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Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Supernatural in fiction'
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1
Hall, Daniel James Alan. "Gothic fiction in France and Germany (1790-1800)." Thesis, University of Exeter, 2000. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.324030.
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Golding, Justin Alex. "Muse : a novel ; The Broken Home : defamiliarization in supernatural fiction." Thesis, Aberystwyth University, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/2160/a7f45fb0-eb57-4873-9319-5943115b201f.
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Yule, Jeffrey V. "Science, the supernatural, and the postmodern impulse in contemporary fiction /." The Ohio State University, 1998. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1487952208107624.
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Stansberry, Tonya Faye. "Imprisoned and Empowered: The Women of Edith Wharton's Supernatural Fiction." [Johnson City, Tenn. : East Tennessee State University], 2003. http://etd-submit.etsu.edu/etd/theses/available/etd-0712103-091758/unrestricted/StansberryT072203f.pdf.
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Thesis (M.A.)--East Tennessee State University, 2003.Title from electronic submission form. ETSU ETD database URN: etd-0712103-091758. Includes bibliographical references. Also available via Internet at the UMI web site.
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Herbig, Art, and Andrew F. Herrmann. "Polymediated Narrative: The Case of the Supernatural Episode "Fan Fiction"." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2016. https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu-works/757.
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Modern stories are the product of a recursive process influenced by elements of genre, outside content, medium, and more. These stories exist in a multitude of forms and are transmitted across multiple media. This article examines how those stories function as pieces of a broader narrative, as well as how that narrative acts as a world for the creation of stories. Through an examination of the polymediated nature of modern narratives, we explore the complicated nature of modern storytelling.
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Eckersley, Adrian Barry. "The fiction of Arthur Machen : fantastic writing in the context of materialism." Thesis, Birkbeck (University of London), 1995. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.250145.
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Leslie-McCarthy, Sage. "The Case of the Psychic Detective: Progress, Professionalisation, and the Occult in Psychic Detective Fiction from the 1880s to the 1930s." Thesis, Griffith University, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10072/365497.
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This thesis examines a little-known hybrid genre popular in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: psychic detective fiction. The stories that comprise this hybrid genre involve the rational investigation of supernatural phenomena. They have received relatively little critical attention due, in part, to their inability to fit comfortably in either the traditional “detective” or “ghost story” categories, in addition to the comparative obscurity of many of the writers. Typically, psychic detective narratives have been subsumed within the discourses of late Victorian “Gothic” criticism. Consequently they have been understood as manifestations of various forms of cultural anxiety because Gothic criticism is typically concerned with the transgression of boundaries and the anxieties associated with modernity. This thesis moves beyond the anxiety model of Gothic criticism by arguing that psychic detective fiction engages with ideas of progress, contemporary occult theories and the development of professionalisation at the turn of the century.
While anxiety was certainly one response to the uncertainty and rapid change that is generally understood as characterising the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, so too was optimism, excitement regarding new possibilities and a fervent desire to bring about social improvement. In particular, this thesis focuses upon progressive ideas of social reform, collectivism, relativity, the synthesis of seemingly different “ways of knowing” and the possibilities offered by new fields of study such as the social sciences and psychical research. It is the sense of possibility, excitement, and faith in the ability to improve (both as individuals and as a society), that characterises psychic detective fiction. The detectives discussed are concerned with problem solving, attempting to bring about positive resolutions to supernatural problems, and providing assistance to those in need. In psychic detective fiction resolution and understanding is most often brought about through the merging of seemingly disparate elements and the transcending of binary oppositions, rather than the traditionally Gothic mode of reinstating former boundaries and enforcing the separation or elimination of the threatening force. Psychic detectives are more concerned with forging new paths than recovering the status quo.Thesis (PhD Doctorate)
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
School of Arts
Faculty of Arts
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Brennan, Joseph Carl Linden. "I am your worst fear, I am your best fantasy: new approaches to slash fiction." Thesis, Department of Media and Communications, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/2123/5872.
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This thesis uses slash fan fiction produced for the CW television series Supernatural to suggest two new slash typologies. While existing frameworks — romantopia (concerned with sex) and intimatopia (concerned with intimacy) — are useful, I argue that many slash stories fall outside the scope of these two terms into two newly proposed categories: paratopia and monstropia. Paratopic slash is centrally concerned with psychological change or geographical repositioning and realises, like romantopia and intimatopia, potentials of homosocial desire. Monstropic slash is centrally concerned with perversity and realises potentials of homosexual panic; it is a genre of slash fiction until now unexplored by slash scholarship. To illustrate these frameworks I discuss Supernatural slash stories in detail. Supernatural was chosen to illustrate both paratopia and monstropia because it is arguably a text that promotes homosexual panic as much as it does homosocial desire. I also argue that Supernatural slash, which would ordinarily be classified as romantopic or intimatopic, is paratopic due to the changes necessary to negotiate the characters’ homophobia and authentically present them in either sexual or intimate love. In conclusion, I argue that paratopia and monstropia are useful frameworks for understanding the ‘other worlds’ that slash inhabits — worlds beyond the reach of ‘topias’ romantopia and intimatopia.
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Giblin-Jowett, Hellen. "Smell, smells and smelling in Victorian supernatural fiction of the fin de siècle." Thesis, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10443/2523.
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My PhD examines how writers at the fin de siècle responded to new understandings of smell, smells and smelling in their representations of the supernatural, demonstrating how those understandings were harnessed to nascent disciplines and technologies concerned with the limits and potential of the human subject. It recovers a lost history of smell and explains how shifts in the meaning of ‘smell’ (verb and noun) were witnessed and interrogated by writers in the period. Drawing attention to significant omissions from foundational accounts of olfaction in the nineteenth century, the thesis performs five key reclamatory readings to illuminate a number of supernatural stories. Firstly, it considers cross-channel influences on the articulation and reception of smell- description, drawing out a specifically British experience of scent that relates to the defaecalisation of the River Thames between 1858 and 1875. It then uncovers the origin, and demonstrates the literary manifestation, of analogies between music and scent. The thesis analyses how smells and noses in fin-de-siècle supernatural tales responded to new discursive possibilities afforded by late nineteenth-century developments in rhinoplasty, anaesthesia, nursing and Tractarian theology. The possible over-estimation of H. G. Wells’s reputation for early alignment with Darwinian theory is also considered through a recuperation of George William Piesse’s The Art of Perfumery (1855). Finally, it considers smellers and noses in Henry Rider Haggard’s She (1887), Richard Marsh’s The Beetle (1897), Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) and a range of prose fiction by Vernon Lee and Arthur Machen. Overall, it argues that in fin-de-siècle supernatural fiction the epistemology of smell, smells and smelling provided writers with new ways of testing, expanding and representing the boundaries of human identity.
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Morgan, Kazel Yvonne. "Not a ghost : liminal female identity and American women's supernatural fiction, 1870-1902 /." Digital version accessible at:, 2000. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/utexas/main.
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Zhao, Xiaohuan. "From Shanhai Jing to Liaozhai Zhiyi : towards a morphology of classical Chinese supernatural fiction." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2003. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/27739.
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The present research is an attempt at a morphological analysis of classical Chinese supernatural fiction known as zhiguai under the theoretical framework designed by Vladimir Propp and later developed by Alan Dundes. As to the study of Chinese zhiguai tales, mountains of work has been done, but research is usually confined either to exploration into the geographical-historical sources of these tales or to the recognition and reconstruction of society in ancient China. It is therefore believed that a systematic study of zhiguai literature from a linguistics-oriented structuralfunctional perspective will shed light on the rules governing the textual organisation of classical Chinese fiction of the supernatural and strange. This thesis will be divided into two parts with the first one aiming at a diachronic survey of zhiguai literature. In this section, the origins of this genre and its development through dynasties in traditional China will be explored with attention focused on an evidential and thematic study of zhiguai works most influential and representative of the time and of the author as well. Part Two, which will start with a review of Propp's morphological method and model, is devoted to a synchronic study of Chinese zhiguai fiction from a Proppian perspective. For each tale text selected for morphological analysis, functions will be identified, and a linear functional scheme presented, and described in terms of the sequence of functions and the distribution of functions among dramatis personae. All the structural and functional traits will be tabulated, discussed and, where possible and necessary, compared. Finally, based on a data analysis, a conclusion will be made on morphological features and structural patterns of classical Chinese fiction of the supernatural and strange. Fifty zhiguai tales will be selected for analysis from ancient zhushu (commentaries), leishu (categorised books), congshu (collectanea), or authoritative modern editions of works of supernatural fiction in classical Chinese. In the course of selection, priority has been given to those about other/supernatural beings or mortals with supernatural power as classified by Aarne as "Tales of magic" in conformity with Propp's corpus of Russian fairy tales in Morphology ofthe Folktale.
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Froelich, Leslie Abrams. "Persistent phantoms: the supernatural in victorian fiction as metaphor for an age of transition." FIU Digital Commons, 2000. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/3609.
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The purpose of this study is to explore the reasons for the great outpouring of high-quality supernatural fiction that appeared in late Victorian Britain and how these stories were influenced by contemporaneous technological, sociological and cultural changes. For this purpose, a number of literary works from the period have been chosen for review and analysis. In addition, numerous historical and critical texts have been consulted for their ability to illuminate and comment upon the significance of the fictional works. Results indicate that Victorian supernatural fiction reflected Victorian attitudes toward and anxieties about their changing world, leading to the conclusion that it served Victorians both as a refuge from their anxieties and as an opportunity to confront their problems imaginatively during a time of transition.
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Sanders, Elizabeth Mildred. "Enchanting Belief: Religion and Secularism in the Victorian Supernatural Novel." Diss., University of Iowa, 2015. http://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/5186.
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MacDonald, Deneka C. "Locating resistance/resisting location : a feminist literary analysis of supernatural women in contemporary fantastic fiction." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2003. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/5344/.
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In this thesis I examine the ways in which feminist and human geographies intersect with contemporary women-centred fantasy fiction. In particular, I consider space and place to be significant to female characters in their role as a physical presence as well as an intangible location. Thus I explore the forest, the body and the mind as territories occupied by the supernatural women. These various spatial themes, I suggest, outline distinctive locations for supernatural female characters and enable them to engage in a position of resistance from patriarchal ideologies. Through a spatial analysis of selected fiction, I reflect on challenges to notions that construct identity, gender and sexuality as well as conflict among women. I argue that the supernatural woman in fiction has been frozen in one-dimensional representation within traditional male-centred texts. This one-dimensionally, I suggest, hinges on the juxtaposition of the overly simplistic good/bad binary that has often illustrated female characters within fantasy fiction. As fantasy is a genre typically more concerned with worlds than characters, the women-centred fantasy text is unique in its exploration and pursuit of the literary character. Given the contemporary and interdisciplinary nature of this thesis, I have drawn upon filmic adaptations of texts at times to illustrate a further level of cultural awareness. The main emphasis is, however, on literary texts and, thus, reference to film is meant to supplement my textual analysis.
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Laredo, Jeanette A. "Reading the Ruptured Word: Detecting Trauma in Gothic Fiction from 1764-1853." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2016. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc862792/.
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Using trauma theory, I analyze the disjointed narrative structure of gothic works from 1764-1853 as symptomatic of the traumatic experience. Gothic novels contain multiple structural anomalies, including gaps in experience that indicate psychological wounding, use of the supernatural to violate rational thought, and the inability of witnesses to testify to the traumatic event. These structural abnormalities are the result of trauma that characters within these texts then seek to prevent or repair via detection.
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Liu, Tryphena Y. "Monsters Without to Monsters Within: The Transformation of the Supernatural from English to American Gothic Fiction." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2015. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/632.
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Because works of Gothic fiction were often disregarded as sensationalist and unsophisticated, my aim in this thesis is to explore the ways in which these works actually drew attention to real societal issues and fears, particularly anxieties around Otherness and identity and gender construction. I illustrate how the context in which authors were writing specifically influenced the way they portrayed the supernatural in their narratives, and how the differences in their portrayals speak to the authors’ distinct aims and the issues that they address. Because the supernatural ultimately became internalized in the American Gothic, peculiarly within female bodies, I focus mainly on the relationship between the supernatural and the female characters in the texts I examine. Through this historical exploration of the transformation of the supernatural, I argue that the supernatural became internalized in the American Gothic because it reflected national anxieties: although freed from the external threat of the patriarchal English government, Americans of the young republic still faced the dangers of individualism and the failure of the endeavor to establish their own government.
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Wallace, Nathaniel R. "H.P. Lovecraft's Literary "Supernatural Horror" in Visual Culture." Ohio University / OhioLINK, 2014. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1417615151.
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Burgess, Moira. ""Between the words of a song" supernatural and mythical elements in the Scottish fiction of Naomi Mitchison /." Thesis, Connect to e-thesis, 2006. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/1046/.
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Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Glasgow, 2006.Includes bibliographical references (p. 270-288). Print version also available. Mode of access : World Wide Web. System requirements : Adobe Acrobat reader required to view PDF document.
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Harris, Jason Marc. "The Angle of Desire and Other Stories." Bowling Green State University / OhioLINK, 2014. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1395068706.
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Bodley, Antonie Marie. "Gothic horror, monstrous science, and steampunk." Pullman, Wash. : Washington State University, 2009. http://www.dissertations.wsu.edu/Thesis/Summer2009/a_bodley_052109.pdf.
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Spears, Jamie. "A seance room of one's own : spiritualism, occultism, and the new woman in mid-to late-nineteenth century supernatural fiction." Thesis, University of Sunderland, 2016. http://sure.sunderland.ac.uk/6503/.
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This thesis will examine the nineteenth-century supernatural stories written by women connected to Spiritualism. These include ‘standard’ ghost stories, esoteric novels and works infused with Spiritualist and occult themes and tropes. The middle- and upper-class Victorian woman was already considered something of a spirit guide within her own home; following the emergence of Modern Spiritualism in the 1850s, women were afforded the opportunity to become paid spirit guides (that is, mediums and lecturers) in the public sphere. Spiritualism was an empowering force for female mediums like Elizabeth d’Espérance and Emma Hardinge Britten, and Spiritualist philosopher Catherine Crowe. In this thesis I will examine how these new power dynamics—to use Britten’s phrasing, the ‘place and mission of woman’—are reflected in society and literature. This thesis sees Spiritualism as the impetus for several occult movements which emerged near to the end of century, including Marie Corelli’s Electrical Christianity, Madame Blavatsky’s Theosophy, and Florence Farr’s Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Each of these women founded, or had significant input in the founding of, their respective creeds. There is an area of critical neglect around the fiction written by these women. Corelli’s works are often analysed in the New Woman framework, but rarely in the spiritual or occult; scholarly interest in Blavatsky focuses on the incredible power she consolidated, but her Theosophical fiction tends to be dismissed in favour of her treatises; d’Espérance’s fiction has not been properly examined thus far. With this thesis I hope to offer a re-reading or re-framing of this supernatural literature by placing it, and its authors, in its socio-political context at the tumultuous end of the nineteenth century.
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Harris, Jason Marc. "Folklore, fantasy, and fiction : the function of supernatural folklore in nineteenth and early twentieth-century British prose narratives of the literary fantastic /." Thesis, Connect to this title online; UW restricted, 2001. http://hdl.handle.net/1773/9456.
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McIntire, Janet E. "H. Rider Haggard and the Victorian occult." Full text available online (restricted access), 2000. http://images.lib.monash.edu.au/ts/theses/McIntire.pdf.
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Coleman, Isaiah. "Someone to Live For, Someone to Die For." University of Akron / OhioLINK, 2020. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=akron1606991158021014.
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Pelletier, Valérie. "Etude sur l'entremêlement des concepts d'histoire et de fiction dans la littérature historique et fantastique en Chine." Thesis, McGill University, 2003. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=79969.
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The fantastic stands as an important part of Chinese culture. It is in fact through its literature that it has been made possible for us to enjoy this heritage. With the study of fantastic tales and anomaly accounts, this thesis tackles the problem of rationalism in relation with supernatural. It attempts to understand the mechanisms of the intermingling of the concepts of fiction and history, through the comparison of Chinese historical and fictional texts, as well as parallels between China and Europe. It will also deal with the concepts of nature, in both the perspectives of China and Europe, and the Enlightenment.
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Hauser, Brian Russell. "Haunted Detectives: The Mysteries of American Trauma." Columbus, Ohio : Ohio State University, 2008. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc%5Fnum=osu1227020699.
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Williams, K. E. R. "Manifestations of the house in the Victorian ghost story." Thesis, The University of Sydney, 2005. https://hdl.handle.net/2123/28032.
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The appearance of the ghostly is generally described as a manifestation, and to perceive the ghostly is predicated on the act of seeing. To be manifest is to be apparent, clear, evident and obvious and a manifestation is an act of revelation, even one of proof. The genre of the ghostly however is rarely truly seen in critical works, and the aim of this
thesis is to engage with and explore the implications raised by the act of seeing within the tradition of the British ghost story. The appearance of the ghostly not only requires the acknowledgement of the existence of ‘the other’ by witnesses, but also actively prompts the viewer to see all that surrounds them in a wholly new way. With the focus firmly on the issue of seeing, this thesis seeks to examine to what extent the ghost story offers a different, and challenging, view of the rational world, and whether the ghost story is more than just an entertaining popular diversion and can actually, as Kenneth Womack suggests, operate as “a mechanism for social critique."
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Davis, Janelle J. "Snapdragon and other short stories." Honors in the Major Thesis, University of Central Florida, 2007. http://digital.library.ucf.edu/cdm/ref/collection/ETH/id/1021.
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This item is only available in print in the UCF Libraries. If this is your Honors Thesis, you can help us make it available online for use by researchers around the world by following the instructions on the distribution consent form at http://library.ucf.edu/Systems/DigitalInitiatives/DigitalCollections/InternetDistributionConsentAgreementForm.pdf You may also contact the project coordinator, Kerri Bottorff, at kerri.bottorff@ucf.edu for more information.Bachelors
Arts and Humanities
English
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Schmidt, Marcus. "Sites of Knowledge : Knowledge Processes in Online Communities." Thesis, Örebro universitet, Institutionen för humaniora, utbildnings- och samhällsvetenskap, 2016. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:oru:diva-51304.
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The aim of this study is to examine knowledge processes in online spaces. It focuses on threeparticular cases: the Bonfireside Chat podcast, the community around the computer game Europa Universalis 4, and the Supernatural fandom. By applying the frameworks of Wenger’s (1998) communities of practice and Hall’s (1980) modes of reading, it examines how these spaces and their communities engage with their respective media artifacts. It concludes thatthese processes display high levels of complexity and literacy, and that a deeper understanding of such processes is useful in developing future educational efforts, online as well as offline.
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Bomhoff, Gary. "Toward the Red Shore." Master's thesis, University of Central Florida, 2013. http://digital.library.ucf.edu/cdm/ref/collection/ETD/id/5914.
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A fictional novel utilizing third person limited narration from the perspective of the primary character, Ilya Kollide, who narrates the story as though it were happening in his head as it occurred, with frequent embellishments. He has come to live near an old mansion on the Trans-Siberian Railroad, named Neimasaurus, to find an antiquated, dusty world of faded aristocracy. Temporarily orphaned at the age sixteen by the recent death of his parents, he has traveled four thousand miles to live with his last living relative, an uncle named Demetri, whom he has never met. The year is 1990, only this is not a world where the rule of the Tsar was supplanted by the Soviet Union. Instead, it is a logical exploration of what Russia might resemble, had communism never taken root. While the fantastical may or may not occur, depending upon how the reader chooses to interpret the point of view of the narrator, the setting in and of itself is not meant to be fantastical. Ilya discovers that all the servants who work there are deaf, as is his uncle and his own now deceased parents, whom he carries around in an urn after mixing their ashes together.
While working at the great estate of the Neimasaurus family, Ilya discovers a surprising numbers of stories and people who both parallel his own experiences and serve as allegorical warnings toward his future mistakes in life. He becomes obsessed with the idea that he is to blame for his parents' death and sets out on a quest to bring redemption to the wounded inhabitants of the estate, only to discover that not everyone wants to be helped. In fact, they want him dead. They see him as an allegory, just as he sees them. To the young man Shoji Yamano, Ilya represents everything he was, and can no longer be. As such a reflection, he resolves to shatter Ilya like a mirror. The novel charts Ilya's personal growth from a neurotic wreck, incapable of normal interaction with people, to a young man capable of not just self-sacrifice, but an understanding of what it actually means to literally sacrifice himself for the well-being of someone he barely knows. He learns to value time spent with others rather than dwelling within a narcissistic and lonely fantasy world.?M.F.A.
Masters
English
Arts and Humanities
Creative Writing
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McCain, Katharine Elizabeth. "Today Your Barista Is: Genre Characteristics in The Coffee Shop Alternate Universe." The Ohio State University, 2020. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1595512930155036.
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Nye, Bret Allan. "Hauntings in the Midwest." Miami University / OhioLINK, 2013. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=miami1374166761.
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McArthur, Maxine Elisabeth. "In the gaps left unfilled : historical fantasy and the past." Thesis, Queensland University of Technology, 2008. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/20297/1/Maxine_McArthur_Exegesis.pdf.
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The thesis consists of the novel The Fox and the Mirror and an accompanying exegesis. The novel is an historical fantasy set in a world based on early medieval (12-13th century) Japan. The main characters are a young female shaman, Hatsu, and a young warrior’s assistant, Sada, who is a Buddhist believer. When Hatsu’s village and shrine are destroyed by warriors and her summoning mirror is stolen, she is abandoned by her kami . To experience the kami’s presence again, she must follow the thief and retrieve the mirror before it can be used to resurrect an ancient evil. Sada must capture Hatsu and bring her back to his lord, or his family will suffer. Yet he is entranced by Hatsu and feels guilt at the destruction of her village. He must choose whether to abandon his former life and stay with Hatsu, or betray her.
In the novel I have tried to invoke the feel of a place and time where the supernatural is as real as the physical world; I also try to imagine how a religion as alien to Japanese native beliefs as Buddhism became a part of that country’s spiritual culture.
In the exegesis I reflect upon how I used various kinds of history, both written and unwritten, to build the world, characters and narratives of The Fox and the Mirror, and thereby explore some ways in which historical fantasy, as a sub-genre of historical fiction, is capable of presenting an ‘authentic’ view of the past, in spite of its non-realistic nature. I identify three main ways historical fantasy writers can provide an authentic view of the past: by using telling details from an historical era; by incorporating documented events and persons into the story; and by portraying the world as people in the past believed it to be. Historical fantasy is different from realistic historical fiction in that it can more easily incorporate elements belonging to shared cultural heritage, such as beliefs regarding the dead and the supernatural. This characteristic involves writers in research using material that involves other ways of knowing the past—in particular the expressions of belief such as religion, popular customs, folk tales, and oral history. With the broadening of our historiological perspectives in the postmodern climate, historical fantasy based on non-documentary forms of history may come to be seen as another way of knowing the past.
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McArthur, Maxine Elisabeth. "In the gaps left unfilled : historical fantasy and the past." Queensland University of Technology, 2008. http://eprints.qut.edu.au/20297/.
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The thesis consists of the novel The Fox and the Mirror and an accompanying exegesis. The novel is an historical fantasy set in a world based on early medieval (12-13th century) Japan. The main characters are a young female shaman, Hatsu, and a young warrior’s assistant, Sada, who is a Buddhist believer. When Hatsu’s village and shrine are destroyed by warriors and her summoning mirror is stolen, she is abandoned by her kami . To experience the kami’s presence again, she must follow the thief and retrieve the mirror before it can be used to resurrect an ancient evil. Sada must capture Hatsu and bring her back to his lord, or his family will suffer. Yet he is entranced by Hatsu and feels guilt at the destruction of her village. He must choose whether to abandon his former life and stay with Hatsu, or betray her.
In the novel I have tried to invoke the feel of a place and time where the supernatural is as real as the physical world; I also try to imagine how a religion as alien to Japanese native beliefs as Buddhism became a part of that country’s spiritual culture.
In the exegesis I reflect upon how I used various kinds of history, both written and unwritten, to build the world, characters and narratives of The Fox and the Mirror, and thereby explore some ways in which historical fantasy, as a sub-genre of historical fiction, is capable of presenting an ‘authentic’ view of the past, in spite of its non-realistic nature. I identify three main ways historical fantasy writers can provide an authentic view of the past: by using telling details from an historical era; by incorporating documented events and persons into the story; and by portraying the world as people in the past believed it to be. Historical fantasy is different from realistic historical fiction in that it can more easily incorporate elements belonging to shared cultural heritage, such as beliefs regarding the dead and the supernatural. This characteristic involves writers in research using material that involves other ways of knowing the past—in particular the expressions of belief such as religion, popular customs, folk tales, and oral history. With the broadening of our historiological perspectives in the postmodern climate, historical fantasy based on non-documentary forms of history may come to be seen as another way of knowing the past.
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Friesen, Ryan Curtis. "Fictions of supernatural agency in early modern drama and culture." Thesis, University of Leeds, 2005. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.422007.
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Bonino, Vittorio. "I racconti in lingua russa di Vladimir Nabokov (1921-1942): il gioco tra reale e soprannaturale nella forma breve." Doctoral thesis, Università degli studi di Trento, 2022. http://hdl.handle.net/11572/336720.
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Title: Vladimir Nabokov’s Russian short stories (1921-1942): The game between real and supernatural in short fiction. (Italian title: I racconti in lingua russa di Vladimir Nabokov (1921-1942): il gioco tra reale e soprannaturale nella forma breve). In this Ph.D. research project, I examined several short stories written by Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977). I focused my attention on the relationship between the real and the supernatural and examined how such a relationship evolved over the years. My research aims to highlight how Nabokov introduced innovations in the European literary tradition with his supernatural short fiction. The core of Nabokov’s first short stories is a binary opposition between something that can be described as real (or realistic), and something that belongs to the realm of the fantastic. The dynamic tension between the real and the supernatural allows Nabokov to renew the European and Russian tradition of “novellas” and supernatural tales. Gradually, Nabokov phased out the fantastic elements and focused on the inner life of the characters that he unveiled through a series of epiphanic moments. The evolution of Nabokov’s short fiction reflects the crisis of the artistic representation experienced by the European intellectuals at the beginning of the 20th century. Nabokov experimented with different kinds of narratives forms to examine the condition of the Russian immigrants and how they relied on imagination and memory to deal with the pain of exile. In this regard, he underscores that only the act of remembering can give new life to the lost past thus conferring dignity to the troublesome present life. The first chapter starts with an overview of numerous studies on short fiction to determine what a “short story” actually is. I then examine the definition of “real” and “supernatural” as well as the most significant scholars’ interpretations of Nabokov’s short stories. Subsequently, I investigate the social, cultural, and historical background of Nabokov’s stories. Finally, I present a chronological list of the stories examined in the thesis. In the second chapter, I carry out the analysis of the short stories I selected for my research. Most of the stories are characterized by the presence of fantastic and supernatural elements. I divided the stories into five different sections, each dedicated to a specific type of supernatural. In this chapter, I examine the different interpretations that have been offered by Nabokov scholars and I provide a new understanding of the evolution of Nabokov’s narrative. In the third chapter, I analyze the relationship among the different short stories to draw a hermeneutic map of the transformations of the narrative core and the themes of the stories. In the conclusion, I outline the main insights of my research.
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Geldenhuys, Vincent. "A signification in stone the lapis as metaphor for visual hybridisation in the Harry Potter films /." Pretoria : [s.n.], 2008. http://upetd.up.ac.za/thesis/available/etd-11132008-191836.
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Donnarieix, Anne-Sophie. "Réenchanter le monde ? : formes et enjeux poétologiques du surnaturel dans le roman français contemporain : Antoine Volodine, Sylvie Germain, Alain Fleischer, Marie Ndiaye, Christian Garcin." Thesis, Paris 10, 2019. http://www.theses.fr/2019PA100065.
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La thèse de doctorat porte sur les résurgences du surnaturel dans le roman français depuis les années 1980 – un phénomène encore relativement peu étudié et dont ce travail propose une lecture à la fois morphologique, esthétique et socio-historique. Au carrefour entre les genres traditionnels du merveilleux, du fantastique ou du réalisme magique, le surnaturel s’invite dans de nombreux textes fictionnels, revendiquant un héritage littéraire certain, mais témoignant aussi de la nécessité de repenser ces outils théoriques qui peinent à appréhender ses contours mouvants, instables et pluriels. Anachronique et déconcertant, il remet aussi en cause le rapport de notre société à un rationalisme et un déterminisme en crise depuis plusieurs décennies, en donnant notamment corps à des imaginaires hantés par la magie, la spectralité ou le chamanisme. À travers l’étude des romans d’Antoine Volodine, de Sylvie Germain, d’Alain Fleischer, de Marie NDiaye et de Christian Garcin, ce travail cherche d’une part à mettre en valeur les formes singulières du surnaturel contemporain et leur ancrage générique ambivalent, d’autre part, à interroger les fonctions poétologiques particulières qui leur sont attribuées. Oscillant entre la tentation d’un réenchantement du monde et des effets de déstabilisation qui intranquillisent la représentation de notre temps, de l’histoire et de l’humain, ces romans déploient un espace complexe qui mêle intimement le réel et l’imaginaire et problématise les modalités de notre présence au monde – tant à l’intérieur de la diégèse qu’à des échelles narratologique et scripturaleThis dissertation explores the resurgence of the supernatural in the French novel since the 1980s – a topic that has been little studied to date and whose morphological, aesthetic, and socio-historical forms are intended to constitute the core of analysis. At the interface between the established genres of the miraculous, the fantastic or the magical realism, the supernatural elements that recur in many fictional texts point to a certain literary heritage, but they cannot be fully grasped by these categories and thus invite us to reconsider them. Through the staging of magical, spectral and shamanistic imaginaries, they also question the relationship of our society to rationalism and determinism and its crisis of recent decades. With the analysis of selected novels by Antoine Volodine, Sylvie Germain, Alain Fleischer, Marie NDiaye and Christian Garcin, this work pursues a double goal. On the one hand, it seeks to illuminate the singularity of contemporary supernatural forms and their complex structures; on the other hand, it seeks to take a closer look at the poetological functions attributed to them. By oscillating between the temptation of reenchanting the world and a pronounced destabilizing function, these novels unfold an ambivalent space that intertwines reality and imagination and strongly problematizes the forms of our existence, both within the plot and at a narratological or even a stylistic level
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Komandera, Aleksandra. "Le conte insolite dans la littérature française du XXème siècle." Valenciennes, 2008. http://ged.univ-valenciennes.fr/nuxeo/site/esupversions/9975400f-d93d-477c-8e61-060ca4e5676b.
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La thèse de doctorat Le conte insolite dans la littérature française du XXe siècle concerne la forme brève littéraire située aux confins du fantastique et du merveilleux et veut montrer qu’un nouveau type de récit court apparaît dans la littérature française du XXe siècle : c’est le conte insolite. L’appellation « conte insolite » n’est pas fréquente dans le discours critique littéraire mais la catégorie, elle-même, a intéressé plusieurs critiques et théoriciens, entre autres, M. Guiomar, J. -B. Renard et J. Goimard. Le but de la thèse consiste à saisir les traits définitoires des contes insolites et à proposer une définition de ce type particulier de récit court pratiqué par des auteurs comme G. Apollinaire, M. Aymé, G. -O. Châteaureynaud, P. Gripari, M. Schneider, J. Supervielle, B. Vian ou M. Yourcenar, pour ne citer que les noms les plus connus. La lecture et l’examen des contes et des nouvelles dits insolites et dont la classification reste ambiguë imposent deux questions : comment créer l’insolite et comme le lire ? La construction de l’univers insolite nécessite le choix de personnages, d’un temps et d’un espace particuliers. La perception du conte insolite, à son tour, demande au lecteur la connaissance des codes culturels et des règles du jeu intertextuelThe thesis The Uncanny Tale in the Twentieth Century French Literature concerns the category of short fiction oscillating between the fantastic and the marvellous and it points out the existence of a new type of tale in the twentieth century French literature. The term "uncanny tale” is in not frequent in critical discourse, though some theoreticians, like M. Guiomar, J. -B. Renard and J. Goimard, have been interested in the concept of the uncanny. The aim of this study is to characterize the essential features of the uncanny tale and advance a definition of the category on the basis of short fictions of G. Apollinaire, M. Aymé, G. -O. Châteaureynaud, P. Gripari, M. Schneider, J. Supervielle, B. Vian or M. Yourcenar, not to mention the most famous authors. Reading and examining the uncanny tale or short stories, which classification remains ambiguous, accentuate two aspects: how the uncanny is created and how it should be read. The formation of the uncanny universe consists of choosing its particular figures, time and space. The perception of this category is subject to the reader’s knowledge of culture codes and intertextuality of the uncanny tales
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Domingo, Domingo Lourdes. "El relato fantástico y la muerte del espectador : nuevas metáforas de lo sublime en un contexto de apocalipsis." Doctoral thesis, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/10803/361112.
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Esta tesis parte de un primer análisis de un corpus de largometrajes de M. Night Shyamalan que revela una continuidad estilística y temática en todos ellos. A partir de este paradigma, se ha investigado si sus características argumentales y expresivas -presentes también en un conjunto de series televisivas contemporáneas- constituyen una tendencia compartida y articulada bajo la cual observar el panorama actual de la ficción audiovisual, el fantástico como modo y su incidencia en el espectador.
Con tal fin, se han estudiado desde la perspectiva hermenéutica, la estética, la narrativa y la fenomenológica el mayor grueso de la filmografía M. Night Shyamalan y las series televisivas Perdidos (J.J. Abrams y Damon Lindelof), Fringe (J.J. Abrams), The Leftovers (Damon Lindelof), Les Revenants (Fabrice Gobert) y Resurrection (Aaron Zelman). En todos estos relatos -atravesados por la muerte- se ha detectado, por un lado, un horizonte compartido con tradiciones anteriores de tipo religioso, dramático, literario y cinematográfico y, por otro, una renovación retórica y poética a través de las metáforas de lo sublime que los mismos relatos articulan. La idiosincrasia de esas figuras provoca la pausa enunciativa y existencial en sus diégesis y la ambigüedad de las identidades que las habitan. Finalmente, de este análisis también se concluye que la lectura que desencadenan estas ficciones se caracteriza por un especial trabajo de reactualización semántica y narrativa y por una hermenéutica de la soledad del receptor frente al umbral final. De todo esto resulta una tendencia del fantástico que prepara a su espectador para la muerte.This thesis starts with a first corpus of M. Night Shyamalan’s full-length films, which reveals a thematic and stylistic continuity in all of them. From this paradigm, it has been researched whether their plot and expressive similarities are also present in a group of contemporary TV series, representing a new shared and articulated trend which is observed in the current scene of audiovisual fiction, the fantastic as a form and its impact on the spectator. To this end, the large majority of filmography by M. Night Shyamalan and the TV series Lost (J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof), Fringe (J.J. Abrams), The Leftovers (Damon Lindelof), Les Revenants (Fabrice Gobert) and Resurrection (Aaron Zelman) have been studied from a hermeneutical, esthetic, narrative, and phenomenological perspective. On one hand, in all these stories which are crossed by death, it has been detected that they all share horizons with old religious, dramatic, literary and cinematographical traditions, but also on the other hand, they bring together a rhetorical and poetical renovation through metaphors of the sublime. The idiosyncrasy of these figures causes the enunciative and existential pause in its diegesis and the ambiguity of the identities which inhabit them. Finally, from this analysis, it can also been determined that the reading of these fictions is distinguished by a semantical and narrative special work of reupdating and also by a hermeneutical solitude of the reader in the face of final threshold. This all causes a fantastic trend that gets the spectator ready for his death.
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"Imprisoned and Empowered: The Women of Edith Wharton's Supernatural Fiction." East Tennessee State University, 2003. http://etd-submit.etsu.edu/etd/theses/available/etd-0712103-091758/.
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Holladay, Melanie Butler. "Individualism possessed the supernatural marriage plot, 1820-1870 /." Diss., 2006. http://etd.library.vanderbilt.edu/ETD-db/available/etd-07212006-113702/.
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Lee, Hui-shan, and 李蕙珊. "The Study of Life Writing in Animals of Supernatural Fiction in Wei-Jin." Thesis, 2015. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/89206825031708702187.
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Handley, Christine. ""Playthings in the Margins of Literature": Cultural Critique and Rewriting Ideologies in Supernatural and Star Wars Fanfiction." 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/10222/13027.
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Building on the questions of gender and sexuality proposed by the ethnographic analyses of first wave fanfiction criticism, I identify the ways in which fanfiction may function as a feminist response to the mainstream patriarchal culture of two media texts: the Star Wars films and the television series Supernatural. To frame this argument, I question the problematic associations of Henry Jenkins’s massively influential metaphor of fan writers as “poachers,” which implicitly supports Theodore Adorno and Max Horkheimer’s vision of the lack of critical engagement engendered by popular culture. In my discussion of this metaphor and the prevalent resistance/incorporation paradigm of fan/producer interaction, I expand critical and theoretical notions of dialogue and intertextuality in terms of fanfiction works, and propose a shift in terminology for my own and future examinations of fan culture.
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Jhang, Jia-Jhen, and 張嘉珍. "A Study of Thoughts in the Life Protection Stories of Supernatural Fiction in the Six Dynasties." Thesis, 2010. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/41863555616683028304.
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碩士雲林科技大學
漢學資料整理研究所碩士班
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The Six Dynasties are an important period for the initial conceptual mergence of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism. Life protection evolved into the worship of specific creatures from the religious notions that every living thing has a soul and that people should treat living things with respect. Deeply rooted in Chinese culture, the psychology of worshipping animals and plants in nature resulted in the emergence of the life protection concept. Traditional Chinese views on life protection were inherited by Taoism and Confucianism. Taoists believe that people should live harmoniously with the times and the environment, so a good Taoist acts in sync with the alternation of the four seasons and follows the regulation originating in the concept of seasonal change that people should not engage in overhunting animals or over-logging. Taoism laid out various commandments regarding encouraging good deeds using life protection notions so as to increase motivation for the accumulation of good behavior, as well as developed the concept of divine retribution to stress the transmittal of sins with a view to strengthening the effect of restraint. Traditional thoughts were combined with Confucian ideas to grow the “Heart of Mercy.” By looking at the connection between animals and humans through the Confucian ethic, the relations between animals and humans are just like those between master and servant. As a result, people are required to treat animals with love, and inverse difference is used in life protection stories, in which animals show more honorable morals than humans, in a bid to simulate humans’ introspection and persuade them to adhere to relevant morals. After Buddhism was spread to China, the concept of reincarnation was taught and life protection stories were given a shot in the arm, believing that animals’ meaning of life is as much as humans'', and hence egalitarianism was further emphasized. The notion that killing animals would be penalized later in life was factored in, so a new element of retribution was added to life protection stories, which were newly imbued with more religious implications. Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism all tell life protection stories with the theme of loving life, and have further laid down different regulations and commandments pertaining to life protection.
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Burke, Nicola. "Mills and fur : feminism and femininity in the supernatural romance." Thesis, 2020. http://hdl.handle.net/1959.7/uws:58691.
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The contemporary supernatural romance genre is frequently dismissed as one dimensional and low quality; a genre for an undiscerning adolescent female audience that reproduces traditional and conservative ideologies of gender and sexuality. In this thesis I contest this dismissal of the supernatural romance, arguing that the genre contains multiple representations of femininity and female sexuality. These representations expose and rehearse the complex attitudes surrounding and held by adolescent girls regarding sexuality, femininity and romantic relationships in the early twenty-first century. My research focuses on analysis of Sisters Red by Jackson Pearce (2010), Low Red Moon by Ivy Devlin (2009), Red Riding Hood by Sarah Blakley-Cartwright (2011) and the Wolves of Mercy Falls series, Shiver, Linger, Forever and Sinner, by Maggie Stiefvater (2009, 2010, 2011, 2014). I argue that the texts feature progressive representations of adolescent female sexuality, presenting female sexual desire and pleasure as positive elements of adolescent girlhood. Simultaneously, however, traditional and repressive ideologies of femininity are reproduced, specifically the construction of women as inherently domestic as well as contemporary discourses on beauty, authenticity and effort. In doing so, the texts reveal contemporary ambiguity within attitudes surrounding adolescent girls and girlhood. My analysis is organised around four main themes common to the texts: the representations of the supernatural, domesticity, scent and smell and food and feasting. I argue that these representations are determined by the contemporary supernatural romance’s location between or within not only the romance genre, but Young Adult (YA) fiction and the fairy tale tradition. Each of these genres explores liminal spaces that complicate binaries such as human/animal, masculine/feminine and real/supernatural. Within the texts studied, the influence of these genres on the four themes allows for complexity and contradictions within representations of femininity, female sexuality and (heterosexual) relationships. In conducting this research, I not only analyse the contemporary ambivalence surrounding adolescent girls and girlhood as it is represented within the texts but emphasise the importance of popular literature as a site in which these attitudes and anxieties can be explored, resisted and reproduced.
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Reis, Amândio Pereira. "Writing the Unknown : Fiction, Reality, and the Supernatural in the Late-Nineteenth Century Short Story (Machado, James, Maupassant)." Doctoral thesis, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10451/43949.
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This dissertation offers a comparative perspective on the supernatural short stories of Machado de Assis, Henry James, and Guy de Maupassant written in the final decades of the nineteenth century. Contextualizing my close interpretation of the texts in this historical period, which corresponds to the birth of the modern short story and, at the same time, of the modern fantastic, I argue that notwithstanding their differences, which are also taken into consideration, these three authors similarly explore the supernatural as a subgenre that given its intrinsic association with the unnatural and, by extension, with the unknown, allows them to approach, through fiction, the various dimensions of an epistemological problem. But this epistemological problem is intimately connected with the nature and experience of literary language, which these authors consistently represent, thematize, and even allegorize in their supernatural short stories. Thus, the main goal of this dissertation is not to arrive at a strict definition of the late-nineteenth century supernatural story, but to investigate the ways in which, in different linguistic, cultural, and literary contexts, the genre resists stabilization and problematizes itself in a constant correlation with various notions of “fiction” and “reality”, as exemplified in the literary as well as critical works of Machado, James, and Maupassant. In this sense, this study distances itself from more habitual approaches that tend to analyze these authors as more or less non-conforming cases of the “fantastic” proper. Instead, I focus on how they explore and renovate the genre through the employment of diverse formal and/or narrative elements — namely, the use of multiple diegetic levels, the figuration of ghostly manuscripts, and the metaliterary representation of writing — which together contribute to form a common notion of “supernatural textuality” that has largely escaped critical attention. My final objective is to demonstrate that a close analysis of these typically neglected texts shows that they are “modern”, also, and above all, because they rhetorically, structurally, and thematically formulate an implicit reflection on literature that focuses on its imaginative ability to represent the unreal by giving shape to the unknown.Esta dissertação oferece uma perspectiva comparativa dos contos sobrenaturais de Machado de Assis, Henry James e Guy de Maupassant escritos nas últimas décadas do Século XIX. Contextualizando uma interpretação aproximada dos textos neste período histórico, que corresponde ao do nascimento do conto moderno e, ao mesmo tempo, do fantástico moderno, sugiro que, não obstante as diferenças entre eles, que são também tomadas em consideração, estes três autores exploram o sobrenatural como um subgénero que, graças à sua associação intrínseca com o não-natural e, por extensão, com o desconhecido, lhes permite abordar, através da ficção, várias dimensões de um problema epistemológico. Contudo, este problema epistemológico está intimamente ligado à natureza e à experiência da linguagem literária, que estes autores consistentemente representam, tematizam e até alegorizam nos seus contos sobrenaturais. Assim, o objectivo principal desta dissertação não é chegar a uma definição restrita do conto sobrenatural do fim do século XIX, mas investigar os meios através dos quais, em diferentes contextos linguísticos, culturais e literários, este género resiste à estabilização e se problematiza a si mesmo numa contante correlação com diversas noções de “ficção” e “realidade”; correlação que parece paradigmática nos textos literários e críticos de Machado, James e Maupassant. Neste sentido, este estudo distancia-se de abordagens mais habituais, que tendem a analisar estes autores enquanto casos mais ou menos conformes com o estrito “fantástico”. Em vez disso, esta análise observa de que maneira eles exploram e renovam o género através da utilização de diversos elementos formais ou narrativos — nomeadamente, a multiplicação de níveis diegéticos, a figuração de manuscritos fantasma e a representação meta-literária da escrita — que, contribuem para formar uma noção comum de “textualidade sobrenatural”, a qual tem escapado à atenção da crítica. O meu objectivo final é demonstrar que uma leitura atenta destes textos tipicamente negligenciados mostra que eles são também, e sobretudo, “modernos”, porque formulam retoricamente, estruturalmente e tematicamente uma reflexão implícita sobre a literatura que incide sobre a sua capacidade de representar o irreal e, assim, dar forma ao desconhecido.
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Anderson, Matthew Neil 1983. "Predatory portraiture : Goethe's Faust and the literary vampire in Gogol's [P]opmpem and Wilde's The picture of Dorian Gray." Thesis, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/2152/ETD-UT-2010-12-2171.
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Despite the fact that there seems to be no direct link between the works of Nikolai Gogol and those of Oscar Wilde, Gogol’s novella, Портрет (The Portrait) and Wilde’s novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, share many elements in common, most notably the device of the predatory portrait. This report explores the parallels that exist between these two texts and argues that they mutually derive from elements found in Goethe’s Faust and the trope of the literary vampire.text
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林婉婷. "Writing sequels and transforming the appearance of the world ： the study of Wang Tao's supernatural fictions." Thesis, 2011. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/75048310604579838036.
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