence of altered cultural movements is ordinarily attributed to a crisis within the former mood; as society ruptures and alters, existing modes of representation prove inadequate to reflect, or else engage with, the emergent structure of feeling. As an event with far-reaching implications, many critics and cultural commentators have attributed the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 with the inception of an altered global mood. Moreover, in the days and weeks following 9/11, the publication of a number of articles penned by authors emphasised the extent to which the event had precipitated a profound crisis in representation. As an ever greater number of articles and studies emerged proclaiming the final death knell of postmodernism and the emergence of a more anxious global mood, so the myth of 9/11 quickly developed. The thesis rests upon a very simple question: to what extent has 9/11 precipitated a change in the novel? Through examining a wide range of fictions published largely within Britain in the last fifteen years, the study explores and ultimately dispels the assumptions of the myth. Rather than examining the fictional representation of 9/11, the study’s focus is on assessing the significance of the novel after the event, and moreover on interrogating the manner in which the terrorist attacks might have engendered a shift in the contemporary mood that is reflected in the subsequent novels published. Through emphasising the novelistic concerns and themes that transcend the assumed cultural rift, the thesis proposes that the ‘post-9/11 mood’ might more usefully be interpreted as an exacerbation of an already existing structure of feeling that responds to the banal superficiality of the postmodern condition.

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McCloskey, Jason A. "Epic conflicts culture, conquest and myth in the Spanish Empire /." [Bloomington, Ind.] : Indiana University, 2008. http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&res_dat=xri:pqdiss&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:3350507.

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Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Spanish and Portuguese, 2008.
Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on Oct. 8, 2009). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 70-03, Section: A, page: 0890. Adviser: Steven Wagschal.

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MacDonnell, Katherine A. "How the Myth Was Made: Time, Myth, and Narrative in the Work of William Faulkner." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2014. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/471.

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It is all too easy to dismiss myth as belonging to the realm of the abstract and theoretical, too removed from reality to constitute anything pragmatic. And yet myth makes up the very fabric of society, informing the way history is understood and the way people and things are remembered. William Faulkner’s works approach myth with a healthy skepticism, only gradually coming to find value in a process that is often destructive; his works demand of their readers the same perceptive criticism. This thesis approaches myth through the lens of Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily," Absalom, Absalom!, and "The Bear." Faulkner's texts ultimately ask readers to bear witness by thinking critically about the process of myth-making, not only in the realm of literature but in the world as a whole.

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Donnelly, E. H. "Myth as history : The secularization of the Fall in Romantic literature." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1988. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.384073.

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Raymond, Gino Gerard. "Politics and myth in the novels of Andre Malraux." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 1987. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.280261.

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Crowe, Mark. "After modernity : versions of myth in the twentieth century." Thesis, University of York, 2000. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.288582.

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Curran, Robert. "Myth, Modernism and Mentorship| Examining Francois Fenelon's Influence on James Joyce's "Ulysses"." Thesis, Florida Atlantic University, 2016. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=10172610.

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The purpose of this thesis will be to examine closely James Joyce’s Ulysses with respect to François Fénelon’s The Adventures of Telemachus. Joyce considered The Adventures of Telemachus to be a source of inspiration for Ulysses, but little scholarship considers this. Joyce’s fixation on the role of teachers and mentor figures in Stephen’s growth and development, serving alternately as cautionary figures, models or adversaries, owes much to Fénelon’s framework for the growth of Telemachus. Close reading of both Joyce’s and Fénelon’s work will illuminate the significance of education and mentorship in Joyce’s construction of Stephen Dedalus. Leopold Bloom and Stephen’s relationship in Joyce’s Ulysses closely mirrors that of Mentor and Telemachus as seen in Fénelon’s The Adventures of Telemachus. Through these numerous parallels, we will see that mentorship serves as a better model for Bloom and Stephen’s relationship in Ulysses than the more critically prevalent father-son model

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Malo-Juvera, Victor. "The Effect of Young Adult Literature on Adolescents' Rape Myth Acceptance." FIU Digital Commons, 2012. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/564.

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This quasi-experimental study (N = 139) measured the effect of a reader response based instructional unit of the novel Speak on adolescents’ rape myth acceptance. Participants were eighth grade language arts students at a Title I middle school in a major metropolitan school district. Seven classes were randomly assigned to treatment (n = 4) or control (n = 3) condition. Two teachers participated in the study and both taught both treatment and control classes. The study lasted a period of five weeks. Participants were pretested using the Rape Myth Acceptance Scale (Burt, 1980) and a researcher created scale, the Adolescent Date Rape Scale (ADRMS). Analysis of pretests showed the ADRMS to be a reliable and valid measure of rape myth acceptance in adolescents. Factor analysis revealed it to have two major components: “She Wanted It” and “She Lied.” Pretests supported previous studies which found girls to have significantly lower initial levels of rape myth acceptance than boys (p < .001). A 2 (group) x 2 (instructor) x 2 (sex) ANCOVA using ADRMS pretest as a covariate and ADRMS posttest as a dependent variable found that treatment was effective in reducing rape myth acceptance (p < .001, ή2 = .15). Boys with high rape myth acceptance as demonstrated by pretest scores of 1 standard deviation above the mean on ADRMS did not have a backlash to treatment. Extended analysis revealed that participants had significantly lower scores posttest on Factor 1, “She Wanted It” (p < .001, ή2 = .27), while scores on Factor 2, “She Lied” were not significantly lower (p = .07). This may be because the content of the novel primarily deals with issues questioning whether the main characters assault was a rape rather than a false accusation. Attrition rates were low (N = 15) and attrition analysis showed that drop outs did not significantly alter the treatment or control groups. Implications for reader response instruction of young adult literature, for research on rape myth acceptance in secondary schools, and for statistical analysis of effect size using pretests as filters are discussed.

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Piper, Jennifer Ann. "White, Carey and Nolan : national myth in Australian literature and painting." Thesis, Open University, 2007. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.446272.

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Angello, Elizabeth Stuart. "Paradise Always Already Lost: Myth, Memory, and Matter in English Literature." Scholar Commons, 2014. https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/5172.

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This dissertation follows a collection of agentive objects around and through the networks of humans and nonhumans in four disparate works of English literature: the Anglo-Saxon poem The Dream of the Rood, William Shakespeare's narrative poem The Rape of Lucrece, Thomas Hardy's novel The Woodlanders, and Philip Pullman's trilogy His Dark Materials. Applying the emergent discourses of object-oriented analyses, I posit the need for a critique that considers literary objects not as textual versions of real-world objects but as constructs of human imagination. What happens when we treat nonhuman or inanimate objects in literature as full characters in their own right? What work do nonhumans do to generate the story and the characters? How does our understanding of the human characters depend on the nonhuman ones? Most importantly, what motivates the agency of the fictive nonhuman? I argue that in this particular collection of texts, nonhuman agency stems from authorial nostalgia for the Garden of Eden: a time long past in which humans, nonhumans, and God existed in perfect harmony. Each text preserves this collective memory in a unique way, processing the myth as the author's cultural moment allows. The Dream of the Rood chapter uncovers the complex network of mirrors between the poet, the fictive Dreamer, the True Cross who speaks to the Dreamer, and the reader(s) of the poem. I use Jacques Lacan's stages of psychosexual development to trace the contours of this network, and I demonstrate how the poet's Edenic vision takes the form of an early medieval feast hall in heaven in which God presides over a banquet table like Hrothgar over Heorot. The Rape of Lucrece chapter posits that a series of domestic actors (weasels, wind, door locks) join with various "pricks" in the poem in an attempt to protect Lucrece from her rapist, Tarquin. Through these objects, I investigate the limits of women's speech and its efficacy before concluding with a consideration of the poem's Edenic vision, a Humanist paradise-on-earth, in the guise of the Roman Republic. The next chapter follows a shorn section of hair through The Woodlanders as it performs various functions and is assigned responsibility and power by several different human characters in the novel. The hair acts within a network of "man-traps" that illustrate the dangers of human artifice in an industrial era, and it reveals to readers Hardy's certainty that we will never reclaim Eden in our postlapsarian world. Finally, I navigate the fantastic worlds of His Dark Materials with the aid of three powerfully agentive objects: a golden compass, a subtle knife, and an amber spyglass. The first and second, I insist, resist not only their user's intentions but also their author's, because they are imbued with so much life and power that the narrative cannot contain them. The spyglass, by contrast, performs exactly as it was designed to do, and reveals the secret of the perfectly symbiotic world of the creatures called mulefa, who model for us a very contemporary new Eden that is populated by hybrids, sustained by materialism and sensuality, and presided over by earthly individuals rather than an omniscient Creator. Pullman's trilogy brings us back to the Garden but insists that our fallen state is our triumph rather than our tragedy.

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Palomaki, Kurt R. "Myth, ritual, and taboo in William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!" Instructions for remote access. Click here to access this electronic resource. Access available to Kutztown University faculty, staff, and students only, 1992. http://www.kutztown.edu/library/services/remote_access.asp.

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Van, Heerden Deon. "The making of the Mandela myth." Thesis, Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/20102.

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Thesis (MA)--Stellenbosch University, 2012.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Nelson Mandela stands as one of the most powerful symbolic figures of the past century, embodying notions of freedom, peace, racial reconciliation and the struggle against tyranny. As largely uncontested as this image is today, its constitution has by no means been uncomplicated. Before he was incarcerated on Robben Island, Mandela was viewed as a young, militant firebrand within the ANC-led liberation movement, an image which was counterpointed by his patrician lineage, education and professional success as a lawyer. His highly visible embodiment of this complex identity served to elevate him not only to the top of the black Johannesburg social hierarchy, but to the forefront of the liberation struggle. The state-sanctioned view of him was, by contrast, as a terrorist, agitating for the destruction of the state. During his imprisonment on Robben Island, the government sought to entirely expunge his words and likeness from active circulation, which ironically facilitated the process of myth-making around him. After his release from prison, Mandela largely succeeded in claiming agency over his image – the one which still persists in the international public imagination – facilitated in large part by the publication of his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, and the numerous acts of reconciliation and diplomacy which he undertook. In writing this thesis, I have sought to trace the process of mythmaking around Mandela, questioning how the disparate, and often contradictory, ideas around him have been narrativised and incorporated into the mythical figure we are familiar with today, both by him and others. I have divided the narrative construction of Mandela into two broad epochs: the ―dominant‖ narrative, which developed from his entry into politics until his release from prison in 1990, and the ―official‖ narrative, which developed from his release from prison. I seek to illustrate the processes by which the dominant narrative was constituted, and how this narrative construct gained increasing ideological currency during his imprisonment on Robben Island. I then seek to illustrate how the numerous, often-conflicting elements of the dominant narrative were ultimately consolidated and largely supplanted by the official narrative, as represented by Long Walk to Freedom, focusing specifically on its theme of progress and maturation. In my conclusion, I argue that many of the ideological elements which fed the mythical construction of Mandela in the dominant narrative, as a youthful, masculinised liberation fighter, persist today. The promise which the Mandela of the official narrative embodied, of South Africa as a ‗miracle‘ nation destined to move beyond the vestiges of Apartheid – including racism, unemployment and poverty – has largely failed to materialise, allowing these elements to gain an ideological currency once more.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Nelson Mandela word beskou as een van die belangrikste simboliese figure van die afgelope eeu, en hy verteenwoordig begrippe soos vryheid, vrede, rasse-versoening en die stryd teen tirannie. Alhoewel hierdie beeld grootliks onbetwis is, was die vestiging hiervan geensins ongekompliseer nie.Voordat hy op Robbeneiland aangehou was, was die jong Mandela as a ‗n militante vuurvreter in die ANC-bevrydingsbeweging gesien; hierdie beeld is teengestaan deur sy aristokratiese afkoms, opvoeding en professionele sukses as ‗n prokureur. Sy hoogs sigbare vergestalting van ‘n komplekse identitiet het nie net gehelp om hom te verhoog tot die bo-punt van die swart Johannesburgse sosiale hiёrargie nie, maar ook tot die voorpunt van die bevrydingstryd. In teenstelling het die staat hom beskou as ‘n terroris wat die staat will vernietig. Terwyl hy sy tronkstraf op Robbeneiland uitgevoer het, het die regering aktief probeer om sy woorde en foto‘s uit sirkulasie te verkry; dit het egter, ironies genoeg, die proses van Mandela se mitifisering vergemaklik. Na sy vrylating uit die tronk, het Mandela grootliks daarin geslaag om sy publieke beeld terug te neem en te herskep, grootliks deur middel van sy outobiografie Long Walk to Freedom en deur talle versoenings- en diplomatieke dade te onderneem. Dit is hierdie beeld wat steeds in die internasional publiek se geheue voortduur. In hierdie tesis, beoog ek om Mandela se mitifiseringsproses na te spoor, om te bevraagteken hoe die uiteenlopende en dikwels teenstrydige idees, beide deur hom en ander, rondom hom genarrativiseer is en opgeneem is in die mitiese figuur met wie ons vandag vertroud is. Ek het die narratiewe konstruksie van Mandela verdeel in twee breё periodes: Die ―dominante― verhaal, wat ontwikkel het vanaf sy toetrede tot die politiek tot met sy vrylating uit die tronk in 1990, en die „amptelike― verhaal, wat ontwikkel het vanaf en na sy vrylating uit die tronk. Ek beoog om te prosesse waardeur die dominante narratief/verhaal geskep is, te illustreer, en om te wys hoe hierdie narratiewe samestelling toenemend ideologiese waarde gekry het tydens sy tronkstraf op Robbeneiland. Daarna beoog ek om te illustreer hoe die dikwels teenstrydige elemente van die dominante verhaal/narratief uiteindelik gekonsolideer en vervang is deur die amptelike verhaal, soos verteenwoordig deur Long Walk to Freedom, deur spesifiek te fokus op diè werk se tema van vooruitgang en volwassewording. In my gevolgtrekking, argumenteer ek dat baie van die ideologiese elemente wat die mitiese konstruksie van Mandela in die dominante verhaal ondersteun het, as jeugdige, manlike vryheidsvegter, vandag voortduur. Die belofte wat die Mandela van die amptelike verhaal gesimboliseer het, dat Suid-Afrika, as ‘n ―wonderwerk―-nasie, bestem is om die oorblyfsels van Apartheid – insluitend rassisme, werkloosheid en armoede – te oorkom, het grootendeels misluk om te verwewenlik, wat hierdie elemete weereens ‘n ideologiese waarde laat verkry het.

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Gurska, Daniel Paul. "Peering Down the Bottomless Well| Myth in Thomas Mann's Joseph Tetralogy." Thesis, Pacifica Graduate Institute, 2017. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=10277390.

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This dissertation focuses on Thomas Mann’s Joseph and His Brothers and addresses the following questions: what does Mann’s novel have to offer to the field of comparative mythology and how might this biblical retelling be relevant for contemporary readers? One approach the dissertation takes in addressing these questions is examining the novel’s relationship to the biblical book of Genesis and to Jewish midrashic traditions. Through a biographical study of Thomas Mann, the dissertation also examines his primary motivations in writing the novel in the first place. The dissertation focuses on detailed discussion of particular stories in Mann’s retelling and how his versions expand the biblical narrative by weaving in parallels from other myths spanning multiple traditions. This ultimately leads to an exploration of the novel’s contemporary significance.

Considering modern day parallels to the nationalistic one-sidedness of Thomas Mann’s time, the study concludes that Mann’s Joseph tetralogy is just as relevant today as when it was originally written. The assertions made throughout the dissertation point to how this novel can serve as a model for how myths of diverse religious traditions can respectfully interact.

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Rudloff, Lynn Holleman. "Larry McMurtry's argument with the cowboy myth." CSUSB ScholarWorks, 1993. https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/etd-project/809.

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Sigrist, Vanina Carrara 1982. "Literatura e ciência em Italo Calvino = o mito Qfwfq = Literature and science in Italo Calvino: the myth Qfwfq." [s.n.], 2012. http://repositorio.unicamp.br/jspui/handle/REPOSIP/270082.

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Orientador: Maria Betânia Amoroso
Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem
Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-21T05:03:06Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Sigrist_VaninaCarrara_D.pdf: 6057497 bytes, checksum: 7af1d1594edb347c0249128368ed4329 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012
Resumo: Italo Calvino, questionando-se sobre novas necessidades impostas pelo enfraquecimento de diversos paradigmas conceituais e metodológicos das áreas exatas e humanas do conhecimento, dedicou-se intensamente como editor, crítico e ficcionista à leitura de incontáveis textos científicos e literários, com a mesma postura de curiosidade e de disciplina crítica, principalmente a partir dos anos 1960. Assim, ele desfez a visão cristalizada de que a literatura seria território exclusivo da expressão da subjetividade do autor em contato com o mundo, e de que a ciência se basearia unicamente em procedimentos de precisão e rigor, transmitidos por uma linguagem também exata. Aproximou por diversas vezes literatura e ciência, pensando-as como um híbrido de padrões e de exceções, de regras e de descumprimento das regras. Seu importante ensaio "Cibernética e fantasmas", de 1967, funcionou na pesquisa como núcleo argumentativo potencial para todo o percurso traçado pelas dezenas de textos seus, uma vez que nele são apresentados todos os elementos mínimos da discussão: o caráter combinatório-científico da literatura, o autor literário como máquina da escrita, a extrapolação da linguagem pela literatura como seu valor mítico e o leitor como fantasma responsável pela efetivação desse mito. Projetando esses elementos sobre uma seleção ensaística do período de 1965 a 1985, constata-se que as principais ciências que teriam contribuído para sua obra foram a cibernética, a antropologia, a etnologia, a matemática e a astronomia, concebidas em extrema mobilidade, sem rígidas fronteiras entre si. O escritor, recusando a estética naturalista-realista e a perspectiva antropocêntrica que a sustentaria, privilegiou teorias estruturalistas e semiológicas, a ideia do humano como uma dentre várias formas de vida, os modelos narrativos das culturas primitivas indígenas e ocidentais, a matematização dos procedimentos literários e a progressiva indistinção entre mundo escrito e mundo nãoescrito. Como crítico, entretanto, Calvino tendeu a explorar as afinidades entre literatura e ciência mais do que as especificidades de cada uma, incorrendo em uma postura interpretativa essencialmente estruturalista, abandonando, em certa medida, a noção de mito apresentada em "Cibernética e fantasmas" como momento determinante da linguagem literária. Foi com o objetivo de tentar reencontrar as especificidades literárias em seu discurso que lemos As Cosmicômicas (1965), um projeto de narrar o cosmo que alia ciência e literatura, máquina e humor, mostrando que tais elementos se misturam indefinidamente
Abstract: Italo Calvino, concerned about new demands due to the dissolution of some conceptual and methodological paradigms used in exact and humanistic areas of knowledge, mainly from the 1960's on, had been intensely dedicated as an editor, a critic and a fiction writer to reading several scientific and literary texts, with the same attitude of curiosity and critical discipline. He undid a traditional point of view which used to consider literature pure expression of an author's subjectivity in front of the world, and to consider science exclusively as a set of precise and rigorous procedures, demonstrated through a language also exact. He put literature and science side by side many times, taking them as a hybrid of standards and exceptions, rules and contraventions. His important essay "Cybernetics and ghosts", dating 1967, served in this research as a potential argumentative core for the entire path through dozens of his writings, because in this text all the basic elements of the discussion are presented: the combinatory-scientific nature of literature, the literary author as a writing machine, the explosion of language due to its mythic value and the reader as a ghost responsible for the effectiveness of this myth. Projecting these elements upon a selection of essays from 1965 to 1985, we can see that the main sciences that would have contributed for his writings were cybernetics, anthropology, ethnology, mathematics and astronomy, conceived in extreme mobility, with no clear boundaries among them. Refusing the naturalistic-realistic aesthetics and its anthropocentric perspective, the writer privileged structuralist and semiologic theories, the idea of human as one of several forms of life, narrative models from indigenous and western primitive cultures, the mathematization of literary procedures and the progressive indistinction between written and non-written world. But as a critic Calvino tended to explore the affinities between literature and science, more than the particularities of each one, reaching a way of reading essentially structuralist and leaving behind, in a certain way, the notion of the myth presented in "Cybernetics and ghosts" as an essential moment of literary language. It was with the purpose of trying to find again literary particularities in his speech that we read Cosmicomics (1965), a project of narrating cosmos which associates science and literature, machine and humor, showing that such elements get melted indefinitely
Doutorado
Teoria e Critica Literaria
Doutora em Teoria e História Literária

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Reuter, Victoria. "Penelope differently : feminist re-visions of myth." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2014. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:4f1ffe10-d690-441d-8726-7fe1df896cb4.

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This thesis examines feminist rewritings of the Penelope myth and the intersections between poetry, myth, and feminist theory. The theoretical framework develops from Rosi Braidotti’s theory of memory and subjectivity which has its roots in the work of Michel Foucault. In Braidotti’s understanding, subjectivity is constructed through narratives of the past including myth. In order to support new, minority, and dissident subjectivities, a re-remembering of mythical narratives needs to happen. This process is linked to Judith Butler’s recent work on narrating the self and to Adrienne Rich’s idea of “Re-vision”. What Butler’s theory adds to Braidotti’s is the notion of dispossession: that as subjects we do not own our identities. We are, instead, dependent on others for recognition. This co-dependence based notion of subjectivity has ethical implications for how we interact with one another and what kind of narratives we iterate and reiterate. The writers discussed in this thesis, namely, Francisca Aguirre, Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke, Gail Holst-Warhaft, and Margaret Atwood, not only rewrite Penelope, but perform Re-visions of the myth. They look back at it with a critical eye and remake it. This thesis further contends that Re-vision provides contemporary feminist writers with a reading and writing strategy that allows them to engage with myth in a way that parallels feminist theory’s efforts to construct new forms of subjectivity. Chapter 1 frames feminist appropriations of myth in a contemporary context and discusses Adrienne Rich’s theory of Re- vision. The next four chapters focus on specific writers who carry out a sustained dialogue with Penelope; they each take an element of the myth and tease it out towards a modern relevance. In looking at how Penelope is revised, this thesis demonstrates that women writers are engaged in a process of remaking canonical, mythic texts in such a way that speaks to contemporary issues of ethical subjectivity and self-making.

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Courbot, Leo. "Metaphor, Myth and Memory in Caribbean Literature : the Work of Fred D'Aguiar." Thesis, Lille 3, 2016. http://www.theses.fr/2016LIL30031.

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Ce travail de recherche propose une étude de l’œuvre intégrale, en vers et en prose, de Fred D'Aguiar, à travers le prisme du mythe, de la métaphore et de la mémoire, et dans le cadre d'une définition large, inclusive et interculturelle de la littérature caraïbe. A partir de la mise en lumière de la relation hypomnésique de la métaphore à la mythologie et à la métaphysique occidentale, l'argumentation s'étend sur des questions telles que celle du lien entre référent et monde et élabore une vision à la fois interculturelle et géographique de la métaphore en tant que tropicalité. La tropicalité donne, à son tour, son élan à l'argumentation, en permettant, pour la première moitié de ce travail de recherche, la production d'une lecture singulière de la poésie de Fred D'Aguiar, qui s'avère aussi liée à un vaste corpus littéraire, s'étendant de l'Antiquité romaine au réalisme magique américain et caraïbe, du romantisme britannique à la philosophie de Jacques Derrida. La deuxième moitié de ce travail explore la prose de Fred D'Aguiar à travers le thème de l'orphelinat, car tous les protagonistes de ses romans sont des orphelins – et, qui plus est, parce-que le roman est aussi, par définition, le genre qui nie toute filiation. Divisée en deux chapitres, cette deuxième partie de l'étude commence par une problématisation des liens qui opèrent entre textualité et orphelinat ainsi qu'entre orphelinat et esclavage, mais aussi entre esclavage et illettrisme, afin d'étudier la représentation de l'esclavage dans les romans de Fred D'Aguiar. Cette deuxième moitié progresse ensuite vers une réflexion sur les qualités surnaturelles, voire orphiques des orphelins de la prose d'aguiarienne, ainsi que sur leur relation, tout autant orphique, à l'environnement. En conséquence, le présent travail de recherche se clôt sur deux questions : celle de la tradition orphique qui sous-tend l'histoire de la littérature, de l'antiquité jusqu'à présent, et celle de la dimension écocritique de la littérature contemporaine, que l'on proposera de défendre pour certains cas, en tant qu'environnementalisme vatique
The present dissertation proposes a study of Fred D'Aguiar's complete verse and prose works, through the triple lens of myth, metaphor and memory, and from within a broad, inclusive, and cross-cultural understanding of Caribbean literature. Beginning with an exacerbation of metaphor's hypomnesic relationship to mythology and Western metaphysics, the argument expands to address issues such as that of the relationship between word and world, and elaborates a cross-cultural, and geographically-based understanding of metaphor as tropicality. Tropicality in turn gives the argument its thrust, as it allows, in the first half of the dissertation, for a singular reading of Fred D'Aguiar's entire verse corpus, which is also shown, in the process, to intersect with a vast body of literature, ranging from Roman antiquity to American-Caribbean magic(al) realism and from British romanticism to the philosophy of Jacques Derrida. The second half of this research work explores D'Aguiar's novels in terms of orphanhood, as all the protagonists of his six novels – itself a genre which, presenting itself as newness, denies filiation – are orphans. Divided in two chapters, the second half of this dissertation begins with a problematization of the links that relate textuality to orphanhood and orphanhood to slavery, but also slavery to literacy, in order to study Fred D'Aguiar's novelistic accounts of slavery. It then proposes a reflection on the supernatural, Orphic qualities of D'Aguiar's orphan characters, and of their relation to the environment, which leads, in turn, to reflections on the Orphic traditions pervading literary history, and opens up onto the ecocritical dimensions of contemporary literature, through the tentative coinage of the notion of vatic environmentalism

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Arbel, Vita Daphna. "Beholders of divine secrets : mysticism and myth in hekhalot and merkavah literature /." Albany (N.Y.) : State university of New York press, 2003. http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb39149435j.

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Kay, Janet Catherine Mary. "Aspects of the Demeter/Persephone myth in modern fiction." Thesis, Link to online version, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/2409.

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Cattle, Simon Matthew James. "Myth, allusion, gender, in the early poetry of T.S. Eliot." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2000. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/8986.

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T.S. Eliot's use of allusion is crucial to the structure and themes of his early poetry. It may be viewed as a compulsion, evident in even the earliest poems, rather than just affectation or elitism. His allusions often involve the reversal or re-ordering of constructions of gender in other literature, especially in other literary treatments of myth. Eliot's "classical" anti-Romanticism may be understood according to this dual concern with myth and gender, in that his poetry simultaneously derives from and attacks a perceived "feminised" Romantic tradition, one which focuses on female characters and which fetishises, particularly, a sympathetic portrayal of femmes fatales of classical myth, such as Circe, Lamia and Venus. Eliot is thus subverting, or "correcting", what are themselves often subversive genderings of myth. Another aspect of myth, that of the quest, is set in opposition to the predatory female by Eliot. A number of early poems place flâneur figures in the role of questers in a context of constraining feminine influence. These questers attempt, via mysticism, to escape from or blur gender and sexuality, or may be ensnared by such things in fertility rituals. A sadomasochistic motivation towards martyrdom is present in poems between 1911 and 1920. With its dual characteristics of disguise and exposure, Eliotic allusion to ritual and myth is itself a ritual (of literary re-enactment) based on a myth (of literature), namely Eliot's "Tradition". Allusive reconfiguration being a two-way process, Eliot's poetry is often implicitly subverted or "corrected" by its own allusions. Thus we are offered more complex representations of gender than may first appear; female characters may be viewed as sympathetic as well as predatory, male ones as being constructed often from representations of femininity rather than masculinity. The poems themselves demonstrate intense awareness of this fluctuation of gender, which appears in earlier poems as a threat, but in The Waste Land as the potential for a rapprochement between genders. This poem comprises multiple layers of re-enactments and reconfigurations of gender-in-myth, centring upon Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis. The Waste Land's treatment of myth should not be seen as merely reflecting a passing interest in anthropology, but as the culmination of concerns with myth and gender dating back to the earliest poetry. The complex interrelation of the two aspects leaves it unclear whether Eliot's allusive compulsion derives principally from a concern with mythologies of literature or from a concern with mythologies of gender.

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Spurgeon, Sara Louise. "History, prophecy and myth: Reconstructing American frontiers and the modern West." Diss., The University of Arizona, 2000. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/284119.

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This study explores and analyzes the ways in which three contemporary writers--Cormac McCarthy, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Ana Castillo--are revisioning the archetypal frontier myths which have shaped, and continue to shape, American culture. Just as with earlier versions, modern frontier myths are mixed and hybridized, the often troubled offspring of parents from multiple cultures and races co-existing in an uneasy intimacy. Contrary to some scholars' assumption, modern American culture is neither lacking in myths, nor unmarked by centuries of conquest and co-existence with Native cultures and their myths. The myths of both the European and Native worlds collided and combined on the various frontiers of the Americas, and the presence of Indians and Indian myths as well as Mexican and other groups have deeply impacted the shape of those myths which justify and direct American culture today. The still unresolved conflicts and tensions inherent in the history of conquest and colonization in the Americas both keeps traditional myths alive and demands their metamorphosis in response to the realities of life in the U.S. at the start of the new millennium when the very questions these myths struggled to answer--issues of national and racial identity, human interactions with the world of nature, and relationships between the conqueror and the conquered--remain painfully current. The purpose of this study is to trace the living remains of those myths and examine their rebirth at the hands of three contemporary writers. The spaces in which the works of these writers collide offer some sharply differentiated visions, but the spaces in which overlap has occurred, where the myths of one culture have become inextricably, often unknowingly, intertwined with those of another, each forcing the others into new and unsuspected forms, provide the most startling insights. Sometimes beautiful, sometimes tragic, the new myths born from these couplings are nonetheless, like any living story, the expressions of the larger culture from which they spring, both a projection onto a troubled and troubling past and an insistent, prophetic vision of a shared future.

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Sutton, Mathew D. "Omar’s Bayou: The Jazz Origin Myth of Treat It Gentle." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2020. https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu-works/7831.

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Book Summary: Swamp Souths: Literary and Cultural Ecologies expands the geographical scope of scholarship about southern swamps. Although the physical environments that form its central subjects are scattered throughout the southeastern United States―the Atchafalaya, the Okefenokee, the Mississippi River delta, the Everglades, and the Great Dismal Swamp―this evocative collection challenges fixed notions of place and foregrounds the ways in which ecosystems shape cultures and creations on both local and global scales. Across seventeen scholarly essays, along with a critical introduction and afterword, Swamp Souths introduces new frameworks for thinking about swamps in the South and beyond, with an emphasis on subjects including Indigenous studies, ecocriticism, intersectional feminism, and the tropical sublime. The volume analyzes canonical writers such as William Faulkner, Zora Neale Hurston, and Eudora Welty, but it also investigates contemporary literary works by Randall Kenan and Karen Russell, the films Beasts of the Southern Wild and My Louisiana Love, and music ranging from swamp rock and zydeco to Beyoncé’s visual album Lemonade. Navigating a complex assemblage of places and ecosystems, the contributors argue with passion and critical rigor for considering anew the literary and cultural work that swamps do. This dynamic collection of scholarship proves that swampy approaches to southern spaces possess increased relevance in an era of climate change and political crisis.

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Walby, Celestin J. "Answering looks of sympathy and love : subjectivity and the narcissus myth in Renaissance English literature /." free to MU campus, to others for purchase, 2004. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/mo/fullcit?p3144464.

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Tombs, George 1956. "Paradise, the Apocalypse and science : the myth of an imminent technological Eden." Thesis, McGill University, 1997. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=20181.

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Scientistic authors in the latter half of the 19 th century and the early 20th century, such as Ernest Renan and H. G. Wells, discounted revealed religion. Yet they believed in the secular myth of an imminent technological Eden and they elevated science itself to the dignity of a religion. In so doing, they shaped bold visions of the future, drawing heavily on a millenary store of Western myth and metaphor. In historical terms, the myth of an imminent technological Eden represents a survival and a fusion of the ancient Greek myth of the Golden Age along with three Judeo-Christian myths: Biblical time, Earthly Paradise and the Apocalypse. Since the Enlightenment, the process of secularization has drained the religious content of such myths, although it does not deprive them of any of their deeply emotional force. This explains why the 19th century myth of an imminent technological Eden has considerable staying-power, in spite of the many events since 1945 which seem to discredit it.

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Gordon, Vanessa Jane. "The novels of Flann O'Brien : myth, reality and the Irish context." Thesis, Royal Holloway, University of London, 1985. http://repository.royalholloway.ac.uk/items/bd53e827-cc14-4b53-a68e-3af54b12a1f5/1/.

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This study discusses the two most outstanding features of Flann O'Brien's work: his comic approach, and his thematic and narrative complexity. The first two chapters explore O'Brien's use of comedy throughout his development as a writer, and examine the nature of his humour in its Irish context. Subsequent chapters deal with the four major comic novels individually, studying the author's treatment of his major theme of man's failure to establish himself in a reasonable relationship with reality, and in particular the tonal and linguistic complexity of the narrative used to pursue this theme.

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Cooke, Paul Richard. "Mauriac's myth of the poet, with special reference to Le Mystere Frontenac." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 1993. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.319980.

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Evers, John David. "Myth as narrative : structure and meaning in some ancient Near Eastern texts." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1988. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/19732.

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Tyler, Lisa Lynne. "Our mothers' gardens : mother-daughter relationships and myth in twentieth-century British women's literature /." The Ohio State University, 1991. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1335473469.

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Homsher, Robert S. "Mythological apocalypses eschatological mythopoeic speculation of the combat myth in biblical apocalyptic literature /." Theological Research Exchange Network (TREN), 2005. http://www.tren.com/search.cfm?p050-0135.

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Godbey, Margaret J. "Vying for Authority: Realism, Myth, and the Painter in British Literature, 1800-1855." Diss., Temple University Libraries, 2010. http://cdm16002.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p245801coll10/id/81444.

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English
Ph.D.
Over the last forty years, nineteenth-century British art has undergone a process of recovery and reevaluation. For nineteenth-century women painters, significant reevaluation dates from the early 1980s. Concurrently, the growing field of interart studies demonstrates that developments in art history have significant repercussions for literary studies. However, interdisciplinary research in nineteenth-century painting and literature often focuses on the rich selection of works from the second half of the century. This study explores how transitions in English painting during the first half of the century influenced the work of British writers. The cultural authority of the writer was unstable during the early decades. The influence of realism and the social mobility of the painter led some authors to resist developments in English art by constructing the painter as a threat to social order or by feminizing the painter. For women writers, this strategy was valuable for it allowed them to displace perceptions about emotional or erotic aspects of artistic identity onto the painter. Connotations of youth, artistic high spirits, and unconventional morality are part of the literature of the nineteenth-century painter, but the history of English painting reveals that this image was a figure of difference upon which ideological issues of national identity, gender, and artistic hierarchy were constructed. Beginning with David Wilkie, and continuing with Margaret Carpenter, Richard Redgrave and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, I trace the emergence of social commitment and social realism in English painting. Considering art and artists from the early decades in relation to depictions of the painter in texts by Maria Edgeworth, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Mary Shelley, Joseph Le Fanu, Felicia Hemans, Lady Sydney Morgan, and William Makepeace Thackeray, reveals patterns of representation that marginalized British artists. However, writers such as Letitia Elizabeth Landon and Robert Browning supported contemporary painting and rejected literary myths of the painter. Articulating disparities between the lived experience of painters and their representation calls for modern literary critics to reassess how nineteenth-century writers wrote the painter, and why. Texts that portray the painter as a figure of myth elide gradations of hierarchy in British culture and the important differentiations that exist within the category of artist.
Temple University--Theses

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Radford, Kathryn. "Picking brains : Hannibal lecter and the cannibal myth in twentieth-century western literature." Thèse, [Montréal] : Université de Montréal, 2003. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/umontreal/fullcit?pNQ92723.

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Thèse (Ph.D.) -- Université de Montréal, 2004.
"Thèse présentée à la Faculté des études supérieures En vue de l'obtention du grade de Philosophiae Doctor (Ph.D.) En littérature comparée et générale" Version électronique également disponible sur Internet.

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Kobs, Michael Ireton Sean Moore. "The root of all evil? the Mandrake myth in German literature from 1673 to 1913 /." Diss., Columbia, Mo. : University of Missouri--Columbia, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/10355/6554.

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The entire thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file; a non-technical public abstract appears in the public.pdf file. Title from PDF of title page (University of Missouri--Columbia, viewed on month day, year). Thesis advisor: Dr. Sean Ireton. Includes bibliographical references.

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Hale, Jacob S. "Reading Street Lit with Incarcerated Juveniles: The Myth of Reformative Incarceration." University of Dayton / OhioLINK, 2018. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=dayton1523966308255071.

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McRae, Shannon. "A dream of purely burning : myth, gender and modernism /." Thesis, Connect to this title online; UW restricted, 1999. http://hdl.handle.net/1773/9479.

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Rosas, Cobian Michael. "Electroacoustic music composition : myth, symbol and image." Thesis, City, University of London, 1997. http://openaccess.city.ac.uk/17771/.

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This thesis presents the author's musical compositions through the elucidation of their source impulse. In order to facilitate the unveiling of the works presented in this thesis I have subdivided it into sections thus: Section 1 - Here I introduce the reader to the motivation behind my music composition work and discuss the elements which inform my cosmology through the elucidation of the concepts and methods used in the realisation of the compositions. Section 2 - An introduction, discussion and conclusion to the series heading of Raza. The compositions and chapters are as follows: Chapter 3, Lucero for charango and tape; Chapter 4, Gato's Raid for marimba and tape; Chapter 6, De Luna a Luna ... for two percussionists and tape. In this section I address that particular musical imagery which is directly related to my cultural roots. Section 3 - An introduction, discussion and conclusion to the series heading of Urbis. The compositions and chapters are as follows: Chapter 9, Urbis #2 'passing moments/riffs & raffs' for bass clarinet and tape; Chapter 10, Urbis #3 'Alter ego' for electric guitar, live electronics and tape; Chapter 11, Urbis #4 for tape. In this section I address the use of modern urban culture symbols in order to create a contemporary mythological canon. Section 4 - A conclusion to this thesis.

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Burger, Alissa. "From "The Wizard of Oz" to "Wicked" trajectory of American myth /." Bowling Green, Ohio : Bowling Green State University, 2009. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc%5Fnum=bgsu1236369185.

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Phillips, Leah Beth. "Myth (un)making : the adolescent female body in mythopoeic YA fantasy." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2016. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/87296/.

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Through a reading of the heroic, female bodies available in Tamora Pierce’s Tortall books (1983–2011) and Marissa Meyer’s Lunar Chronicles (2012–2015), this thesis demonstrates how mythopoeic YA fantasy contests the dominant, hegemonic narratives of female adolescence. Owing to the system of binary oppositions structuring this space, the adolescent girl is offered— through the heavily stylised and always-edited images of popular and media culture—a very narrow and limited means of becoming self, one insisting on a discourse of self-through-appearance at the expense of the body’s fleshiness. Demonstrating a creationary or world-building mind-set, this vein of speculative fiction offers a sub or counter-cultural space in which alternative frameworks of living and being an adolescent female body are possible. Through the sometimes-fantastical transformations of the body in Pierce and Meyer’s fantasy, this thesis engages liminality, focusing on the adolescent (between child/adult), the body (between self/other), and young adult literature (YAL) (between children’s/adult literature). Drawing from a variety of fields: YAL and feminist theory, studies of myth and folklore as well as popular culture and cultural anthropology, this thesis speaks to and from the places between oppositions, and does so in order to refuse the individuality and isolation required by hegemonic models, while also offering a re-mapping of the body’s curves and contours, one that takes “lumps,” “bumps,” and “scars” into account. To counter the dominant framework of adolescence, this thesis concludes by offering, through a metaphor of “the Pack,” a model of interdependency and relation. Formed by repetition and connection, this model frustrates the economy of opposition, while also taking into account the body’s raised and irregular surfaces and demonstrating how individuals may be “scored into uniqueness” through relationality.

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Strasen, Christian T. "A Postcard From the Future| Technology, Desire, and Myth in Contemporary Science Fiction." Thesis, Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, 2016. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=10013970.

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This thesis argues that modern, post-apocalyptic science fiction functions as a projected analysis of the author’s contemporary world. This insight is used to chart the historical trajectory of the spread of automaticity, the reduction of objects, and the loss of historical memory. The Introduction introduces readers to both the literary and critical histories of science fiction, contextualizing the worlds that George R. Stewart, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Margaret Atwood write in. Chapter One analyzes George R. Stewart’s 1949 novel Earth Abides, using it to demonstrate how the growing trend of automaticity leads toward a reduction of physical objects, and a misunderstanding of politics. Chapter Two uses Ursula K. Le Guin’s 1973 novel The Lathe of Heaven to reveal an acceleration of automaticity and reduction of objects though the manipulation of human desire. This, in turn, leads to a loss of historical memory via Herbert Marcuse’s concept of repressive desublimation. Chapter Three charts the effects that the advent of the virtual has had on automaticity and the manipulation of human desire through an engagement with Margaret Atwood’s 2003 novel Oryx and Crake.

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De, Gruchy John. "W.B. Yeats's Japan : more myth than reality." Thesis, McGill University, 1991. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=50844.

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This thesis analyses the development of Yeats's image of Japan from his introduction to Japanese culture through 'Japonisme' in the mid-1880's, until the end of his life in 1939. It also surveys the sources of information that Yeats had on Japan other than the Noh drama, and shows how these sources were as important as the Noh, if not more, in defining his image of Japan as an artistic utopia. Three periods of Japanese history were of particular interest to Yeats: The early nineteenth century, in which most Japanese colour prints were produced; the Ashikaga period (1333-1573), when the Noh flourished, and Heian Japan (794-1100), an extraordinary culture which produced some of the world's greatest works of art. Images of Japanese culture from these periods combined to produce a composite, mythical vision of Japan in Yeats's imagination.

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Lamberto, Katie Ann. "The power dynamics of sound in Dionysiac cult and myth." Thesis, State University of New York at Buffalo, 2015. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=3725944.

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A particular range of sounds express the presence and power of the god Dionysos. &Bgr;ϱóμιoς, an epithet almost exclusively applied to Dionysos, especially connotes powerful sounds from the natural world, frenetic sounds, and sounds construed as foreign. The kind of noise conveyed by the name &Bgr;ϱóμιoς is created in the ecstatic worship of Dionysos, generating an aurally-defined mobile and temporary Dionysiac space that blurs boundaries and infringes upon other types of spaces. Dionysiac sound conveys the vitality associated with Dionysos and provides a mechanism for his epiphany.

Accounting for Dionysos’ relationship with sound allows for new readings of Bacchae and Frogs. The aural aspects of Bacchae provide a counterpoint to its rich visual imagery. Pentheus threatens to silence Dionysos and remains oblivious to the importance of sound in Dionysiac worship. When he dresses as a maenad, he assumes only the visual aspects of the cult. Pentheus’ screams are incorporated into the Dionysiac soundscape before he dies, silenced forever. Aristophanes’ Frogs subverts the usual relationship between Dionysos and sound in a way that emphasizes the comical stereotype of the god as weak and incompetent. In particular, both choruses present Dionysiac sound to an oblivious Dionysos. He is irritated by the frogs and enthralled by the initiates.

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Gainyard, Nicole Michelle. "Trouble in paradise: rupture of the pastoral plantation myth in American literature, 1832-1921." Diss., University of Iowa, 2013. https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/4630.

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In "Trouble in Paradise: Rupture of the Pastoral Plantation Myth in American Literature, 1832-1921," I argue that nineteenth-century African American and white writers use the plantation space in their texts as a barometer of American politics and life. Beginning with a case study of John Pendleton Kennedy's Swallow Barn (1832 revised 1851), "Trouble in Paradise" argues that the plantation is fraught with contradiction, conflict, and decay, but it also accommodates other views that are not visible from the big house windows. Therefore, I use Plantation Geography, a spatially-driven model, to reveal the sociopolitical costs of slavery through a comparative analysis of what Patricia Yeager calls "themed spaces." In this framework, the big house acts as a hub that may regulate the widening places--forest, coffeehouse, tavern--which were nonetheless imagined to radiate from it. Feeling the normative pull of the big house, these far-flung places decenter the master's home as the plantation's symbol of power and stability, and locates alternative pathways and their accompanying activities as primary locales of antebellum life. Therefore, while Kennedy intended to preserve the whimsical charm of country life in the Old Dominion, he more publicly remapped the plantation space as national attitudes shifted. By focusing on a variety of plantation spaces--cabins, kitchens, sheds, and stables--and the routes between them, "Trouble in Paradise" challenges the limits of African American democratic participation suggesting that their activities transform and exceed plantation boundaries. Writers throughout this period take a cue from Kennedy's novel by revising the plantation space in vastly different ways. Chapter One, "A House Divided: The Abolitionist Deployment of the Plantation Landscape, 1850-1862," looks at how Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) and Frederick Douglass's The Heroic Slave (1853) utilize the plantation as a means of abolitionist protest. Specifically, this chapter discusses the ways in which Uncle Tom and Madison Washington expose, challenge and transform their positions through their activities in a myriad of spaces including alternative sites beyond the plantation. Therefore, distant places in both novels have a proclivity to either promise or peril; while the cotton gin-house shed, tavern, Quaker home, and ship are potential sites where a slave's minority status could be reaffirmed, their distance from the plantation proper decreases the big house's power and pull. However, as much as these spaces present real opportunities for change, their transitory nature constantly challenged the assurance of a former slave's subjectivity. As promising as these spaces are, the real challenge was to renegotiate the United States as a nation that would eventually support the incorporation of African Americans into its body politic as American citizens. Chapter Two, "Paradise Lost: The State of the Myth during the Civil War and Reconstruction," explores two distinct literary visions of the South as their protagonists' struggle to reconcile themselves to the demise of their plantations during and after the Civil War. Joseph Addison Turner's The Old Plantation: A Poem (1862) reveals a perspective of the plantation through the son of a slaveholder, who tinges southern nostalgia with melancholy, pathos, loss, and decay. However, the poem reveals the limits of his vision because the plantation cannot be replicated and maintained on a national scale. Although Turner's Reconstruction writings reveal an angry and bitter southerner who criminalizes African American movement and pathways, his works also reveal the hope of a new South as a Phoenix, primed to rise from the plantation ashes. Harper's novella counters Turner's lament by chronicling the journey of a man and woman who discover their African-American ancestry. This revelation holds the big house and the White House accountable to the slave cabins of the South and suggests that a radical restructuring of spaces is vital to the South's rebirth. This in effect reveals the conflict between the crippling power of the pastoral plantation in the hearts and minds of white southerners and the courageous endeavors of the emerging African American community as they all participated in the reorganization of the South. Chapter Three, "The `Good Ole Days': Reconciliationist Literature and its Discontents" argues that Joel Chandler Harris's Uncle Remus: His Songs and Sayings (1880) and Charles Chesnutt's Conjure Woman (1899) utilize the pastoral plantation in sharp contrast to their antebellum counterparts. While the harmonious spaces of the plantation and Uncle Remus's cabin serve as a framework for the predatory world of the animals in the folktales, these spaces also foster amnesia about the brutality of black bondage and the Civil War by focusing on the good ole days of slavery. Episodes of hostility, violence, toil, and sacrifice by blacks are encrypted exclusively as a series of folktales told by Uncle Remus to the little white boy within the confines of his old slave cabin. However, Charles Chesnutt's The Conjure Woman presents a vision of the plantation as a site of business created to extract wealth from slave labor and the land. Published in The Atlantic Monthly as early as 1887, these stories reveal local and national connections to the plantation through John and Annie's relocation to North Carolina from northern Ohio. At the heart of these tales are Julius's unpleasant memories of an Old South rife with thievery, conjuring, and murder as he seeks to renegotiate his claim to the McAdoo plantation with John and Annie. Both writers reveal a complicated recollection of the pastoral plantation that the earlier Kennedy could not imagine. Concluding with Paul Laurence Dunbar's The Sport of the Gods (1902), "Trouble in Paradise" continues to explore the pastoral myth's inconsistencies, appeal and contradictions incepted by John Pendleton Kennedy's Swallow Barn. In the opening scene of Dunbar's novel, a slave cottage much like the one in Kennedy's novel is resurrected and misery once again intrudes upon Eden. In a dark rebuttal, Dunbar challenges Harris's positive conclusion and suggests that everyone eventually bears the costs of the plantation, including whites. Furthermore, while several scholars argue that Dunbar's ending does not offer social or political alternatives to the plantation model, The Sport of the Gods revisits a space--the urban milieu--as a site where African Americans continue the process of creating a new identity away from the plantation proper. In doing so, this project presents a comprehensive paradigm that enlarges the plantation's boundaries and a narrow definition of "the South."

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Vital, Luisa Fernandes. "As três faces do destino : castigo, transcendência e redenção em Guimarães Rosa /." Araraquara, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/11449/151216.

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Orientador: Maria Celia de Moraes Leonel
Banca: João Batista Toledo Prado
Banca: Vanessa Liporaci Chiconeli de Castro
Resumo: A necessidade de explicação sobre o mundo e sobre si próprio é algo que sempre estimulou a sede de conhecimento do homem e o impulsionou em busca de respostas para sua realidade. Sendo assim, os mitos, narrativas indispensáveis com alto teor simbólico, foram criados na tentativa de interpretar os desejos e terrores humanos. Estando arraigados em nós, os mitos e seu teor simbólico, apresentados através de mitemas, ecoam nas mais diversas formas de produção artística. A dissertação tem como objetivo tecer uma mitocrítica de três contos de Guimarães Rosa - "Conversa de bois", "A hora e vez de Augusto Matraga", ambos publicados em Sagarana, no ano de 1946, e "A menina de lá" de 1962, publicado em Primeiras estórias - a partir do mito de Er, explicitado por Platão, no "livro X" d'A república. A escolha desses contos e desse mito se deve ao fato de que em ambos estão presentes dois mitemas: o destino e o julgamento final sob o motivo simbólico da viagem e da morte, respectivamente. O destino, na obra rosiana, desenvolve-se no cenário da viagem e culmina na morte prematura das personagens Agenor Soronho, Augusto Matraga e Nhinhinha. Esse fim abrupto representa uma espécie de julgamento final, realizado pelo destino. Pretende-se mostrar que cada morte tem um valor simbólico diferente, a saber: castigo, redenção e transcendência. Por meio da pesquisa centrada na fortuna crítica de Guimarães Rosa, sobretudo os estudos de Benedito Nunes e Suzy Sperber, e com o apoio teórico da concepçã... (Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo)
Résumé: La nécessité d'éxplication sur le monde et sur soi-même a toujours stimulé la soif de connaissance de l'homme et lui a poussé envers la recherche des réponses à sa réalité. Ainsi, les mythes, des récits indispensables avec un contenu hautement symbolique, ont été crées dans le but d'expliquer les désirs humains et ses terreurs. Les mythes et son contenu symbolique, exprimé par des mythèmes, étant enraciné en nous, se montrent comme un écho dans la plupart des productions artistiques. Le présent travail vise à tisser une mythocritique entre les récits de Guimarães Rosa - «Conversa de bois», «A hora e vez de Augusto Matraga», tous deux publiés en Sagarana, dans l'année 1946, et «A menina de lá», publié en 1962 das le livre Primeiras estórias - et le mythe d'Er, décrit par Platon dans « Le livre X» de La république. Le choix de ces histoires et de ce mythe est dû au fait d'une analyse de deux mythèmes: le destin et le jugement final sous les motifs symbolique du voyage et de la mort, respectivement. Le destin, dans les écrits de Rosa se développe dans la scène du voyage et culmine dans la mort prématurée des personnages Agenor Soronho, Augusto Matraga et Nhinhinha. Cette fin abrupte des personnages en question est une sorte de jugement final prononcé par le destin. Il dévoile que chaque mort a une valeur symbolique différente, à savoir, la punition, la rédemption et la transcendance. Grâce à la recherche axée sur la fortune critique de Guimarães Rosa, en particulier les études de Benedito Nunes et Suzy Sperber, et le support théorique offert pour une conception anthropologique du mythe défendue par Mircea Eliade et Gilbert Durand, cette recherche vise à localiser et à identifier ces mythèmes dans le texte...
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Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Myth in literature'

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