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Grau, Donatien. "Le roman romain : généalogie d'un genre français." Thesis, Paris 4, 2014. http://www.theses.fr/2014PA040069.
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Cette thèse a pour but d’étudier l’émergence et le développement dans la littérature française d’un genre nouveau, du début du XIXe jusqu’à la fin du XXe siècle : le roman romain à sujet contemporain. N’évoquant pas la stabilité de la Ville antique, de ses ruines et de ses monuments, mais le paysage urbain et humain en mouvement de l’époque, il rompt avec la tradition du Grand Tour, qui était implicitement fondée sur la notion qu’aucune fiction ne pouvait être inventée dans le présent éternel de Rome, puisque la perception qu’on en pouvait nourrir était si profondément ancrée dans le passé. En faisant usage du roman, les écrivains étaient confrontés simultanément à la modernité du médium et à la modernisation urbaine et politique de la Ville, alors qu’ils avaient toujours à l’esprit le signe de Rome – le mythe de la Ville Éternelle. Les romans situés dans la Rome contemporaine fournissaient à leurs auteurs la possibilité de traiter des questions les plus fondamentales de l’éthique et de l’esthétique dela fiction : le rôle de la croyance dans la civilisation moderne – en terme de religion et de son contrepoint, la fiction littéraire ; le rôle du passé dans la construction de la modernité ; l’importance du présent dans l’expérience du passé ; la signification des Anciens à l’époque des Modernes. Analyser les formes du roman français à sujet romain contemporain signifie plus encore que de se confronter au portrait d’une ville : c’est une étude de la pertinence des paradigmes occidentauxThis thesis aims to address the emergence and the development in French literature of a whole new genre, from the beginning of the 19th until the end of the 20th century: the contemporaneous Roman-themed novel. Dealing not with the stability of the Ancient City, its ruins and its monuments, but with the shifting urban and human landscape of the time, it disrupts the tradition of the Grand Tour, which was implicitly based on the notion that no fiction could be invented in the eternal present of Rome, since the perception one could have there was so deeply rooted in the past. By using the novel, writers were simultaneously confronted to the modernity of the medium and to the urban and political modernisation of the city, while the sign of Rome – the myth of the Eternal City – was always present in their mind. Novels set in contemporaneous Rome provided their authors with the possibility to engage with the most crucial issues inherent to the aesthetics and ethics of fiction: the role of belief in modern cultures – in terms of religion and its counterpart, literary fiction; the role of the past in the construction of modernity; the importance of the present in the experience of the past; the meaning of the Ancients at the time of the Moderns. Analysing the forms of the French contemporaneous Roman-themed novel signifies even more than engaging with the portrait of a city: it is a study in the relevance of Western paradigms
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D'Andrea, Paola. "Classical reception in Sir Walter Scott's Scottish novels : the role of Greece and Rome in the making of historico-national fiction." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2016. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.722557.
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Dannemiller, Alexander Scott. "Untitled." PDXScholar, 2015. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/2392.
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Deeply concerned with body politics, sexual slavery, identity, and technology, this work takes a serious and brutally honest route through the close perspectives of those living it moment by moment. With influences from science fiction, horror, weird, and literary fiction, the untitled novel blends genres for a disturbing account. This novel also plays with constraints in the spirit of many constraint-based writing movements, without the inclusion of names, few identifying markers, and in publication the removal of title, chapter numbers, page numbers, and author name.
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Hubert, Barbara. "Le paysage des origines de Rome dans les sources littéraires antiques : fictions et réalités." Thesis, Paris 10, 2009. http://www.theses.fr/2009PA100165.
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Nouveau fondateur de Rome, Auguste sollicite les mythes des origines de Rome, que les poètes sont chargés de mettre en vers. Notre thèse vise d’une part à étudier l’aspect du paysage recréé par les poètes, de l’autre à souligner l’importance de la place des paysages dans les épisodes légendaires : en effet, le caractère sacré de ces épisodes est renforcé par leur inscription dans un paysage composé d’éléments le plus souvent sacrés, qu’ils soient naturels ou bâtis. Le paysage semble ainsi figer dans un espace intemporel les mythes des origines, qui s’ouvrent alors à tous les habitants de Rome, même venus d’ailleurs, facilitant l’accès à la romanité désiré par Auguste. Influences littéraires hellénistiques, souvenirs de paysages connus, fresques picturales, sont autant de sources que les poètes vont utiliser pour offrir leur propre représentation de ce paysage imaginaire. On assiste à la naissance d’un type de littérature proprement romaineAs the new founder of Rome, ; the emperor Augustus uses the founding myths, put in verse by the poets. This thesis aims to study how the landscapes recreated by the poets look like ; furthermore it aims to emphasize the importance of the place of the landscapes within the legendary episodes : the sacred landscapes, made of natural and architectural elements, streghthen the sacred character of these episodes. The founding myths, inscribed in a preserved location, make easier the romanity. Hellenistic influences, memory of birth place landscapes, pictural frescoes, are all the sources used by the poets to create their own representation of this imaginary landscape. A new type of roman litterature emerges
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Wiechert, Nora L. "Urban green space and gender in Anglophone Modernist fiction." Pullman, Wash. : Washington State University, 2009. http://www.dissertations.wsu.edu/Dissertations/Summer2009/n_wiechert_071309.pdf.
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Blum, Joanne. "Defying the constraints of gender : the male/female double of women's fiction /." The Ohio State University, 1986. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1487265555440577.
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Johnson, Thomas Leo. "Black Hole: The Role of Black Aesthetics in Science Fiction." Wright State University / OhioLINK, 2007. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=wright1180786498.
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Weißhampel, Stefan. "The role of science fiction : Asimov & Vonnegut - a comparison /." Hamburg : Diplomica-Verl, 2007. http://d-nb.info/989566374/04.
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Chew, Cynthia Mei-Li. ""It's stupid being a girl!" : the tomboy character in selected children's series fiction /." Murdoch University Digital Theses Program, 2008. http://wwwlib.murdoch.edu.au/adt/browse/view/adt-MU20090430.203438.
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Grace, Nancy McCampbell. "The feminized male character in twentieth-century fiction studies in Joyce, Hemingway, Kerouac, and Bellow /." The Ohio State University, 1987. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1487331541709914.
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Smith, Cynthia M. "Walter M. Miller, Jr.’s A Canticle for Leibowitz: A Study of Apocalyptic Cycles, Religion and Science, Religious Ethics and Secular Ethics, Sin and Redemption, and Myth and Preternatural Innocence." Digital Archive @ GSU, 2006. http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/english_theses/10.
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Walter M. Miller, Jr.’s A Canticle for Leibowitz is a timeless story about apocalyptic cycles, conflicts and similarities between religion and science, religious ethics and secular ethics, sin and redemption, myth and preternatural innocence. Canticle is a very religious story about a monastery dedicated to preserving scientific knowledge from the time before nuclear war which devastated the world and reduced humanity to a pre-technological civilization. The Catholic Church and this monastery are portrayed as a bastion of civilization amidst barbarians and a light of faith amidst atheism. Unfortunately, humanity destroys the Earth once again, but Miller ends with two beacons of hope: a starship headed for the unknown to help humanity begin again and the preternaturally innocent Rachel who portends a future for similarly innocent human beings repopulating the Earth. Thus, faith ultimately triumphs over atheism even in the midst of almost total catastrophe.
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Makowski, Dominique. "Cognitive neuropsychology of implicit emotion regulation through fictional reappraisal The paradox of fiction: emotional response toward fiction and the modulatory role of self-relevance The distinctive role of executive functions in implicit emotion regulation Phenomenal, bodily and brain correlates of fictional reappraisal as an implicit emotion regulation strategy Bodily, cognitive and personality determinants of implicit emotion regulation through fictional reappraisal What is the sense of reality? Part 1: origin, architecture and mechanisms." Thesis, Sorbonne Paris Cité, 2018. https://wo.app.u-paris.fr/cgi-bin/WebObjects/TheseWeb.woa/wa/show?t=1486&f=14951.
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L'objectif de cette thèse est d'examiner comment les croyances sur la réalité peuvent amener à une régulation émotionnelle. Cette discussion est centrée autour de 4 études opérationnalisant la réévaluation par la fiction comme une modulation de la nature d'un stimulus affectif (en le présentant à des participants comme étant réel ou fictionnel). Elles étudient l'effet de ce mécanisme sur l'expérience émotionnelle dans sa composante phénoménologique, physiologique et neurale, ainsi que son interaction avec le Self (études 1 et 3), les fonctions exécutives (études 2 et 4) et l'intéroception (étude 4). Les résultats suggèrent que la réévaluation par la fiction est une stratégie efficace pour atténuer l'expérience émotionnelle, englobant ses aspects subjectifs et objectifs. Bien que l'émotion soit modulée par les processus de référence à soi, nos travaux suggèrent une absence d'interaction avec la fiction. Par contre, les données soulignent le rôle des capacités exécutives et intéroceptives dans l'efficience de la réévaluation par la fiction. Ces résultats sont discutés dans le contexte de leur importance pour les sciences affectives fondamentales, leurs implications cliniques, ainsi que comme nouvelles pistes pour une science du sentiment de réalitéThe aim of this thesis is to examine how, and under what circumstances, beliefs about reality can lead to emotion regulation. This discussion is centred around four studies operationalising fictional reappraisal as a modulation of the nature of an affective stimulus (presenting it to participants as real or fictional). They investigated the effect of this mechanism on phenomenal, bodily and brain markers of the emotional experience, as well as its interaction with Self-related processes (studies 1 and 3), executive functions (studies 2 and 4) or interoceptive abilities (study 4). Results suggest that fictional reappraisal is an efficient strategy to down-regulate the emotional experience, encompassing the subjective and objective aspects of the emotional response. Although emotions are modulated by Self-referential processes, no interaction with fictional reappraisal was reported. Instead, the evidence suggests that executive and interoceptive skills play a role in the effectiveness of fictional reappraisal as an implicit emotion regulation strategy. These findings are discussed in the context of their importance for fundamental affective science, their clinical implications, as well as scientific leads for a science of the sense of reality
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Dudley, Shawna L., and University of Lethbridge Faculty of Arts and Science. "A chameleon role : how adoption functions in nineteenth-century British fiction." Thesis, Lethbridge, Alta. : University of Lethbridge, Faculty of Arts and Science, 2001, 2001. http://hdl.handle.net/10133/130.
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In my thesis I look at adopted characters in nine nineteenth-century works: Jane Austen's Mansfield Park, Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, Elizabeth Barrett-Browning's Aurora Leigh, George Eliot's Silas Marner, Rudyard Kipling's Kim, and both Bleak House and Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. From these works we see that the figure of the adopted child both destabilizes and expands the Victorian concept of the family, a concept which the literature of the time was often concerned to reinforce. Since adoption implies the injection of a foreign element into the fabric of family life, it serves to underline the fragility of blood-ties. In this sense, the adopted child functions as a figure of subversion and instability within the heart of the family. But because adoption also implies a looser acceptance of what family means, it may serve to expand the definition of kinship. The tension between these two ideas is dealt with in my thesis. No two novels treat adoption in the same way and the possibilities for adoptive relationships are endless, with potential for good and bad relationships, allegory and realism, expansion and deconstruction of the family.150 leaves : ill. ; 28 cm.
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Romney, Jonathan Alexander. "Textual tyranny and the role of the reader in Lautreamont's Les Chants de Maldoror." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 1987. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.254309.
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Cox, Katharine May. "Labyrinths : navigating Daedalus' legacy : the role of labyrinths in selected contemporary fiction." Thesis, University of Hull, 2005. http://hydra.hull.ac.uk/resources/hull:5646.
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This study initially engages in an historical survey of the varying key realisations of labyrinths and their applications from antiquity through to the beginnings of the twentieth century. The shifting cultural significance of the labyrinth and its deployment in historical documents and literature alike is also evaluated. In particular, it focuses on two distinctive manifestations of the labyrinth: the Egyptian and the Cretan. The examination of these ancient artefacts affords an analysis of the intersection of archaeology, mythology and cultural productions. At the core of this study is the analysis of the fecundity of labyrinths in late twentieth-century fiction, focalised through four salient texts: Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose (1980), Peter Ackroyd's Hawksmoor (1985), Jeanette Winterson's The Passion (1987) and Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves (2000). These novels target specific usages of the trope, whereby the physical event of the labyrinth and its navigation, coupled with the labyrinthine text, intensifies an exploration of thematic issues. I will argue that a late twentieth-century engagement with complexity and ideas of selfhood coupled with a propensity for self-reflective narratology recalls the Egyptian and the Cretan labyrinths and so privileges these models. The labyrinth is considered as an appropriate medium to describe narrative construction and consumption in a manner that deconstructs the text as artifice and prioritises the reader's and the author's relationship to it. Specifically, the adoption of the labyrinth addresses the interplay between space and history in the textual arena and so encourages the individual to be envisaged as a transhistorical wandering figure. These textual usages foreground the apposite deployment of the labyrinth as this ancient meta-signifier is an entirely apposite vehicle for the interrogation of the late twentieth-century postmodern condition.
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De, Nittis Elizabeth MacInnes. "Gender and the grotesque in the short fiction of Joyce Carol Oates." View electronic thesis, 2008. http://dl.uncw.edu/etd/2008-1/denittise/elizabethdenittis.pdf.
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Jennings, Hope. "Journey towards the (m)other : myth, origins and the daughter's desires in the fiction of Angela Carter." Thesis, St Andrews, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/148.
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Larbalestier, Justine. "The battle of the sexes in science fiction from the pulps to the James Tiptree, Jr. memorial award /." Connect to full text, 1996. http://hdl.handle.net/2123/401.
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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Sydney, 1997.Title from title screen (viewed Apr. 15, 2008). Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the Dept. of English, Faculty of Arts. Degree awarded 1997; thesis submitted 1996. Includes: The James Tiptree Jr. Memorial Award list. Includes bibliography. Also available in print form.
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James, Sarah J. "Not without my body : feminist science fiction and embodied futures." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/14613.
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This study explores the interaction between feminist science fiction and feminist theory, focusing on the body and embodiment. Specifically, it aims to demonstrate that feminist science fiction novels of the 1990s offer an excellent platform for exploring the critical theories of the body put forward by Judith Butler in particular, and other feminist/queer theorists in general. The thesis opens with a brief history of science fiction's depiction of the body and feminist science fiction's subversions and rewritings of this, as well as an overview of Judith Butler's theories relating to the body and embodiment. It then considers a wide range of feminist science fiction novels from the 1990s, focusing on four key areas; bodies materialised outside patriarchal systems in women-only or women-ruled worlds, alien bodies, cyborg bodies and bodies in cyberspace. An in-depth analysis of the selected texts reveals that they have important contributions to make to the consideration of bodies as they develop and expand the issues raised by theorists such as Butler, Elisabeth Grosz, Luce Irigaray and Julia Kristeva.
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Caser, Giorgia <1991>. "The educational role of narrative fiction - A particular focus on African postcolonial literature." Master's Degree Thesis, Università Ca' Foscari Venezia, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/10579/9603.
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The aim of this thesis is to emphasize the worldwide power of narrative fiction in the way it can speak to the entire world and overcome geographical and cultural borders. Its educational role in terms of what readers can learn through narrative fiction will also be analysed. In particular, African postcolonial literature will be the main focus because of its recent widespread diffusion through the emergence of new African authors. The risk is that their works would almost become commodified and part of a cultural industry. On the contrary, the role of African authors should be reckoned to promote their creativity and to give Africa a voice. This thesis is divided as follows: chapter one will present some considerations on the functions of literature and its importance in life and education. Then it will also deal with technical aspects of narrative fiction, and with Western representations of Africa in terms of effectiveness of literature and its reliability. Chapter two will focus on the postcolonial literary industry and the recent phenomenon of Afropolitanism will be presented. The chapter will also deal with African postcolonial literature, in particular in English language delineating its history, controversies and limits of expression. Chapter three will tackle the employment of African postcolonial literature in educational practices, with a particular focus on the role of the teacher. Lastly, chapter four will present some examples of narrative fiction in English language whose educational role and its relationship with the Western societies, can be taken as starting point to encourage children in becoming adults in a globalized world. In the conclusion, final considerations on the topic will be delineated.
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Hewitt, Avis Grey. ""Myn owene woman, wel at ese" : feminist facts in the fiction of Mary McCarthy." Virtual Press, 1993. http://liblink.bsu.edu/uhtbin/catkey/862262.
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This study examines Mary McCarthy's three major female-protagonist works of fiction--The Company She Keeps (1942), A Charmed Life (1955), and The Group (1963)--in terms of the author's attitude towards femaleness. It confronts Elizabeth Janeway's assessment in Harvard Guide to Contemporary American Writing (1979) that McCarthy's works need not be reviewed in a survey essay on "Women's Literature" because they are "essentially masculine even if not conventionally so" (345). The thesis is that McCarthy's fiction receives a pattern of criticism faulting its lack of imagination and its inability to create "living" characters precisely because she maintained a high degree of self-censorship and control over parts of her awareness that were not male-identified. She was not free to imagine in areas that might unleash the horrors beneath what Norman Mailer has called "the thin juiceless crust" upon which McCarthy's "nice girls" live their lives.Each novel finds the protagonist at a different stage of modern womanhood and using a variety of male-identified responses. Meg Sargent of Company is a young New York sophisticate dealing with divorce, employment, travel, social life, political activism, casual sexual encounters, and the resolution of childhood trauma through psychoanalysis. Martha Sinnott of Charmed is a married woman returning with her second husband to the bohemian artists' community of her first husband in order to resolve the conflict of literary mentorship and patriarchal dominance that had marked the old relationship. In The Group Kay Strong and eight other Vassar Class of '33 females serve as literary embodiments of the social ailment that Betty Friedan cited in her 1963 polemic, The Feminine Mystique.McCarthy's three autobiographies--Memories of a Catholic Girlhood (1957), How I Grew (1985), and Intellectual Memoirs (1992)--illuminate many reasons for and consequences of her male-identified approach to living and writing. Social context for such a fate stems in part from having come of age in the 1930s, being a member of what Elaine Showalter refers to as "The Other Lost Generation." McCarthy's texts provide literary illustration of a common response to patriarchy.Department of English
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Chanda, Geetanjali. "Indian women in the house of fiction : place, gender, and identity in post-independence Indo-English novels by women /." Thesis, Hong Kong : University of Hong Kong, 1998. http://sunzi.lib.hku.hk/hkuto/record.jsp?B19736617.
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Lolley, Sarah. "Medical professionalism and the fictional TV medical drama House MD." Thesis, McGill University, 2008. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=112537.
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This thesis is an exploration and analysis of what audiences may be learning about medical professionalism from the fictional television (TV) medical drama House MD. Fictional TV medical dramas are an important form of medical narrative in that they are usually created by writers with no medical training. As such, they carry a higher risk of portraying the practice of medicine inaccurately. A review of the scholarly literature reveals that there is a precedent for fictional TV medical dramas to affect viewers' perception of the practice of medicine and health behaviours, and viewers' understanding of medical ethics issues. It also reveals strong empirical evidence that TV medical dramas can affect audience's perceptions of physicians' character. A thorough review of the first two seasons of House MD reveals 20 lessons on professionalism (i.e. lessons on interactions with colleagues and patients, medical ethics, and professional competence) that the title character, Gregory House, is imparting to viewers. All 20 lessons are in direct conflict with established charters on professionalism. Arguments are made for the programme's potential to negatively affect patient access to care, physician-patient relations, interactions between healthcare professionals, and applications to medical school.
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Williams, Rose M. A. "Feminine fictions: An embodied autobiography : navigating feminine embodied ontologies with/in aesthetic autobiography." Thesis, Edith Cowan University, Research Online, Perth, Western Australia, 2003. https://ro.ecu.edu.au/theses/1822.
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“In Speculum I wrote that to re-establish a political ethics a dual dialectic is necessary, one for the male subject and another for the female subject (pp223-4). Today I would say that a triple dialectic is necessary: one for the male subject, one for the female subject and one for their relationships as a couple or in a community. The weak and strong point of this quest concerns the issue of subjectivity and objectivity for women.”
Pg 39 Irigaray, L (1994) Thinking the Difference: for a peaceful revolution trans Karin Montin, Routledge New York
The Feminine Fictions project takes on Irigarays challenge for "A Peaceful Revolution” to find its genesis between men and women through enabling dialectics - an interaction between masculine and feminine subjectivities at the point of difference and within the context of relationship and community.
For Irigaray, historically repressed feminine subjectivities must continually be (re)constructed/ transgressed in order for such dialectics to be both possible and empowering. In Feminine Fictions I take up Irigarays engagement in the hope that doing so will re-create bonds of relationship and community for and with women that yield such enabling returns. To do so I use the axes of symmetry and scale that Irigaray identifies - working from the subject to the transcendent, from the cosmic to the divine and from the microcosmic to the macrocosmic. Masculine and Feminine appear as continually coalescing co-ordinates rather than limits in these axes, moments of opportunity rather than fixed references points and using subjectivity as a portal for viewing the cultural construction of “objective” experience. I adopt Irigarays mechanisms of mimesis, alterics and transgression (Irigaray 1981 a & b, 1985 a & b, 1986,1987 a&b, 1989, 1990, 1994, 1999,2000) through autobiography (Miller 1991, Benstock 1988, Brodzki & Schenk 1988) to inquire into my own embodied, engaged subjective experiences. I work from that position to cross and re-cross ontological thresholds, and through that continual movement, to articulate feminine subjectivities that arise in dialogue with the Other, amongst community.
Feminine Fictions poses a series of questions: What can embodied aesthetic engagement reveal through/for “the feminine” as a site of difference? How does this impact through/on my particular ontological and subjective experiences (and vice versa)? How is this significant for contemporary feminisms?
I use written and factured terms – aesthetic practice and performance - to re-member, generate and extend my subjective experience and finally articulate and record that experience of being-in-the-world in response to these concerns (MacDonald: Swindells 1995). The project culminating in an embodiment of the ontological research through an installation and performance event at Fremantle Prison on December 8 2002 involving 55 members of my epistemic community (Babbit: Alcoff & Potter), including my family.
The evening provided an opportunity to undertake multiple ‘readings’ of the work and a way to mimetically re-construct my personal inquiry process in collective terms. The organising metaphorical structure of the event, the Stations of the Cross, foregrounded the incarnational aesthetic of embodied difference, ontological construction and transgression central to the project (Bozarth 1997, Irigaray 1986 & 2000). The prison became a laboratory that could be used collectively and personally by each participant to explore their own embodied experiences of being-in-the-world and explore their own ontological orientations and philosophies-in-action.
The entire project was then produced into an exegetical theses as a CD ROM in website format to extend the proposal of embodied ontology into cyberspace and contemporary technological constructs (Wiley: Price & Shildrick 1999). The website format also allowing for a labyrinthine structure that can bring together the factured and conceptual work through geographical space into the alteric space of the internet.
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Kong, Wai-ping Judy, and 江偉萍. "Gender and sexuality in modern Shanghai: Chinese fiction of the early twentieth century." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2004. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B31245432.
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Tijani, Ishaq. "Male domination, female revolt : race, class, and gender in Kuwaiti women's fiction /." Leiden : Brill, 2009. http://opac.nebis.ch/cgi-bin/showAbstract.pl?u20=9789004167797.
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Platt, Stephen B. "Stranger in a stage land: A case for the role of science-fiction in theatre." Thesis, Platt, Stephen B. (2020) Stranger in a stage land: A case for the role of science-fiction in theatre. PhD thesis, Murdoch University, 2020. https://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/id/eprint/62006/.
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Science fiction is one of the most popular genres across the major entertainment mediums, except theatre. Despite science fiction plays existing for almost as long as there has been science fiction literature, the genre has failed to flourish on stage as it has done in the mediums of cinema, literature, television, and interactive entertainment like video games. Theatre in the twenty-first century has shown encouraging signs of growth and development for science fiction stage shows, and live performance spaces, practitioners, and production companies have the potential to breed the next great works of the genre.
Academia relating specifically to science fiction theatre is also an emerging practice. Ralph Willingham’s Science Fiction and the theatre (1994) remains amongst the most comprehensive compendiums of the genre’s stage history, but a number of contemporary researchers and academics are beginning to examine the practice of science fiction theatre in greater detail. By considering the work of academics on science fiction and the history of the genre, both on and off the stage, I show that science fiction and the theatre possess many benefits for one another when combined in practice. My research uses a multi-modal approach, drawing upon the theories of Practice as Research, Audience Reception theory, and the Iterative Cyclical Web, to demonstrate how practitioners can develop science fiction texts for live performance spaces that effectively create and explore the genre’s themes, values, and stories.
The exegesis explores the genealogy of science fiction in theatre and contains documentation of my creative artefact used to examine the processes of creating original science fiction for the stage; the staged radio play series @lantis. Written and directed by myself, @lantis was a two-year long project that featured the contributions of more than fifty actors, sound designers, foley artists, theatre technicians, visual artists, and musicians which culminated in seven individual episodes between sixty and ninety minutes long, performed live as a work of theatre to an audience, as well as being recorded and broadcast online as audio plays. The exegesis concludes with an analysis of data collected from surveys taken by @lantis audience members and in-depth discussions about potential areas of interest for contemporary and upcoming science fiction theatre practitioners.
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Butler, Henry James. "Diegetic stance and its role in role playing games an examination of schema development and narrative application in digital interactive fiction /." [Gainesville, Fla.] : University of Florida, 2003. http://purl.fcla.edu/fcla/etd/UFE0000909.
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Constantinou, Odysseas Symeon. "Sound-to-picture : the role of sound in the audio-visual semiosis of non-fiction film." Thesis, Cardiff University, 2007. http://orca.cf.ac.uk/54109/.
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Yip, Kit-wan, and 葉潔雲. "The role of Lin Shu's translations in the introduction offoreign culture in the late Qing period." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2003. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B2684011X.
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Colley, Sharon Elizabeth. ""Getting above your raising" : the role of social class and status in the fiction of Lee Smith /." VIEW WEB VERSION, 2002. http://etd.lsu.edu:8085/docs/available/etd-0129102-172747/.
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Halleck, Kenia Milagros. "Modernización y género sexual en los melodramas domésticos de autoras centroamericanas, 1940-1960 /." Diss., Connect to a 24 p. preview or request complete full text in PDF format. Access restricted to UC campuses, 2000. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/ucsd/fullcit?p9981957.
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Flouton, Emily Suzanne. "Creature of Detours." PDXScholar, 2018. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/4561.
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This collection of short stories explores themes of contemporary gender performance through the lens of the fairy tale. The stories examine both the reverberations canonical tales continue to have in American society today, and the new iterations of fairly tales we encounter in modern culture, particularly those which we burden young women through film and television.
Within the collection of stylistic conceits and narrative concerns specific to the fairy tale, these stories feature isolated narrators and themes of journeying through the forest. Each of these tales presents a female character or characters going into a metaphorical woods; the stories also often invoke the literal woods. The idea of "the handsome prince" figures here as well, in different explorations (most often lampoons) of contemporary masculinity. Many of these stories also foreground the particular dynamics and complexities of relationships between women: friends, rivals, lovers, teachers and students, mothers and daughters.
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Molloy, Carla Jane. "The art of popular fiction : gender, authorship and aesthetics in the writing of Ouida : a thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English in the University of Canterbury /." Thesis, University of Canterbury. Culture, Literature and Society, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10092/1956.
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This thesis examines the popular Victorian novelist Ouida (Maria Louisa Ramé) in the context of women’s authorship in the second half of the nineteenth century. The first of its two intentions is to recuperate some of the historical and literary significance of this critically neglected writer by considering on her own terms her desire to be recognised as a serious artist. More broadly, it begins to fill in the gap that exists in scholarship on women’s authorship as it pertains to those writers who come between George Eliot, the last of the ‘great’ mid-Victorian women novelists, and the New Woman novelists of the fin de siècle. Four of Ouida’s novels have been chosen for critical analysis, each of which was written at an important moment in the history of the nineteenth century novel. Her early novel Strathmore (1865) is shaped by the rebelliousness towards gendered models of authorship characteristic of women writers who began their careers in the 1860s. In this novel, Ouida undermines the binary oppositions of gender that were in large part constructed and maintained by the domestic novel and which controlled the representation and reception of women’s authorship in the mid-nineteenth century. Tricotrin (1869) was written at the end of the sensation fiction craze, a phenomenon that resulted in the incipient splitting of the high art novel from the popular novel. In Tricotrin, Ouida responds to the gendered ideology of occupational professionalism that was being deployed to distinguish between masculinised serious and feminised popular fiction, an ideology that rendered her particularly vulnerable as a popular writer. Ouida’s autobiographical novel Friendship (1878) is also written at an critical period in the novel’s ascent to high art. Registering the way in which the morally weighted realism favoured by novelists and critics at the mid-century was being overtaken by a desire for more formally oriented, serious fiction, Ouida takes the opportunity both to defend her novels against the realist critique of her fiction and to attempt to shape the new literary aesthetic in a way that positively incorporated femininity and the feminine. Finally, Princess Napraxine (1884) is arguably the first British novel seriously to incorporate the imagery and theories of aestheticism. In this novel, Ouida resists male aesthetes’ exploitative attempts to obscure their relationship to the developing consumer culture while confidently finding a place for the woman artist within British aestheticism and signalling a new acceptance of her own involvement in the marketplace. Together, these novels track Ouida’s self-conscious response to a changing literary marketplace that consistently marginalised women writers at the same time that they enable us to begin to uncover the complexity of female authorship in the second half of the nineteenth century.
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Miranda, Huereca Rafael. "The evolution of cyberpunk into postcyberpunk: The role of cognitive cyberspaces, wetware networks and nanotechnology in science fiction." Doctoral thesis, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10803/288302.
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Potter, John Randall Charles. "Ordinary children, extraordinary journeys, the role of imagination in the early life and selected fiction of Alice Munro." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1998. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/ftp03/MQ30740.pdf.
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Francis, A. J. "'In the way of business' : the role and representation of commerce in the Asian fiction of Joseph Conrad." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2010. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.599169.
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This thesis argues that in his Asian fiction Conrad writes through, and interrogates, commerce as part of his depictions of aliens within the commercial, political, and social contexts of the largely colonial south-east Asia of the second half of the nineteenth century, including Arab, Chinese, and Malay trading, and reflects the expansion and globalisation of an increasingly capitalist trade. The thesis aims to demonstrate four main aspects of commerce in this fiction. First, that it is crucial to shaping, and often vivifying, its world. Secondly, that it is pervasive and inextricable from that world. Thirdly, that time and space are increasingly commercialised, and fourthly, that Conrad’s treatment of the complexity of commerce in an informed, historically specific context resists often reductive readings of commerce as simple, homogeneous or necessarily pernicious. The Introduction provides a summary of the methodology and contexts. Chapters 1-3 examine the Lingard Trilogy and the waning of Lingard’s mode of trade in the face of increasing competition and globalisation. Chapter 4 explores Lord Jim, Conrad’s broadest representation of commerce and colonialism in the Asian fiction. Chapter 5 discusses ‘Falk’ and The Shadow-Line as investigations of commerce and dependability. Chapter 6 discusses ‘The End of the Tether’ and 6 discusses ‘The End of the Tether’ and Victory as representations of the forces of later colonial capitalism. The aims of this thesis are pursued by close, often phenomenological, readings of the texts with reference to the region’s –particularly the Dutch East Indies’ – histories, seeking to recover the business conditions present in the culturally specific texture and detail, and in the lived experience of commerce. The readings reflect the particular commercial topics arising in individual works, for example, economic botany in Almayer’s Folly and Lord Jim.
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Canepari-Labib, Michela. "Word-worlds : the refusal of realism and the critique of identity in the fiction of Christine Brooke-Rose." Thesis, University of Sussex, 1999. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.266448.
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Aston, Richard Michael. "The role of the fool and the carnivalesque in post-1945 German prose fiction on the Third Reich." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2005. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:10b3780b-66bd-4467-849f-8648ec969c55.
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This thesis examines post-1945 German prose fiction dealing with the Third Reich in the light of Mikhail Bakhtin's Rabelais and his World. My review of the secondary literature in Chapter 1 shows how few Germanists have examined the role of the carnivalesque in such fiction or used Bakhtin's work systematically. Having set out the shortcomings of Bakhtin's theory and shown Carnival's ambivalent position in the Third Reich, Chapter 2 builds on this theoretical and historical foundation by giving an overview of the different ways in which authors deploy the Fool and the carnivalesque in post-1945 prose fiction. This overview provides a context for the rest of the thesis, in which I discuss in detail how four authors use the topoi of the Fool and the carnivalesque in different ways to confront the past and encourage social change. Thus, Chapter 3 analyses Hans Hellmut Kirst's 08/15 trilogy (1954-55) which describes Asch's carnivalesque subversion of the NCOs who abuse power within the Army, and his subsequent development into a positive figure of authority. Chapter 4 argues that, beneath its bleak surface, Günter Grass's Hundejahre (1963) deploys the carnivalesque to transmit a sense of mourning and rebirth after the Holocaust. Chapter 5 deals with Edgar Hilsenrath's Der Nazi and der Friseur (1977), whose Fool-protagonist provokes the reader to laugh at earlier attempts to make sense of the Holocaust in order to prioritize the act of anamnesis as an end in itself. Chapter 6 examines Gert Hermann's Veilchenfeld (1987) and Der Kinoerzähler (1990). Veilchenfeld is a carnivalesque signifier of Nature whose persecution at the hands of the people of Limbach parallels the town's ecological destruction, so that the novel can be read as a critique of the exploitation of Nature. In Der Kinoerzähler Hofmann uses Karl, a Fool-figure who narrates silent films, to encourage the development of critical faculties which combat the fatalism and authoritarianism that hamper social change. It becomes clear that the authors of the above works have anticipated the shortcomings of Carnival as a model of resistance and have thus redefined the Fool and the carnivalesque. So in my view, although the way the authors deploy these topoi maps only partially with Bakhtin's ideas about Carnival, these authors have understood the central concepts of the carnivalesque's ambivalence and its powers to subvert authority and use them productively to deal with the issues raised by the Third Reich.
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Bladon, Henry James Murray. "'Missing Pieces' : the presentation of mental health nursing in narrative fiction and the role of the practitioner/writer." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2018. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/8104/.
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Missing Pieces is a novel about mental health nursing and the difficulties faced by a challenging profession, as Ron seeks an understanding of his personal and professional world. The novel challenges traditional stereotypes, offering a greater range of character depictions. The critical discussion asks why mental health nursing is represented in fiction like it is. By first contextualising the argument within the sphere of fictional representations of other health professions, it then examines the stereotypes of mental health nursing in fiction, and argues that, while literary shortfalls are in part supported by clinical evidence, existing novels fail to accurately depict the experience of the profession. By reference to the nursing theory of Peplau and others, we not only see the failures of fiction writers, but realise that mental health nursing must assume some culpability, by failing to disseminate its identity with sufficient clarity. Looking at the work of Freya Barrington and Monica Starkman in other health disciplines, it asks how fictionalised accounts of mental health practitioner/writers can integrate into health education programmes, and looks at the professional benefits of writing fiction including continuing professional development. Finally, it points to potential areas for further investigation.
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Ebeling, Charlotte. "'Dreamers, madmen and poets' : illusion, reality and the role of the artist in the fiction of Sven Delblanc." Thesis, University of Wales Trinity Saint David, 1994. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.683117.
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Watson, Anna Elizabeth. "Music lessons and the construction of womanhood in English fiction, 1870-1914." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/5479.
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This thesis explores the gendered symbolism of women's music lessons in English fiction, 1870-1914. I consider canonical and non-canonical fiction in the context of a wider discourse about music, gender and society. Traditionally, women's music lessons were a marker of upper- and middle-class respectability. Musical ‘accomplishment' was a means to differentiate women in the ‘marriage market', and the music lesson itself was seen to encode a dynamic of obedient submission to male authority as a ‘rehearsal' for married life. However, as the market for musical goods and services burgeoned, musical training also offered women the potential of an independent career. Close reading George Eliot's Daniel Deronda (1876) and Jessie Fothergill's The First Violin (1877), I discuss four young women who negotiate their marital and vocational choices through their interactions with powerful music teachers. Through the lens of the music lessons in Emma Marshall's Alma (1888) and Israel Zangwill's Merely Mary Ann (1893), I consider the issues of class, respectability and social emulation, paying particular attention to the relationship between aesthetic taste and moral values. I continue by considering George Du Maurier's Trilby (1894) alongside Elizabeth Godfrey's Cornish Diamonds (1895), texts in which female pupils exhibit genuine power, eventually eclipsing both their music teachers and the artist-suitors for whom they once modelled. My final chapter discusses three texts which problematize the power of women's musical performance through depicting female music pupils as ‘New Women' in conflict with the people around them: Sarah Grand's The Beth Book (1895), D. H. Lawrence's The Trespasser (1912) and Compton Mackenzie's Sinister Street (1913). I conclude by looking forward to representations of women's music lessons in the modernist period and beyond, with a reading of Katherine Mansfield's ‘The Wind Blows' (1920) as well as Rebecca West's The Fountain Overflows (1956).
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Lafontaine, Tania. "Ecocriticism and Science Fiction Theory: the Role of Environments and Representations of Post-Nature in Starfish, Maelstrom and Behemoth by Peter Watts and The Road by Cormac McCarthy." Mémoire, Université de Sherbrooke, 2014. http://savoirs.usherbrooke.ca/handle/11143/77.
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(Résumé) Ce mémoire propose une analyse des représentations de la nature et de l’environnement dans deux œuvres de science-fiction: la trilogie des Rifters—de l’auteur canadien Peter Watts—, qui comprend trois romans en quatre tomes: Starfish (1999), Maelstrom (2001), Behemoth B-Max (2004) et Behemoth Seppuku (2005); et le roman The Road (2006) de l’auteur américain Cormac McCarthy. Cette étude vise à théoriser les implications critiques et littéraires de ces représentations. Pour ce faire, un survol de quelques-unes des principales théories de la science-fiction précède l’analyse des romans. L’intégration de ces théories et des concepts qu’elles mettent de l’avant à l’analyse des romans me permet d’articuler le fait que, dans les récits choisis, les novums science-fictionnels entraînent la défamiliarisation de la nature et de l’environnement, ce qui produit un effet d’étrangeté.
En effet, dans ces récits la nature est soit hybride— transformée par l’intervention des humains et de la technologie—, soit malade, mourante, détruite, ou absente et pleurée par les personnages, qui se la remémorent en rêve. Dans les deux cas, la nature est ré-imaginée, l’environnement est recontextualisé et des mondes post-naturels sont présentés d’une façon qui implique des stratégies littéraires semblables, mais une différence critique importante: la trilogie de Watts met en évidence les conséquences tragiques possibles de notre échec à surmonter les enjeux environnementaux de notre époque. Le roman de McCarthy dresse le portrait de la destruction de la société et de la planète tels que nous les connaissons, mais en tait les causes. // (Abstract) This thesis analyzes the representations of nature and environments in two works of science fiction: the Rifters Trilogy, by the Canadian author Peter Watts, comprised of three novels in four volumes: Starfish (1999), Maelstrom (2001), Behemoth B-Max (2004), and Behemoth Seppuku (2005); and the novel The Road (2006), by the American author Cormac McCarthy, in order to theorize their critical and literary implications. To do so, some significant theories in the field of science fiction theory are explored and appropriated in order to develop analyses of the novels. The integration of these theories and their concepts in the analyses allows me to articulate how nature and environments are defamiliarized and generate an estrangement effect within the selected narratives because of their respective sf novums and the consequences they entail. Nature is presented in the primary texts as hybrid — transformed by human intervention and technology — but also as sick, dying, destroyed, and as something lost, absent, mourned and virtually only remembered in dreams. Both works re-imagine nature, re- contextualize environments, and ultimately present post-natural worlds in ways that evidence similar literary strategies. However, they offer a major critical difference: for the Rifters trilogy points out the possible tragic consequences of the failure to overcome environmental issues in our time, while The Road portrays the destruction of society and the planet as we know them but silences the causes.
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Liang, Wen-Chun. "Constructing the role of human agents in translation studies : translation of fantasy fiction in Taiwan from a Bourdieusian perspective." Thesis, University of Newcastle Upon Tyne, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/10443/1057.
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The aim of this thesis is to investigate the translation phenomenon of fantasy fiction in Taiwan, with the help of Pierre Bourdieu's sociological model. The application of a sociological approach to translation studies allows an examination of the social and cultural nature of translation by locating this activity within social structures. One of the aims of the thesis is to discover to what extent Bourdieu's sociological model can elucidate a translational phenomenon when compared with other models in translation studies. To fulfil this aim, the similarities and differences between Bourdieu's theoretical framework, Even-Zohar's polysystem model and Toury's concept of translational norms are discussed. It is postulated that the imposition of the concept of norms on Bourdieu's notion of habitus would reinforce the explanation of translation agents' practices in both the micro-structural and macro-structural investigation of the translation of fantasy fiction. The micro-structural investigation was conducted by employing a parallel corpus study of fantasy translations: J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, C. S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia, T. H. White's The Sword in the Stone and Philip Pullman's Northern Lights. The aim of this comparison is to examine translation agents' textual translatorial habitus when dealing with culture-specific items (CSIs). The results revealed a source-oriented tendency when translating CSIs. The evidence from the textual analysis was interpreted and discussed in terms of the interaction between the translatorial habitus and the constraints and opportunities determined by the literary field. This thesis also aims to understand the production mode of fantasy fiction translation in Taiwan by means of a macro-structural investigation. The focus in this phase of the research is on how translation agents tend to develop particular choices and directions for texts, and which socio-cultural determinants govern their decision-making process. Bourdieu's concepts of field, capital and habitus were deployed in placing the translation activity within the broader and complex social and institutional network in which translation agents operate. The strategies of the producers of fantasy fiction translations and the tensions exerted in this cultural field were examined through in-depth interviews with translation agents. The data indicated that the production of translation of fantasy fiction in the literary field in Taiwan was conditioned by the logic of the market which is inherited by the heteronomous struggles from other fields outside of the literary field, so that a tendency toward prioritising the profitability of the translated products emerged.
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Behin, Bahram. "Aspects of the role of language in creating the literary effect : implications for the reading of Australian prose fiction /." Title page, contents and abstract only, 1997. http://web4.library.adelaide.edu.au/theses/09PH/09phb419.pdf.
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Stanisic, Biljana. "Fantasy versus Reality: How video game and book genres associate with creative thinking." Thesis, Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för psykologi (PSY), 2019. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:lnu:diva-85441.
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Video games have suffered a negative reputation regarding their influence on children and adolescents, in comparison to its “well-behaved” counterpart, books. Nevertheless, the world of video games is much more diverse than imaginable – from fantasy to reality – and it is possible that different types of video games have different effects on human cognition and behavior. To fill a gap in research, fantasy and non-fantasy genres were the focal point of the correlational study. In this study, we analyze how video game playing habits, video game genre preference, book reading habits and book reading preferences are correlated with creative thinking. Construal level theory explains the importance of psychological distances in enhancing creativity. Fantasy and fiction content, as well as role play, are theorized to be part of creativity due to generation of distance and abstract thinking. Creativity was measured by insight problems and a categorization task. Abstract thinking was also measured by the Behavioral Identification Form. The questionnaire was given out to 154 students during lunch hours at a university in Sweden, throughout the period of March 2019. The results indicated that preference in a genre, whether gaming or literature, did not indicate significant differences in creative thinking. However, the consumption and habit of playing role-play games showed a significant correlation to creativity in comparison to its “rival” – action games. Results showed the same effects for fiction literature versus non-fiction. Theoretical and practical implications for organizations and the workplace are discussed, as well as limitations of the study.
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Cleveland, William. ""Why is Everyone So Interested in Texts?": The Shifting Role of the Reader in the Genre of Hard-boiled Fiction." Fogler Library, University of Maine, 2007. http://www.library.umaine.edu/theses/pdf/ClevelandW2007.pdf.
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White, Glyn. "Reading the graphic surface : the presence of the book in fiction by B.S. Johnson, Christine Brooke-Rose and Alasdair Gray." Thesis, University of East Anglia, 1999. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.302085.
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This thesis develops a critical vocabulary for dealing with the visual appearance of prose fiction where it is manipulated for effect by authors. It explores why literary criticism and theory has dismissed such features as either unreadable experimental gimmicks or, more recently, as examples of the worst kind of postmodernist decadence. Through the examination of three problematical texts (B.S. Johnson's Albert Angelo, Christine Brooke-Rose's Thru and Alasdair Gray's Lanark: a Life in Four Books), the thesis demonstrates that an awareness of the graphic surface can make significant contributions to interpretation particularly around the issues of representation in fiction and our understanding of the reading process in general. There are four large chapters divided into sections. Chapter One sets out to demonstrate both how and why the graphic surface has been neglected; the first section looks at the visual perception of graphic surface and at how that perception may be obscured by other concerns or automatised until unnoticed. Section two looks at theoretical obstacles to the perception of the graphic surface, particularly those which see printed text as either an idealised sign-system or a representation of spoken language. Section three moves on to examine how 'blindness' to the graphic surface, and particularly to its potential mimetic usage, is reflected and perpetuated in literary criticism. Section four examines critical assumptions about the transformation of manuscript to novel, and what our familiarity with the printed form of the book leads us to take for granted. Section five discusses our choice of texts and their specific authorial and critical backgrounds. Chapters Two, Three and Four deal with the three chosen texts (listed above) individually and in detail, before a concluding summary which touches on some of the implications of the project.
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Alston, Sylvia, and n/a. "Where meaning collapses: a creative exploration of the role of humour and laughter in trauma." University of Canberra. Professional Communication, 2009. http://erl.canberra.edu.au./public/adt-AUC20091215.114305.
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The thesis consists of a full-length novel and an exegesis that examines the ways in which humour can be used to restore the symbolic order and serve as a means of regaining control, thus allowing those involved in the most disturbing, painful and challenging situations to feel less powerless.
The research component of the thesis involved critical reading, fieldwork, observations, and personal interviews. The texts examined include works by Michael Billig, Henri Bergson and Julia Kristeva, in particular her reference to the act of laughing at the abject as a kind of horrified 'apocalyptic laughter', a compulsion to confront that which repels (Kristeva 1982, pp. 204-206). As part of the fieldwork, I completed training to become a Laughter Club leader. Laughter Clubs are based on the notion that laughter, even fake laughter, is beneficial. This concept is explored in more detail in the exegesis. The fieldwork also included training in laughter-generating activities for students and staff at two local primary schools. The observational component, which involved the Australian War Memorial, the 'Reveries: Photography and Mortality' exhibition, Norwood Crematorium and the children's garden and babies' rose garden at the Gungahlin cemetery, enabled me to examine images and memories of death as well as the responses of other visitors. The final component of my research involved personal interviews. The participants in these interviews were drawn from a diverse range of fields including: volunteers at a local hospice, hospital clowns, general practitioners, cancer survivors and their carers, a psychiatrist, nurses, a paramedic, a police officer, a hospital teacher and bereaved parents.
The findings from this research provided the framework for the creative piece, a novel set in present-day Canberra. The story begins one autumn evening when thirteen-year-old Sam is found unconscious and bleeding from a head wound. By the time Maggie, Sam's widowed mother, arrives at the hospital, Sam has regained consciousness. His x-rays show a large mass in his brain and he is kept in for further tests. The results confirm that Sam has an inoperable tumour. Maggie and Sam rely on humour in their interactions both with each other and with other people as a means of maintaining that 'baseline of social control' (Kristeva 1982, p. 99), staying on the edge of what Kristeva refers to as the place 'where meaning collapses' (p. 2).
Humour is their anchor, enabling them to maintain a grip on their new normality. And, as if having a dying child isn't enough to cope with, Maggie is being pursued by a handsome and slightly younger man.
Both the findings in my exegesis, and the creative work they led to, suggest that although there has been an enormous amount of research undertaken over the previous thirty or so years, there is no conclusive proof that humour can be closely correlated with health. At best, humour can provide a means of controlling that which would otherwise be outside our control.
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Gazeau, Matthieu. "Le tombeau de Cynthia : mythes, fictions et ironie dans le livre IV des Elégies de Properce." Paris 3, 2008. https://eu03.alma.exlibrisgroup.com/view/uresolver/33UFC_INST/openurl?u.ignore_date_coverage=true&portfolio_pid=53188741650006657&Force_direct=true.
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En inscrivant au cœur du livre IV et de la Rome virgilienne le tombeau de Cynthia, Properce détourne, au profit d’une femme légère, le motif traditionnel de l’immortalisation par la poésie et renverse la dialectique romaine du poète et du grand homme. Le recueil est l’épilogue d’une œuvre qui repose sur une poétique de la recusatio, refus dramatisé du grand genre, et affirme la légitimité de la subjectivité littéraire, incarnée par Cynthia. Dénouement emblématique de cette recusatio, l’apothéose de Cynthia est l’ultime fragment d’une déclaration amoureuse qui est authentique sans être sincère : elle n’obéit pas au code moderne de l’effusion spontanée d’une subjectivité idéalement transparente mais, dans un rapport dramatisé à une réalité problématique, est l’expression d’un sujet qui s’avance masqué derrière les formes et les rôles littéraires stéréotypés que sont la recusatio, le paraclausithyron, le fallax seruus de la comédie ou l’épigramme - dont le genre élégiaque est une mise en scène. Au terme de cette épopée paradoxale du poète amoureux qui doit se battre pour défendre la légitimité de son amour et de sa poésie, le drame est projeté dans la mémoire fantasmée de Rome : les variations étiologiques révèlent la contingence du récit fondateur, légataire d’une histoire produite par l’action héroïque de quelques uns, et la relativité des normes éthiques, gage de l’ironie de l’Histoire et des dieux. Le livre IV, cimetière symbolique où se côtoient la tombe de Cynthia et celle de Mamurius, l’artiste exilé pour avoir sculpté l’œuvre dangereusement équivoque qu’on lui avait commandée, est la réponse du poeta caelator au Vates horatien utile à la Ville et à ses PrincesBy placing Cynthia’s tomb at the centre of book IV and of Virgilian Rome, Propertius perverts, for a woman of small virtue, the traditional motif of immortalisation through poetry, and turns the Roman dialectics of the poet and great man upside down. The collection of poems comes as the epilogue to a work based on the poetics of recusatio, the marked refusal of the lofty style, and asserts the legitimacy of literary subjectivity embodied by Cynthia. Emblematical outcome of this recusatio, Cynthia’s apotheosis is the last fragment of a declaration of love which is authentic without being sincere. It does not follow the modern code of a spontaneous emotional demonstration poured forth from ideally transparent subjectivity. It is rather, in a staged reaction to a problematical reality, the expression of a subjectivity sheltered behind the persona of stereotyped literary forms and parts such as the recusatio, the paraclausithyron and the fallax seruus of the Comedy or epigrams, staged in the elegiac genre. At the end of this paradoxical epic written by an amorous poet who must fight to assert the legitimacy of his love and poetry, the drama is projected into the fantazied memory of Rome. The etiological explanations reveal the founding tale’s contingency, heir to a history created by the heroic acts of a few, and also the relativity of ethical norms, proof of the irony of History and the Gods. Book IV, the symbolical churchyard where the tombs of Cynthia and Mamurius, the artist who had been exiled for sculpting a dangerously equivocal work of art, stand side by side, is the response of the poeta caelator to the horatian Vates, useful to Rome and its princes