Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Novellara'

Estudar a obra novelística de Luigi Pirandello é um modo de entender não apenas as razões que o levaram a ser um dos mais importantes escritores italianos do século XX, mas também o papel de cada um de nós no mundo e na vida. As novelas, baseadas em pequenos acontecimentos cotidianos, formam um grande mosaico da existência humana: uma nota no jornal, um amor acabado ou ainda nem começado, um simples gesto ou o apito de um trem, são situações que despertam a imaginação do autor e nas quais muitas vezes nos reconhecemos. Dramaturgo e romancista de sucesso, Pirandello nunca deixou de escrever novelas: foram 251 ao longo de sua carreira. Para ele, a novela era o espaço íntimo, insubstituível, reservado para a discussão existencial empreendida pelos seus personagens em uma época tão inquieta como o início do século XX. As novelas, reunidas no projeto Novelle per un anno, são de vital importância para se compreender a evolução das preocupações do autor e representam a base de seu pensamento. As últimas novelas, principalmente, trazem novas chaves de interpretação ao conjunto da obra e mostram um escritor novo e muito mais inquietante, que muitas vezes a crítica não soube reconhecer. Traçar a trajetória do Pirandello novelista, ou novellaro, como ele se definia, relacionando-a com os outros aspectos de sua carreira literária, de seu pensamento e da época que ele tão bem retratou, é o objetivo deste trabalho.
To study Pirandellos short story is a means not only of understanding the reason why he became one of the most important Italian writers of the twentieth century but also the role we play in the world and life. His short stories, based on ordinary events, make the great mosaic of our lives a piece of news, a love that has broken up or not even started, a gesture, a train whistle; situations that drive his thoughts, where many times we recognize ourselves. Successful play writer and novelist, Pirandello never stopped writing short stories: 251 along all his work life. According to Pirandello, a short story was the intimate, unique place, intended for the existential debates of his characters in the hard times of the beginning of the twentieth century. The short stories, brought together in the project Novelle per un anno, are of great importance to understand the evolution of the authors worries and represent the basis of his thought. The last short stories mainly bring new tools for interpretation to Pirandellos work and show a new, much more disturbing writer, many times not acknowledged by critics. To follow the course of the short-story writer Pirandello or novellaro, as he used to call himself connected with other aspects of his literary life, thought, and the time he described so well, is the focus of this work.

Tolv fristående noveller. Korta skeenden, begränsade tidsperioder, med få gestalter inblandade. Ett försök att fånga den mänskliga vilsenheten i en ordinär tillvaro där de till synes obetydliga detaljerna utgör själva kärnan.

Plankwalk is a creative thesis in the form of a novella and critical afterword. The essay explains how the author makes use of a variety of sources, and how he shapes their effect according to an original conception of the form of the contemporary novella. There follows a discussion of this form and its relation to the confessional narratives of Vladimir Nabokov, and to cultural critics' views on the social role of criminals. The author demonstrates how the changing nature of criminality and confession is reflected in the works of de Sade, Poe, and Nabokov. The issues of the handling of irony, paranoia and the relation of crime to work emerge as the key elements. The author posits the fusion of confessional narrative with the literature of genre overdetermination, in which the expectations of genre dominate a character's interiority.

Tony is a car thief reliant on loyalty so that he may flourish. Allegiances, on Tony's map, are not fixed sites. He believes that schisms within the everyday occur mainly by design and are imposed on him. As these breaches are not necessarily within Tony's control, he adjusts their details according to his (perverse perception of ) need; to maintain/establish a semblance of identity/ control. To accomodate Tony's rhizomatic movements, his dependence on memory wavers between a reliable recalling of past anecdotes and his awesome and playful fulfillment within the moment. But his 'wonders' are manifested at the expense of those within his borders. Actions which, ultimately, contribute to Tony's entombment within an aspect of his physical identity
Master of Arts (Hons) Writing

Engulfed by the tumultuous 1960s, seventeen-year-old Katherine Dayes conceals her pregnancy from the conservative seaside community of Samphire, her hometown. The novella traces a year in Katherine's life, from her summer of love through a winter stained by blood and moonlight. Throughout the story, Katherine endures the push and pull of a culture torn between tradition, represented by community leader Margaret Blythe, and modernism, embodied by the free spirit Evelyn Partridge. Inspired by the life of an actual eighteenth-century woman, Samphire explores the complexities of the 1960s feminist movement. Using vivid imagery of natural elements, it examines opposing views of sexuality and cultural criticisms that women have faced throughout history. The character-driven narrative seeks to deconstruct societal views of teen pregnancy, motherhood, women's sexuality, and infanticide by exploring the psyche of a young woman caught between cultural perceptions and her personal reality.
B.A.
Bachelors
Arts and Humanities
English; Creative Writing

The leitmotif of Stuffmobile, a modern day Florida-based novella, is that of relational healing: a son with his father, ex-lovers with one another, and, even more challenging perhaps, a son making peace with his dead mother. New beginnings are explored, both as resurrection of long dead feelings and as starting afresh after loss. A husband finds distraction in a covert project after his wife's death, so much so that his preoccupied isolation worries his two adult children. The son comes to investigate, and his malfunctioning car leads to the beginnings of reconciliation. The characters here struggle to understand and be understood, to avoid hurting others and avoid being hurt, all while searching for respect and love: just another normal day of the human experience.
ID: 031001491; System requirements: World Wide Web browser and PDF reader.; Mode of access: World Wide Web.; Adviser: Pat Rushin.; Includes reading list (p. 177-181).; Title from PDF title page (viewed July 24, 2013).; Thesis (M.F.A.)--University of Central Florida, 2012.
M.F.A.
Masters
English
Arts and Humanities
Creative Writing

University of Central Florida College of Arts and Sciences Thesis
A computer screen places each of us in an interface and virtual reality provides a totally simulated environment, a virtual world that we can enter. Enterface is a novella that examines the question first posed by Michael Heim: How far can we enter cyberspace and still remain human? It also explores the power and the limitation of language and the role of stories to shape reality in human life. Its themes are death, technology, ethics, and love. It is informed by Wittgensteinian philosophy, Norse mythology, and the "metaphysics of virtual reality." The plot involves Moses Mackinow, a former Air Force officer and entrepreneur, who decides there should be a way to simply live forever. He hits upon the idea that life could be digitized, and a civilization, a world of complete, sentient humans could be created in cyberspace--a world he could enter upon his death and continue to live. A variety of technologies are available to digitize the physical human (x-rays, CTSCNS, Magnetic Rensonance Images, graphic images, etc.), but the big problem is how to synthesize his human heart. Moses decides that the stories of his life are the keys to creating the "rag and bone shop" of his eternal heart. Getting the stories "right" is critical to the prospect of digitizing life and is a major focus of the novella action. The novella traces the reduction of Moses as a a human being as he pursues his obession, compromising one principle after another. Everything in the environment of the novella, reflects this reduction. Everything becomes less than it was, a glimpse of humanity reduced to bits and bytes, floating 1's and 0's. Enterface is a work at war with itself.
M.A.;
English
Arts and Sciences;
165 p.
vii, 165 leaves, bound ; 28 cm.

Lucidity is a novella set in the near future of a man living in a city in the United States as a successful businessman. The novella criticizes the idea of consumerism through Aurora, a character who believes that a drug is being introduced into the water and food supply by the corporate-backed government. Characters find advertising to be almost irresistible, experience strange cravings for things like cheap beer, and are generally preoccupied with the latest products. James Simmons, the protagonist of the novella, finds himself in the lap of luxury. He has a job that pays well, a penthouse apartment, a fast car, and women. Even though he has the material riches that society tells him he needs to be happy, he knows that something is missing, something is wrong with the world in which he lives. For reasons unknown to him at the time, James is fired from his job and sets out on a journey to discover why. Over the course of his journey, he is finally able to begin piecing together the nature of deeper questions about himself that he never had a chance to answer.
B.A.
Bachelors
Arts and Humanities
English

Thesis (S.B. in Creative Writing)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Humanities, 2004
This novella is the story of a young woman, Sakura "Cherry" Ogata, who is inhabited by an alien construct, "Nephesh." The motives of the alien are not explicitly malevolent and Cherry's experience leads her to believe that they are benign. A significant portion of the story examines how Cherry and Nephesh learn to live with one another. In the larger sense, the alien has no motives, either benign or malevolent. In some circumstances, it simply acts in the way it must. This leads to the story's conclusion, which purposefully leaves many unanswered questions. Cherry cannot truly understand the alien, and the reader is left wondering about her fate and the fate of humanity.
by Antony Nigel Donovan.
S.B.in Creative Writing

This master’s degree thesis exists in two parts: a critical introduction and an original novella entitled Side Effects. The critical introduction introduces and explains the theories on, literature surrounding, and literary uses of dystopian fiction, the novella format, and drug-based psychotherapy. Current opinion on dystopian fiction sees it characterized by a seemingly perfect societal setting that ultimately contains hidden or suppressed moral flaws. The ultimate purpose of dystopian fiction is commentary on contemporary society through a defamiliarized setting. The novella format is shown to exist in a middle-ground state between the short story and the novel, yet the format manages to maintain positive literary elements of both. Finally, a discussion on drug-based psychotherapy illustrates the use of chemical compounds to treat or cure psychological conditions, a topic of much debate amongst current psychology practitioners. The section on drug-based psychotherapy focuses largely on memoirs for purposes of first-hand experience and character creation for the original novella. The novella, entitled Side Effects, follows the character Edward, a middle-aged man who creates and tests serums that suppress by mandate the emotions that his society deems toxic to the human condition. Edward remains ignorant of any life outside the symmetry and order of the Company, the corporation responsible for the maintenance of the society. That is, until a chance encounter with a young woman named Gabrielle causes Edward to explore a world outside the confines of his carefully crafted city and lifestyle. She introduces him to a community of people who reject the mandates of the Company and exist as the extreme opposition to its ideals. As Edward spends more time with this group, known as Splicers, he must confront his long-held standards and finally choose for himself what life he will live.

Magister Artium - MA
It’s quite simple really. During these interviews you get to talk about anything you like. I’ll ask questions here and there to help the story along. Just be honest and try to forget about the camera. We’ll use the interview footage to complement the live footage to help tell your story. Wedding from Different Worlds is probably the most honest and authentic documentary series on television. You’re pretty lucky to star in one of the episodes. So relax and say anything.

People are often a product of their environment, and each of the characters in this collection is an example of that shaping effect. These stories take you to the southern plains–land of red dirt, Bluestem, and prairie wind. Themes like hope, loss, and the exploration of frontier appear throughout the collection. In each story the setting becomes a character, forcing us to recognize the importance of place in our lives.

[EN] I believe that research and review of the work of Vicente Gómez Novella can bring matters of great importance for the historiography of photography in Spain in particular, as well as other fields of art also practiced. Moreover, tackling this project from an academic point of view, means building a structure outside the innumerable anecdotes that exist around her figure; thing and I discussed under the heading: "Vicente Gómez Novella: life and work 1871-1956" and that led to my research. Therefore, and to distance as possible from those aspects that can be found in the memory of their relatives, but lack rigor contrasted in publications or files, I decided to rename the project and delete the words "life and work" that , it may seem irrelevant, it has helped me to focus my attention on anything that has to do with the intention of this work, which is simply to catalog and display their work to the public. In terms of structure, I will begin with a brief historical approach to help us locate their period of creation within a historical context, while we provide an overview of the artistic movements of the time. Once developed this theme, we turn to particular study of the work of our author, for which we thought divide their analysis into four main sections, through which we will develop the four facets that served as artist: painting, music , photography and finally, archeology and collecting antiques (the latter have joined into one because they do not understand one without the other, as discussed in paragraph). With regard to the section devoted to painting, differentiate which refers to his early days as a student at the Academy of San Carlos de Valencia (where he was a disciple of Ignacio Pines, Cayetano Capuz) and subsequent dedication to impressionist landscape and portrait, from the second decade of the twentieth century. The part that deals with his love of music, focus on the activities developed through his phonograph cabinet, place from which it spread the love for this art through various branches of Spain and Paris. Within the section devoted to photography, this being that more attention will pay for the relevance and mentioned that it reached (in addition to the countless references that we found), divide its structure so as to allow us to differentiate his activity as artist Professional. With regard to the last thematic section, one dedicated to archeology, collectibles and antiques, it will focus on its archaeological excavations and his love decorating their different studies with pieces there found, in addition to those acquired in his travels Europe. Finally, the work will address provided Novella argue why the art of his time and why we believe deserved dedicate this project.
[ES] Considero que la investigación y revisión de la obra de Vicente Gómez Novella puede aportar aspectos de gran interés para la historiografía de la fotografía en España en particular, así como a otros campos del arte que también practicó. Por otra parte, abordar este proyecto desde un punto de vista académico, significa construir una estructura ajena a las innumerables anécdotas que existen en torno a su figura; cosa que ya abordé bajo el título: "Vicente Gómez Novella: vida y obra 1871-1956", y que dio lugar a mi trabajo de investigación. Por ello, y para distanciarme en lo posible de aquellos aspectos que puedan encontrarse en la memoria de sus familiares, pero que carecen de rigor contrastado en publicaciones o archivos, he decido cambiar el nombre del proyecto y eliminar las palabras "vida y obra" que, aunque parezca irrelevante, me ha ayudado a centrar mi atención en todo aquello que tiene que ver con la intención de este trabajo, que no es otra que catalogar y mostrar su obra al público. En cuanto a su estructura, comenzaré con una breve aproximación histórica que nos ayude a situar su periodo de creación dentro de un contexto histórico, al mismo tiempo que nos ofrezca una visión general de los movimientos artísticos de la época. Una vez desarrollado este tema, pasaremos al estudio particular de la obra de nuestro autor, para lo cual hemos pensado dividir su análisis en cuatro apartados centrales, a través de los cuales, desarrollaremos las cuatro facetas que ejerció como artista: la pintura, la música, la fotografía y por último, la arqueología y el coleccionismo de antigüedades (estas últimas las hemos unido en uno sólo porque no se entenderían la una sin la otra, como veremos en su apartado). Con respecto al apartado dedicado a la pintura, diferenciaremos la que se refiere a su primera época como estudiante de la Academia de San Carlos de Valencia (en la que fue discípulo de Ignacio Pinazo y Cayetano Capuz) y su posterior dedicación al paisaje impresionista y el retrato, a partir de la segunda década del siglo XX. La parte que se ocupa de su afición a la música, la centraremos en las actividades desarrolladas a través de su gabinete fonográfico, lugar desde el que difundió la afición por este arte a través de diversas sucursales por España y París. Dentro del apartado destinado a la fotografía, siendo éste al que más atención prestaremos por la relevancia ya mencionada que ésta alcanzó (además de por las innumerables referencias que hemos encontrado), dividiremos su estructura de manera que nos permita diferenciar su actividad como artista de la del profesional. Por lo que respecta al último apartado temático, el dedicado a la arqueología, el coleccionismo y las antigüedades, lo centraremos en sus excavaciones arqueológicas y su afición a la decoración de sus diferentes estudios con piezas allí encontradas, además de las adquiridas en sus viajes por Europa. Por último, el trabajo se ocupará de argumentar qué aportó Novella al arte de su época y por qué consideramos merecido dedicarle este proyecto.
[CAT] Considere que l'investigacio i revisio de l'obra de Vicent GÓMEZ NOVELLA pot aportar aspectes de gran INTERÉS per a l'historiografia de la fotografia en Espanya en particular, aixina com a atres camps de l'art que tambe practicà. Per atra part, abordar este proyecte des d'un punt de vista academic, significa construir una estructura aliena a les innumerables anecdotes que existixen en torn a la seua figura; cosa que ya abordi baix el titul: "Vicent GÓMEZ NOVELLA: vida i obra 1871-1956", i que donà lloc al meu treball d'investigacio. Per aixo, i per a distanciar-me en lo possible d'aquells aspectes que puguen trobar-se en la memoria dels seus familiars, pero que carixen de rigor contrastat en publicacions o archius, he dit canviar el nom del proyecte i eliminar les paraules "vida i obra" que, encara que semble IRRELEVANTE, m'ha ajudat a centrar la meua atencio en tot allo que te que vore en l'intencio d'este treball, que no es atra que catalogar i mostrar la seua obra al public. En quant a la seua estructura, escomençare en una breu aproximacio historica que mos ajude a situar la seua PERIODO de creacio dins d'un context historic, al mateix temps que mos oferixca una visio general dels moviments artistics de l'epoca. Una volta desenrollada este tema, passarém a l'estudi particular de l'obra de nostre autor, per a lo qual hem pensat dividir el seu analisis en quatre apartats centrals, a través dels quals, desenrollarém les quatre facetes que eixerci com artiste: la pintura, la musica, la fotografia i per ultim, l'arqueologia i el coleccionisme d'antigores (estes ultimes les hem unit en un soles perque no s'entendrien l'una sense l'atra, com vorem en el seu apartat). Respecte a l'apartat dedicat a la pintura, diferenciarém la que se referix a la seua primera epoca com estudiant de l'Academia de Sant Carles de Valencia (en la que fon discipul d'Ignaci PINAZO i Gayeta Capuç) i la seua posterior dedicacio al païsage impressioniste i el retrato, a partir de la segona decada del segle XX. La part que s'ocupa de la seua aficio a la musica, la centrarém en les activitats desenrollades a través del seu gabinet fonografic, lloc des de el que difongue l'aficio per este art a través de diverses sucursals per Espanya i Pariu. Dins de l'apartat destinat a la fotografia, sent este al que mes atencio prestarém per la RELEVANCIA ya mencionada que esta alcançà (ademes de per les innumerables referencies que hem trobat), dividirém la seua estructura de manera que mos permeta diferenciar la seua activitat com artiste de la del professional. Per lo que respecta a l'ultim apartat tematic, el dedicat a l'arqueologia, el coleccionisme i les antigores, ho centrarém en les seues excavacions arqueologiques i la seua aficio a la decoracio dels seus diferents estudis en peces alli trobades, ademes de les adquirides en els seus viages per Europa. Per ultim, el treball s'ocuparà d'argumentar que aportà NOVELLA a l'art de la seua epoca i per que considerem mereixcut dedicar-li este proyecte.
Muñoz Duato, J. (2015). Vicente Gómez Novella 1871-1956 [Tesis doctoral no publicada]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/51666
TESIS

This Master’s Thesis seeks to explain the process of initiation undergone by Henry James’s characters. Characters are chosen for initiation into forbidden knowledge, and, like the Biblical Adam and Eve, are exiled as a result. Though initiation is erotic, it is not sexual, and society falsely perceives a sexually charged relationship between the initiator and the initiate, also called the complementary pair. The initiate faces exile and death because of his forbidden knowledge. He no longer has a place in his society, which leads to his social death and eventually physical death. James’s reader is initiated along with the characters, becoming a critical reader who no longer sees reading as a passive activity but brings his own judgment to the text. The Jamesian Reader does not face the same fate as the initiate, but he does change substantively as a result of his new perspective on the text.

Stildrag i sex noveller av Eyvind Johnson (Fredrik Smeds, C-uppsats i Svenska språket, Karlstads universitet, Institutionen för kultur och kom-munikation, 2001). I uppsatsen pekar författaren på olika stildrag i sex av Eyvind Johnsons noveller från tiden 1929–38. I analyserna av de enskilda novellerna ingår alltid en beskrivning av handlingen och dessutom diskuteras person- och miljöbeskrivningen. I ett senare kapitel har statistiska uppgifter om skiljetecken och meningslängd beräknats, men framför allt studeras där dialogen och kompositionen. Även ordvalet och valet av tilltalsord har studerats, liksom det dialektala talspråket i en novell. Syntaxen undersöks också, exempelvis graden av samordning (asyndes, polysyndes etc.).

Wolf at the Door concerns a thirteen year old boy, Wilmer, during the summer of his sexual awakening, where he explores the boundaries of his sexuality and his attraction to violence and danger, primarily through an older teenage boy, Bricktone, all while young women from his working class community are being kidnapped, abused, and murdered by a human predator. Wilmer considers what kind of man he will become and whether can escape the influence of the wolf.

Casa Caracol: A Novella and Stories is a two-genre writing project. The novella is a collection of interconnected stories about two Venezuelan female childhood companions, Zafirah and Tamara, who maintain their friendship despite political upheaval and migration. The protagonist, Zafirah, must reconcile her divided cultural identity through the dynamics of her relationship with a new host country and her far-away homeland. The stories, Migrant Voicings, are language driven cuentos that attempt to render what is happening in a migrant-influenced mind. The voicings aim to challenge how a story is told and disrupt the expectations of what the immigrant story is supposed to be. There are thematic links to the novella--migration, Diaspora, alienation, violence, nostalgia and embodied longing, etc--and a vocal link, too, as some of the voices could belong to a grown-up, alternative Zafirah.
Master of Fine Arts

The thesis begins with an introductory chapter that helps to define and locate the point of view from which the novella is told. The introduction also cites modern authors who influenced the tone, structure, and content of the novella. Thirteen chapters and an epilogue follow the introduction. Every third or fourth chapter is written as a vignette. The vignettes function as interchapters with the intention of giving contrast and balance to the main plot chapters.

Magister Artium - MA
Nobathembu lifts her hand and waves at her neighbour. She is watering spinach in her garden with a jug from a bucket. At age sixty-nine, her beauty shines. The sun is high on the echoes of Nyanga village – echoes of barking, the neighing of nearby donkeys, a truck against a slope. Two butterflies mate in her thorn tree. In their hearts the story begins. Their wings brighten and in their own time they disappear, following their peculiar rhythms.

Epiphany is a significant feature for a certain kind of short stories. In this essay Anna Westberg studies its importance for her short story writings in comparison to Alice Munro, one of the short story most prominent authors. The analysis is supported by a brief overview of the history of the short story and its development.
Epifani är utmärkande för en viss typ av noveller. I denna uppsats undersöks epifanins betydelse för Anna Westbergs novellskrivande genom att jämföra hennes noveller med en av novellkonstens stora författare Alice Munro. Som en bakgrund till analysen ges en kort översikt av novellens historia och utveckling samt vilka drag som utmärker denna typ av noveller.

Sharing Beds, a collection of three interconnected novellas, follows young women navigating family and romantic relationships, missing sisters and mothers, sticking to routines, making new homes, adopting stray cats, reading books and trying to write. These characters feel most close to reality when they try to put their experiences and interior landscapes into writing. This collection traces the tensions between the safety of the familiar and the possibility of newness; contentment in solitude and the sudden thrill of connection; the inevitability of acting in the world and the pleasure of removing oneself to watch.
Master of Fine Arts

Henning Berger (1872 – 1924) har en plats i den svenska litteraturhistorien som en av få ihågkomna författare från 1900-talets första årtionde, vid sidan av Hjalmar Söderberg och Bo Bergman. Intresset har främst knutits till Bergers USA- och barndomsskildringar, särskilt i Där ute (1901) och Drömlandet (1909). I denna uppsats granskas teman, teknik och stil i de noveller han skrev som bosatt i Danmark under 1910-talet, och som han har förlagt till dansk miljö. Framställningen refererar till tidigare undersökningar och omdömen av framför allt Sven Lagerstedt och Fredrik Böök. I analysen används delvis en biografisk ansats med stöd av Bergers brev och uppgifter från Bergers samtida. Med den biografiska ansatsen visas på paralleller mellan Bergers liv och novellernas karaktärer, särskilt ifråga om kvinnobilder. Den förfarne novellfabrikören Berger beskrivs genom den marknadsorientering han tillämpar, bland annat i spök- och kriminalberättelser, och den klassiska novellteknik han ofta tillämpar. Vidare behandlas hans impressionistiska stilkonst, delvis i förbindelse med danska föregångare. I slutdiskussionen tas spekulativt upp hur Berger i slutet av 1910-talet synes närma sig ett ”modernare” tilltal, i samklang med den splittrade europeiska tillvaron efter första världskriget.

Uppsatsen analyserar fyra noveller i John Ajvide Lindqvists novellsamling Pappersväggar som utkom 2006. Novellerna som analyserats är ”Gräns”, ”By på höjden”, ”Equinox” och ”Vikarien”. Syftet med analysen är att undersöka hur Ajvide Lindqvist arbetar för att göra sina noveller skrämmande och vad som är skrämmande. Uppsatsen utgår från en etablerad begreppsapparat som definierats av olika teoretiker och författare, som skriver inom genrerna gotik och skräck. Analysen visar att Ajvide Lindqvist använder sig av karaktärsdrag och grepp som går att finna inom genrerna gotik och skräck. Jag finner även att det som framför allt skapar skräckeffekt i hans noveller är vardagsförankringen. De drag och grepp han använder sig av får en större verkan på grund av att det utspelar sig i välbekanta miljöer som nog de flesta läsare kan relatera till.

The Sad Kitchen, a work of magical realism, tells the story of a saintly woman named Helen. She opens an underground kitchen where people who feel guilty can come to be comforted and nurtured in the middle of the night. The story is, at its heart, a reflection on forgiveness. Song of Neon, also of the magical realist genre, is an existential work about a nurse named Avery and her husband, an owl house maker, named Saul. Their town, Milliard, is under a trance. Avery and Saul struggle with their respective identities in the quiet, vacuum the town has become.

Since the beginning of the May Fourth era in 1919, modern Chinese literature has been dominated to some degree by four main characteristics: antitraditionalism, Westernization, realism, and artistic deficiency. Of these, the most persistent has been antitraditionalism. Chinese writers and intellectuals have long felt that the Confucian tradition was responsible for the near-collapse of the country in the early part of the twentieth century and it was therefore rejected in favour of Western values - first democratic, and later socialist. The three novellas of Zhong Ahcheng (pen name Ah Cheng), which were first published in 1984 and 1985 and which are part of a larger contemporary literary phenomenon known as the "School of Cultural Exploration", have effectively reversed the predominant traits of modern Chinese literature by overturning its long-standing antitraditional bias, eschewing any overt influence from Western literature, creating an objectified critical realism through the careful maintenance of authorial distance, and demonstrating a singular concern for form. This concern for form is what constitutes the modernity of Ah Cheng's work. Although Chinese fiction near the end of the Qing dynasty (1644-1911) began to move away from the traditional episodic structure which was characterized by large numbers of loosely connected chapters and began to favour more tightly structured plots, fiction in the twentieth century has tended to concern itself more with content than with form. I have in this thesis employed the neo-Aristotelean method of analysis as described by Norman Friedman in his study Form and Meaning in Fiction to show that the plots of Ah Cheng's novellas have been carefully and cleverly structured and that they therefore represent a significant departure from the predominant trend in modern Chinese fiction. Tradition in the novellas is manifested in their meaning. "The Chess Master" represents, at the primary level, a recognition or affirmation of the spiritual values of life not only in a society and an era (the Cultural Revolution) in which the system of values appears to be bankrupt, but more importantly for the protagonist, in an individual life of material and emotional deprivation. The story also suggests that these spiritual values may be located in the Chinese tradition and that this tradition is available to anyone at any level of society. "The King of Trees," a didactic work (in contrast to the other two novellas which are both mimetic) is a modern day allegory with a strong Taoist flavour that depicts a struggle representative of the contest between man in his mindless determination to conquer nature and nature in its quiet determination to survive. Finally, "The King of Children" reflects a return to the traditional values of honesty and integrity at a time when these values have been supplanted by the struggle to survive and the imperative to conform to the ideological dictates of the day. While psychological treatment and social criticism make up an important part of the overall meaning of the three novellas, Ah Cheng's fiction is in the end primarily philosophical. He is suggesting as a possible solution to China's post-Cultural Revolution spiritual crisis a synthesis of the elements that constitute the Chinese tradition. Ah Cheng's tradition is a flexible organic entity, all or part of which may be adapted to fit the particular needs and circumstances of the individual.
Arts, Faculty of
Asian Studies, Department of
Graduate

Children find decomposing bodies on a beach. A girl becomes a ghost and finds someone. A dog dies but its owner is out of his mind and eating waffles. Sheep are a perfect species. A woman experiences a pregnancy that is out of this world! A raccoon dies and you watch its body break down. A father does his best fathering. You take a textual road-trip tour of America’s oldest hobby. A trauma is slowed down, picked apart. A soupfin shark is dissected and you watch. A homestead becomesa ghost town in rural Oregon. Joseph Beuys is an artist. A sister falls in love with an object, has a difference of opinion with her sister.

This collection of fiction - a novella and a collection of short stories - focuses on the commonality of the human condition. While we create separations for ourselves by focusing on distinctions such as, religion, class, gender, and race, we are, I believe, spiritual beings sharing a human experience. My work tends to explore these distinctions and our motivations for embracing them. In the novella, Middle Ground, two sisters in alternating narrative voices share the story of their parents' struggles with separation, sobriety and cancer. Their voices, as distinct as their perspectives, explore the landscape of a family, the borders between forgiveness and acceptance, the self-preserving act of looking beyond imperfections and weaknesses, and the realization that truth is an illusion and flawed love the only certainty. The short story collection consists of eight pieces. Many of these stories explore characters in a state of recovery - a brain tumor operation, a death of a spouse, a shot to the head where a bullet rests and reminds - and plot occurs as these characters attempt to move on. They meet sandhill cranes who cry out in pain for the death of another, lovers who speak in italics, vets who swear that the blasted silence is louder than King Kong screaming in your ear. They sit with shrinks who lie, sleep with poets who stray, compete with incarcerated ex-husbands who were "man enough" to put a gun to a woman's head and pull the trigger. They are nothing - and everything - like all of us, and readers are invited to join the characters beside the mirror of our collective Middle Ground.
M.F.A.
Department of English
Arts and Humanities
Creative Writing MFA