Dissertations / Theses on the topic '1819-1891 Criticism and interpretation'
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Maufort, Marc. "Visions of the American experience: the O'Neill-Melville connection." Doctoral thesis, Universite Libre de Bruxelles, 1986. http://hdl.handle.net/2013/ULB-DIPOT:oai:dipot.ulb.ac.be:2013/213576.
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Landeck, Jeffrey. "The vine and the rose : towards an aesthetics of incompleteness in Melville's sketch pieces, 1853-1856." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1999. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk1/tape9/PQDD_0025/MQ50534.pdf.
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Goddard, Kevin Graham. "Versions of confinement: Melville's bodies and the psychology of conquest." Thesis, Rhodes University, 2003. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002259.
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This thesis explores aspects of Melville’s presentation of both the whale and the human bodies in Moby-Dick and human bodies in other important novels. It argues that Melville uses his presentation of bodies to explore some of the versions of confinement those bodies experience, and by doing so, analyses the psychology which subtends that confinement. Throughout Melville’s works bodies are confined, both within literal spatial limits and by the psychology which creates and/or accepts these spatial limits. The thesis argues that perhaps the most important version of bodily confinement Melville addresses is the impulse to conquer bodies, both that of the other and one’s own. It adopts a largely psychoanalytic approach to interpreting bodies and their impulse to conquer, so that the body is seen to figure both in its actions and its external appearance the operations of the inner psyche. The figure of the body is equally prevalent in Melville’s exploration of nationalist conquest, where, as with Manifest Destiny and antebellum expansionism, the psychological and physical lack experienced by characters can be read as motivating factors in the ideology of conquest. A final important strand of the thesis is its argument in favour of a gradual shift in Melville’s interpretation of the value and possibility of genuine communion between human beings and between humans and the whale. One may read Typee as an attempt by Melville to explore the possibility of a this-worldly utopia in which human beings can return to a version of primitive interconnectedness. This exploration may be seen to be extended in Moby-Dick, particularly in Ishmael’s attempts to find communion with others and in some moments of encounter with the whales. The thesis uses phenomenology as a theory to interpret what Melville is trying to suggest in these moments of encounter. However, it argues, finally, that such encounter, or ‘intersubjectivity’ is eventually jettisoned, especially in the works after Moby-Dick. By the end of Melville’s life and work, any hope of an intersubjective utopia he may have harboured as a younger man have been removed in favour of a refusal actually to assert any final ‘truth’ about social, political or even religious experience. Billy Budd, his last body, is hanged, and his final word is silence.
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De, Villiers Dawid Willem 1972. "Interregnum in Providence : the fragmentation of narrative as quest in the prose fictions of Heman Melville." Thesis, Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2003. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/53472.
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Thesis (PhD)--University of Stellenbosch, 2003.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Herman Melville (1819-1891) remains a recalcitrant and enigmatic presence in the Western canon. This dissertation explores the radical narrative strategies engaged by Melville in the composition of his prose fictions. It is my contention that Melville's writings to an important degree constitute a subversive response to the privileged apocalyptic and teleological narratives of the day-national, ontological, metaphysical, and literary, or aesthetic-and that he primarily engages these narratives in terms of the archetypal symbolism of the romantic quest. Against this linear and goal-oriented, or plotted, progress, Melville's own narratives assert the nonredemptive forces of time, change, and natural flux, which the quest is symbolically meant to conquer and subject to a redemptive pattern. Melville's critique of the quest takes the shape of a radical fragmentation of its agonistic, evolutionary force-its progress-which is always directed towards a resolvent end. In this sense, most of his protagonists may be defined as questers, characters who seek, by some (individuating) action, to achieve a monumental point of closure. But the Melvillean narrative (even when narrated by the protagonist) always resists this intention. His rhetoric is digressive and improvisational, his style heterogeneous and parodic, and his endings always indeterminate and equivocal. Significantly, this same quality renders his prose fictions highly resistant to an apocalyptic hermeneutics that strives to redeem the monumental "meaning" of the work from the narrative itself. The destabilising questions raised in Melville's work with regard to redemptive plot and progress ultimately centre on the idea of Providence, in other words, the authorising telos that informs, governs and justifies the quest. By fragmenting this quest, Melville undermines the effective presence of Providence, clearing away what he perceives to be an illusion of control harboured in a dual but related image of the providential God and the providential author as external, "metaphysical" authorities directing their worlds in terms of a master plan toward final and meaningful closure. Melville's fiction, then, imaginatively (and philosophically) engages a world in which such stable authorising centres are absent. It is in terms of this absence that I intend to examine the nature of Melville's prose fictions. The focus in this dissertation is specifically on Typee, Omoo, Mardi, Redburn, White-Jacket, Pierre, Israel Potter and The Confidence-Man. Throughout, however, the canonical Moby-Dick and the unfinished and posthumous Billy Budd, are also drawn into the discussion in order to clarify and extend the points raised.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Herman Melville (1819-1891) bly 'n weerspannige en enigmatiese aanwesigheid in die Westerse kanon. Hierdie verhandeling ondersoek die radikale narratiewe strategiëe wat deur Melville ingespan is tydens die komposisie van sy fiksie in prosa. Ek gaan van die standpunt uit dat Melville se werk tot 'n groot mate gedefinieer word deur 'n ondermynende reaksie teen die bevoorregte apokaliptiese en teleologiese narratiewe diskoerse van sy tyd-nasionaal, ontologies, metafisies, en literêr, of esteties-en dat hy hoofsaaklik hierdie diskoerse ondersoek in terme van die argetipiese simboliek van die romantiese soektog of "quest." Teenoor hierdie lineêre en doelgerigte, of beraamde ("plotted"), vooruitgang, beklemtoon Melville se eie verhale die nie-verlossende kragte van tyd, verandering, en natuurlike stroming, dit wat die "quest" simbolies beoog om te oorwin en onderwerp aan 'n verlossings-patroon. Melville se kritiese beoordeling van die "quest" neem die vorm aan van 'n radikale fragmentering van die opposisionele, evolusionêre krag---die progressie-wat altyd op 'n beslissende slot gerig is. In hierdie sin kan ons die meerderheid van sy protagoniste as soekers ("questers") definieer, karakters wat poog, deur middel van die een of ander (individuerende) handeling, om 'n monumentale slot te behaal. Maar die Melvilliese verhaal (selfs wanneer deur die protagonis vertel) werk altyd dié voorneme teë. Sy retorika is uitwydend en improvisatories, sy styl heterogeen en parodies, en sy slotte altyd onbeslis en dubbelsinnig. Dit is aanmerklik dat hierdie einste eienskap sy fiksie hoogs weerstandig maak teen 'n apokaliptiese hermeneutiek wat poog om die monumentale "betekenis" van die werk uit die narratief self te herwin of "verlos." Die ondergrawende vrae wat in Melville se werk ten opsigte van die beslissende verloop ("plot") en progressie geopper word word uiteindelik grotendeels gekoppel aan die idee van die Voorsienigheid, met ander woorde, die outoriserende telos wat die "quest" beïnvloed, regeer en regverdig. Deur die "quest" te fragmenteer, ondermyn Melville die effektiewe teenwoordigheid van die Voorsienigheid, en verwyder daarmee dit wat hy ervaar as 'n illusie van beheer wat behoue bly in die dubbele beeld van die bestierende God en die bestierende outeur as eksterne, "metafisiese" outoriteite wat hulle wêrelde in terme van 'n uitgewerkte plan na 'n finale en betekenisvolle einde lei. Melville se fiksie, dus, op verbeeldingsryke (en filosofiese) wyse, stel 'n wêreld daar waarin sulke outoriserende sentra afwesig is. Dit is in terme van hierdie afwesigheid wat ek beoog om die aard van Melville se fiksies te ondersoek. Hierdie verhandeling fokus op Typee, Omoo, Mardi, Redburn, White-Jacket, Pierre, Israel Potter en The Confidence-Man. Die kanonieke Moby-Dick en die onvoltooide en postume Billy Budd word egter deurgaans in die bespreking opgeneem ter wille van die duidelikheid en uitbreiding van die argument.
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Pinnegar, Fred. "Women, marriage, and sexuality in the work of Herman Melville: A cultural/gender study." Diss., The University of Arizona, 1990. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/185319.
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This dissertation examines the problem of women, marriage, and sexuality in Melville's work. The general absence of female characters in his stories, his frequent depiction of horrific marriages, and his seeming reticence about sexuality have all contributed to the long-standing critical view that his writing reveals a deep-seated hatred and fear of women. In disputing these critical commonplaces, the study argues that Melville always reinforces the importance of the sexual element in human relations. His ideas about women, marriage, and sexuality are informed by his perception of a disturbing tension between men and women in his society, and he makes the paradoxes of his culture concerning gender relations central to his work. The dissertation is organized thematically to isolate and explore the primary manifestations of sexualized human relations in Melville's work: desire, frustration, marriage, transgression, and homoeroticism. Close readings of specific stories, poems, and sections of novels suggest new interpretative trajectories based primarily on considerations of how culture influences gender and sexual meaning. The introduction surveys the tradition of Melville scholarship on the problem of women and sexuality. The sources of the prevailing negative impression concerning his attitudes are traced largely to the demands of the theoretical approaches which have dominated discussion of the sexual issues in Melville's writing. Evidence from Melville's marginalia is then offered to establish the ground for a more balanced view of his perceptions. The second chapter asserts that, for Melville, much of the difficulty of human experience can be attributed to sexual desire. Within his work he probes the psychological nature of these desires, and he interrogates the cultural codes by which desire is regulated. The next chapter, on the marriage theme, locates Melville within the nineteenth century turmoil in marriage ideologies, while chapter four is an analysis of the sexual transgression motif. The violation of cultural rules through which sexual pleasure is licensed and controlled is used metaphorically by Melville to represent the individual quest for personal or artistic freedom. The final chapter describes Melville's consistent use of figurative language associated with negative homoeroticism to dramatize disproportionate power relations between men.
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Terzis, Timothy R. (Timothy Randolph). "Melville's Vision of Society : A Study of the Paradoxical Interrelations in Melville's Major Novels." Thesis, University of North Texas, 1995. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc278456/.
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I hold that Melvillean society consists of paradoxical relationships between civilization and barbarianism, evil and good, the corrupt and the natural, the individual and the collective, and the primitive and the advanced. Because these terms are arbitrary and, in the context of the novels, somewhat interchangeable, I explore Melville's thoughts as those emerge in the following groups of novels: Typee, Omoo, and White-Jacket demonstrate the paradox of Melvillean society; Redburn, Moby-Dick, and Mardi illustrate the corrupting effects of capitalism and individualism; and The Confidence-Man, Israel Potter, and Pierre depict a collapsed paradox and the disintegration of Melville's society.
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Smiley, Gregory. "The subject of descriptive movement : intensities within narrative." Thesis, McGill University, 1988. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=61760.
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Nautiyal, Nandita. ""This self is Brahman" : Whitman in the light of the Upanishads." Thesis, McGill University, 1996. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=26747.
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This thesis examines the reasons why Walt Whitman has been a "puzzle" to literary critics for well over a century. It shows the correspondence between Walt Whitman's work and the mystical tradition of East as also interpreted by American Transcendentalists. Enquiry into "self" is the central theme of most of Whitman's work. Two aspects of this enquiry have been investigated in this thesis and compared with the Upanishads: the development of self; and the use of contradictions as a means of conveying meaning. Both aspects support the view that Whitman displays a worldview not in accordance with the popular Western view in which God and man are entirely different and can never meet on equal terms. Whitman's view can be compared to that of the American Transcendentalists and Neoplatonists which finds a sympathetic chord in the native European tradition of humanistic values as well as in the Upanishads. Whitman works from a state of consciousness that is different in spirit and structure from the Hegelian dialectical principle which has wielded so much influence over Western thought. Whitman's poetry is remarkably akin to that of the Upanishadic writers in whose consciousness the subject and object have fused into one. Whitman is shown to draw his ideas from a depth of the human psyche that is often associated with Eastern thought but which is also present in the West. Four stances of self in Whitman's work have been identified which are seen to be related to, but not identical with, four states of consciousness in the Upanishads. The thesis concludes that not only is there a remarkable degree of correspondence between Walt Whitman and the Upanishads, both in respect to development of the self and use of contradictions, but that interpreting him in the light of the Upanishads provides another modern opportunity for meeting of the East and the West.
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Ku, Ting-chee, and 顧婷芝. "Confessing the impossible: Bataille,Foucault, Rimbaud, and transgression." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2003. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B31227417.
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Stedall, Ellie. "Herman Melville, Joseph Conrad and transatlantic sea literature, 1797-1924." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2013. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.648378.
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Findlay, Isobel. "Reading for reform : history, theology, and interpretation and the work of Elizabeth Gaskell and Charles Kingsley." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1997. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/ftp03/NQ29935.pdf.
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Gasyna, George. "The autobiographical act in the exile narratives of Marek Hłasko and Henry Miller /." Thesis, McGill University, 1997. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=28273.
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This study is an investigation of the autobiographical narratives of two authors, the Pole Marek Hlasko, and the American Henry Miller. Though they lived in different times and places Miller and Hlasko, share some remarkable features with respect to temperament, philosophies of writing, and modes of narrative output. In the chapters that follow I will examine both the biographical and the textual points of contact between these two men, concentrating on the problem of self-inscription in the autobiographical novels, and on the games played with identity that both men engaged in throughout their artistic careers, especially during their periods of exile.The first section provides a recapitulation of relevant biographical data together with a summary of the social and historical contexts as these affect the personal ideology of each writer. I begin with an expose of some parallels in the biographies and the autobiographical narratives of the two men, and subsequently turn to a summary of the broader polemics of authorial representation in works written in the first person. Here the traditional notion of equating the author of an autobiographical novel with its subject will be rejected in favour of examining the network of relationships that exist among the writer, the writer's cultural "persona", and the textual voice. Following this theoretical framework, I explore each author's personal script of emigration, his sense of self-understanding and self-positioning in the world, and the strategies of self-construction and self-invention undertaken both in the narratives and in the public arena. My analysis of each author's most representative autobiographical works of the exile period will finally suggest the conclusion that while the autobiographical impulse supplied the form for virtually all of Hlasko's and Miller's writing, it is the experience of exile that furnished the content for successful narrative self-revelation.
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Wilkins, Peter Duncan. "The transformation of the circle : an exploration of the post-encyclopaedic text." Thesis, University of British Columbia, 1986. http://hdl.handle.net/2429/26939.
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Any text which criticizes, undermines and/or transforms the encyclopaedic ideal of ordering and textualizing the world in a closed, linear fashion can be defined as a post-encyclopaedic text. This thesis explores both theoretical and artistic texts which inhabit the realm of post-encyclopaedism.
In the past, critical speculation on encyclopaedism in literature has been concerned with the ways in which artistic texts attempt to live up to the encyclopaedic ideal. In some cases, this effort to establish an identity between the artistic text and the encyclopaedia has led to an ignorance of the disruptive or even deconstructive effects of so-called fictional encyclopaedias. Once we recognize the existence of such effects, we must begin to examine the techniques and possibilities of post-encyclopaedism.
Hence we can see post-encyclopaedic qualities in the condensed meta-encyclopaedism of Jorge Luis Borges' "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius", the disrupted quests for encyclopaedic revelation in Herman Melville's Moby Dick and Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, and the principle of textualized world as fugue in Louis Zukofsky's "A"-12.
In addition, we can create a theoretical space for the post-encyclopaedic text by weaving together Mikhail Bakhtin'sideas on the novel as opposed to the epic, Michel Foucault's notion of restructuring the closed circle of the text through mirrored writing, Jurij Lotman's theory of internal and external recoding in texts, and Umberto Eco's concept of the open text.
By combining an investigation of theoretical and artistic texts which lend themselves to post-encyclopaedism, we can create a generic distinction between texts which attempt to be encyclopaedic in themselves: and texts which disrupt and/or transform the encyclopaedic idealArts, Faculty of
English, Department of
Graduate
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zur, Loye Tobias Percival 1985. "History of a Natural History: Max Ernst's Histoire Naturelle, Frottage, and Surrealist Automatism." Thesis, University of Oregon, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/1794/10700.
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x, 144 p. : ill. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number.When André Breton released his Manifesto of Surrealism in 1924, he established the pursuit of psychic automatism as Surrealism's principle objective, and a debate concerning the legitimacy or possibility of Surrealist visual art ensued. In response to this skepticism, Max Ernst embraced automatism and developed a new technique, which he called frottage , in an attempt to satisfy Breton's call for automatic activity, and in 1926, a collection of thirty-four frottages was published under the title Histoire Naturelle. This thesis provides a comprehensive analysis of Histoire Naturelle by situating it in the theoretical context of Surrealist automatism and addresses the means by which Ernst incorporated found objects from the natural world into the semi-automatic production of his frottages. All previous scholarship on the subject is consolidated and critically examined, and the development of frottage is traced from its earliest manifestations to its long-lasting influences.
Committee in Charge: Dr. Sherwin Simmons, Chair; Dr. Joyce Cheng; Dr. Charles Lachman
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Henchey, Karen. "The keen, settled mind : the language of the citizens in George Eliot's fiction." Thesis, McGill University, 1987. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=66141.
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Fortier, Anne-Marie. "La lecture à l'oeuvre : René Char et la métaphore Rimbaud." Thesis, McGill University, 1997. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=34724.
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The purpose of this thesis is to analyse the function and the modulations of the figure of Rimbaud in the works of Rene Char, from 1927 to 1988 approximately.This analysis, which traces the passage---from the latent to the manifest---of the figure of Rimbaud through Char's works, is situated at the junction of two series of texts, one "interior" (Char's writings on Rimbaud), the other "exterior" (twentieth-century interpretations of Rimbaud). Intertexuality, understood to mean the influence of Rimbaud on Rene Char, emerges as a reading, that is a "critique" of Rimbaud, the elaboration of a "Rimbaldian" text of which Char himself is the legatee.
What is designated in this thesis as the "metaphore Rimbaud" in the work of Rene Char refers to a process of aesthetic conceptualization rooted in the figure of Rimbaud. The "conceptual metaphor" (a notion borrowed from the works of Judith Schlanger) constructs rather than describes an interpretation. The metaphor is thus a means of intellectual invention, a heuristic act and an instrument of investigation. For Char, the metaphorical Rimbaud is the space into which he projects and imagines the work to be created. Thus, the figure of Rimbaud, through a working and reworking of discrepancies and margins, is gradually transformed by the poet and becomes, finally, a true metaphor, that is, a conceptual hypothesis which is supple and ample enough to accommodate all of Char's poetry.
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Preston, Nathaniel H. "Passage to India and back again : Walt Whitman's democratic expression of vedantic mysticism." Virtual Press, 1994. http://liblink.bsu.edu/uhtbin/catkey/902498.
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Democracy and mysticism are two prominent themes of Walt Whitman's writings, yet few critics have explored the connections that may exist between these areas. Some critics have noted that Whitman holds an ideal of "spiritual democracy," in which all people are equal due to their identity with a transcendent self such as that found in "Song of Myself," but they have not identified the best philosophical model for such a political viewpoint. I believe that the parallel between Whitman's thought and Vedantic mysticism, already developed by V. K. Chart and others, may be expanded to account for Whitman's political thought. Past studies of Whitman and Vedanta have focused only on the advaitic aspects of his writing, but in his later years he came to adopt a visistadvaitic stance similar to that of Ramanuja. In the political sphere, his concept of a Brahmanic self shared by all people led him to not only believe that all people are equal, but that they also possess the capacity to become contributors to a democratic society. Whitman felt that the poet was the primary means by which the masses could attain mystical consciousness and the concomitant social harmony. The ideal poet described in Democratic Vistas and the Preface to the 1855 Leaves of Grass serves as a mediator between the people as they are and Whitman's ideal of a completely unified democratic society and thereby parallels the Vedantic guru's function of bridging the relative and absolute levels of reality.Department of English
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Canton, Licia 1963. "The fate of the fallen woman in George Eliot and Thomas Hardy /." Thesis, McGill University, 1986. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=65544.
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Hooker, Jennifer. "From paternalism to individualism : representations of women in the nineteenth century English novel." Scholarly Commons, 2000. https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/uop_etds/546.
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Three of the most notable English women authors, Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, and George Eliot, explore similar themes of the individual, particularly the young woman, in relation to a hierarchical, patriarchal society, more specifically a crumbling paternalist society. My focus is on three Victorian novels' representations of society's transformation from a paternalistic nature to one of greater individualism; and in particular, I explore how women defined for themselves positions of power within these structures. So this study is twofold, one on representations of gender and the other of class; for the two are inseparable in discussing power relationships of Victorian women. Austen, Bronte, and Eliot understood and, to some degree, accepted the pervasive paternal values. Their novels, however, do not advocate radical social change; rather, their heroines willingly turn to domesticity. I aim to argue that each author, although dissatisfied with aspects of society, did not desire to radically alter women's role within society. The fictitious lives they created became both a representation and a critique of the ideologies surrounding them. The texts of Emma, Jane Eyre, and Middlemarch are representative of traditional social norms and yet question some of the culture's dominant codes, especially in relation to paternalism and gender. What strikes me about these novels is that although the female characters are limited by society, they are not ineffectual. Rather the authors portray women in control of their lives and able to make choices for themselves within the framework of society. My research includes social, philosophical, and political attitudes of the decades in which each novel was written, as well as personal philosophies held by Austen, Bronte, and Eliot in relation to gender and class and the influence of these philosophies in their art. Finally, my reading of the texts explicates evidences of the culture's and author's attitudes in relation to paternalism and gender.
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Roberts, Timothy Paul English UNSW. "Little terrors:the child???s threat to social order in the Victorian bildungsroman." Awarded by:University of New South Wales. English, 2005. http://handle.unsw.edu.au/1959.4/23930.
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This thesis is a study of rebellious child protagonists in Victorian bildungsroman. It discusses five novels ??? Jane Eyre, The Mill on the Floss, What Maisie Knew, Vanity Fair and Kim ??? that feature ???radical child??? protagonists who use indirect methods of narrative control to resist conservative models of character development. It argues that these novels form a subset of subversive English bildungsromane, which threaten the genre???s traditionally liberal values. Theories of narrative desire, reader seduction and discursive manipulation are used to reveal how the radical child in the Victorian bildungsroman takes command of the reader???s sympathy and gains power over the realist text, despite its physical and social powerlessness. Especially important is the presence of a fantasy counterplot, which coexists with, and ultimately undermines, the bildungsroman???s realistic surface narrative of successful socialisation. The counterplot allows radical child protagonists to develop in a non-linear manner that contradicts bourgeois ideals of stable progress. Focusing instead on sites of rupture between the individual and society, subversive bildungsromane resist both the dialectical model of character, which aims to harmoniously unite the protagonist with the realist world, and the dialogic model of interaction, which requires the restriction of personal liberty for the common good. This rebellious child in the Victorian bildungsroman thus represents an assault on the genre???s democratic ideals. Rejecting compromise, the radical child replaces the bildungsroman???s central ethic of interpersonal responsibility with an individualistic ethic of domination. Indeed, the thesis argues that the appeal of such child protagonistslies in their rejection of the obligatory, but anticlimactic, exchange of freedom for security that underpins the realist bildungsroman???s social contract, a rejection attractive to the reader precisely because it is unrealisable in reality. Finally, the thesis compares this radical child with the Gothic monster. While the monster is punished for its subversion, the radical child???s counterplot enables it to enact most of its subversive desires unpunished. The conservative English bildungsroman thus becomes a more effective way of representing asocial energies than the more obviously radical Gothic genre, which openly displays its anti-democratic sentiments.
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Kling, Jutta Cornelia. "On knowingness : irony and queerness in the works of Byron, Heine, Fontane, and Wilde." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/11824.
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This thesis identifies strategies of queer/irony in the writings of Lord Byron, Heinrich Heine, Theodor Fontane, and Oscar Wilde. Key to the understanding of irony is Friedrich Schlegel's re-evaluation of the concept. The thesis establishes an approach to the multifaceted concept of irony and identify key concepts of queer theory. The focus, however, is close reading. First, Lord Byron's epic satire Don Juan is read with regards to the interplay of narrative strategies and the depiction of gender, homoeroticism and the concept of the child. Furthermore, reviews published at the time of the publication of Don Juan are examined: Why did the reviewers reject the work so violently? Second, in Heine's Buch der Lieder we find ironic strategies that Richard Rorty subsumed into the concept of 'final vocabularies.' By acknowledging the formulaic nature of language in general and Romantic tropes in particular, Heine succeeds in subverting a heteronormative discourse on love and desire. Heine's Reisebilder – 'Die Reise von München nach Genua' and 'Die Bäder von Lucca' – depict the limits of queer/irony: Where meaning is fixed, as in the case of the Platen polemic, irony loses its propensity to contain multitudes. Third, Theodor Fontane's novels of adultery are read against the background of irony as established through a Schlegelian reading of Frau Jenny Treibel and a queer reading of Ellernklipp. The novels Unwiederbringlich and Effi Briest question notions of truth and map the danger of knowledge. At the core of this chapter lies the notion of 'knowledge management,' a strategy closely related to irony. The figure of the courtier Pentz in Unwiederbringlich becomes a harbinger of dangerous, queer knowledge similar to the way Crampas' use of Heine quotations negotiates sexually suggestive knowledge in Effi Briest. In a final step, the aforementioned queer/ironic strategies are employed to read texts by Oscar Wilde. Are the strategies as inferred in the other chapters valid for Wilde's writings as well? We find that, in a time where homoerotic behaviour was heavily sanctioned, ironic writing had become a liability. Wilde's ironies are too opaque for the reader: They have become a movement where nobody is allowed to 'play along'.
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Heterick, Garry R. (Garry Raymond) 1965. "Dethroning Jupiter : E.M. Forster's revision of John Ruskin." Monash University, English Dept, 1998. http://arrow.monash.edu.au/hdl/1959.1/8604.
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Wright, Catherine. "The unseen window : 'Middlemarch', mind and morality." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 1991. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/15066.
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Middlemarch is the novel at the centre of this thesis. George Eliot's writing, and Middlemarch in particular, is the paradigm of what has come to be known as Classic Realist fiction. In reading Middlemarch, it seems, one is introduced to a fictional world. The characters are psychologically complex, and they are presented with moral and social problems which are created and discussed with subtlety and intelligence. Until recently, critical assessment of Middlemarch has focussed on evaluation of Eliot's achievement in just these terms. The thesis begins with a question, how, and indeed is it possible for a novel to depict a fiction in this way? The introductory chapter proposes an answer to this question which opens the way to a radical critical appraisal of the status of Middlemarch as a psychologically realistic novel. The scope of the thesis is in one sense very narrow: it is on the ways in which George Eliot creates the moral psychology of her characters, and the ways in which she develops and sustains our interest in their motives, their emotions and in general their mental states and processes. My suggestion is that the language Eliot uses is deeply coloured by her commitments in the Philosophy of Mind. The argument will be that in order to take Eliot's fiction to be psychologically realistic, we are committed to sharing her unacceptable philosophical presuppositions. The second chapter of the thesis is a discussion of Eliot's novella The Lifted Veil. This is an odd piece of fiction, both technically and in subject matter. It does not fit easily into the Eliot canon, and until recently it has received little attention. The purpose of Chapter Two is partly to redress that balance but more to diagnose Eliot's philosophical commitments. The eerie fantasy of unnatural mind-reading reveals Eliot's ideas in a very explicit way. My suggestion is that in the struggle to make this fantasy coherent, a picture of the mind emerges which is both seductive and ultimately nonsensical. Narrow as the focus is, the arguments to establish my point take us deep into Wittgenstein's later Philosophy. The fundamental insight of Wittgenstein's work on the philosophy of mind was that in order to understand how it is possible to talk meaningfully about mental states and processes, we must resist the seductive, ultimately nonsensical picture seemingly imposed upon us by the grammar of ordinary psychological remarks. And if those arguments are thought to be convincing, the thesis has important negative implications for at least one important perennial question in the philosophy of aesthetics. The starting point of this thesis takes seriously the idea that novelists can, and ought to, examine themes of deep human significance. The larger goal of this piece of work has been to open up a line of enquiry which might examine, from within the Analytic tradition in philosophy, the extent to which that task is feasible. I have sought to establish an important connection between the creation of the moral psychology of fictional characters, and Wittgenstein's later work in the philosophy of mind. I believe that the examination I have conducted of the way issues in the philosophy of mind, especially those treated in the Philosophical Investigations, bear on the way Eliot writes places much of the psychological language of Middlemarch in a new light, and discloses certain quite general limits on what is possible in creating fictional minds.
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Winterton, David E. (David Edward). "Toward a natural history of architecture : the vegetal culture of Viel de Saint-Maux." Thesis, McGill University, 1995. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=22551.
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This thesis reflects on the Lettres sur l'Architechure of Viel de Saint-Maux, published in Paris in 1787. This period represents a crisis point at which classical architechure and a traditional means of relating-to-the-world had exhausted themselves. In the Lettres, St.-Maux privileges original agrarian societies who worship the natural force of fecundity and the agricultural bounty that results from it. He claims that this worship supplied the radical base for their iconographic and symbolic forms as applied to architecture. Viel de St.-Maux's privileging of the generative forces of nature as a site for sacred imagining and ritual constructions of the agricultural environment belie a relation to the methodology and epistemology of Natural History as formulated by the Comte de Buffon.Viel de Saint-Maux sought to resist the threat of an overweening rationality by valuing the wonderment cast by the discoveries of Science. He put his faith in natural science and applied this same compulsion to the ancient primitives who, he believed, knew divinely how to propitiate Nature and its fecundity. Fecundity and Agriculture become metaphors for cultural harmony, enlightenment and a re-fusion of the mystery of vitality into everyday life.
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Law-Viljoen, Bronwyn. "A hermeneutical study of the Midrashic influences of biblical literature on the narrative modes, aesthetics, and ethical concerns in the novels of George Eliot." Thesis, Rhodes University, 1993. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002279.
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The thesis will examine the influence of Biblical literature on some of the novels of George Eliot. In doing so it will consider the following aspects of Eliot criticism: current theoretical debate about the use of midrash; modes of discourse and narrative style; prophetic language and vision; the influence of Judaism and Jewish exegetical methods on Adam Bede, "The Lifted Veil", The Mill on the Floss, Felix Holt, and Daniel Deronda. Literary critics have, for a long time, been interested in the influence of the Bible and Biblical hermeneutics on literature and the extent to which Biblical narratives and themes are used typologically and allegorically in fiction has been well researched. In this regard, the concept of midrash is not a new one in literary theory. It refers both to a genre of writing and to an ancient Rabbinic method of exegesis. It has, however, been given new meaning by literary critics and theoriticians such as Frank Kermode, Harold Bloom, and Jacques Derrida. In The Genesis of Secrecy, Kermode gives a new nuance to the word and demonstrates how it may be used to read not only Biblical stories but secular literature as well. It is an innovative, self-reflexive, and intricate hermeneutic processs which has been used by scholars such as Geoffrey Hartman and Sanford Budick, editors of Midrash and Literature, a seminal work in this thesis. Eliot's interest in Judaism and her fascination with religion, religious writing, and religious characters are closely connected to her understanding of the novelist's role as an interpreter of stories. In this regard, the prophetic figure as poet, seer, and interpreter of the past, present, and future of society is of special significance. The thesis will investigate Eliot's reinterpretation of this important Biblical type as well as her retelling of Biblical stories. It will attempt to establish the extent to which Eliot's work may be called midrash, and enter the current debate on how and why literary works have been and can be interpreted. It will address the questions of why Eliot, who abjures normative religious faith, has such a profound interest in the Bible, how the Bible serves her creative purposes, why she is interested in Judaism, and to what extent the latter informs and permeates her novels.
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Lundy, Lisa Kirkpatrick. "Reverberating Reflections of Whitman: A Dark Romantic Revealed." Thesis, University of North Texas, 1999. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc279061/.
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Walt Whitman has long been celebrated as a Romantic writer who celebrates the self, reveres Nature, claims unity in all things, and sings praises to humanity. However, some of what Whitman has to say has been overlooked. Whitman often questioned the goodness of humanity. He recognized evil in various shapes. He pondered death and the imperturbability of Nature to human death. He exhibited nightmarish imagery in some of his works and gory violence in others. While Whitman has long been called a celebratory poet, he is nevertheless also in part a writer of the Dark Romantic.
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Speerstra, Jane Ellen. "Landscape and change in three novels by Theodor Fontane." PDXScholar, 1988. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/3841.
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This thesis traces and explicates the changes in Theodor Fontane's landscape depiction in the years 1887- 1892. I examine his novels Cecile (1887), Irrungen, Wirrungen (1888), and unwiederbringlich (1892). I show that Fontane, as though discarding a relic of the Romantic past, used increasingly less landscape in his narratives. He focused on the actions and conversation of his characters, and on their immediate surroundings. When these surroundings were urban, they tended to disappear. The progressive minimalization of landscape, and of cityscape in particular, foreshadowed the appearance in German literature of twentieth-century man: man alienated from nature in cities, and less aware of empirically observable surroundings than of internal forces and realities.
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Sneddon, Andrew John. "Discourses of race, place and nationalism in the writing of Neil M. Gunn." Thesis, University of Stirling, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/1893/367.
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My thesis examines the early and middle periods of Neil M. Gunn’s writing career in the context of contemporaneous debates and discourses emergent in Scottish political and cultural nationalism. I locate my thesis within a new, broad development in Scottish Studies which is adopting more rigorously analytical, interdisciplinary and theorised models of interpretation. The first chapter examines Gunn’s own nationalism in the light of other contemporaneous Scottish nationalisms and assert that it is moderate in tone but radical, being based on a model of cultural repression / resistance. I examine current theoretical approaches to the study of nationalism and adopt the analytical methods of Anthony D. Smith’s ethno-symbolism. The second chapter examines Gunn’s used of racial figures of speech and concludes that he carefully constructs a politicised account of Scotland’s early history. This account is predicated on a theory of racial essentialism communicated through the visual clue of race. The third chapter examines Gunn’s racial tropes alongside those of D. H. Lawrence and fellow Scottish novelist James Leslie Mitchell (Lewis Grassic Gibbon). I demonstrate how they share an interest in aesthetic primitivism. All three writers adopt radical political positions based on the rejection of ‘whiteness’ and modernity. The last chapter examines Gunn from the perspective of current landscape theory, and analyses how his use of what Denis E, Cosgrove calls ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ positions is figured in his novels, and in his contribution to the Highland Hydro-Electric debates of the 1930s and 1940s. I conclude that Gunn is a profoundly political writer and urge a reassessment of his oeuvre in this light.
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Koo, Seung-Pon. "The Politics of Sympathy: Secularity, Alterity, and Subjectivity in George Eliot's Novels." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2009. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc12145/.
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This study examines the practical and political implications of sympathy as a mode of achieving the intercommunicative relationship between the self and the other, emphasizing the significance of subjective agency not simply guided by the imperative category of morality but mainly enacted by a hybrid of discourses through the interaction between the two entities. Scenes of Clerical Life, Eliot's first fictional narrative on illuminating the intertwining relation of religion to secular conditions of life, reveals that the essence of religion is the practice of love between the self and the other derived from sympathy and invoked by their dialogic discourses of confession which enable them to foster the communality, on the grounds that the alterity implicated in the narrative of the other summons and re-historicizes the narrative of the subject's traumatic event in the past. Romola, Eliot's historical novel, highlights the performativity of subject which, on the one hand, locates Romola outside the social frame of domination and appropriation as a way of challenging the universalizing discourses of morality and duty sanctioned by the patriarchal ideology of norms, religion, and marriage. On the other hand, the heroine re-engages herself inside the social structure as a response to other's need for help by substantiating her compassion for others in action. Felix Holt, the Radical, Eliot's political and industrial novel, investigates the limits of moral discourse and instrumental reason. Esther employs her strategy of hybridizing her aesthetic and moral tastes in order to debilitate masculine desires for moral inculcation and material calculation. Esther reinvigorates her subjectivity by simultaneously internalizing and externalizing a hybrid of tastes. In effect, the empowerment of her subjectivity is designed not only to provide others with substantial help from the promptings of her sympathy for them, but also to fulfill her romantic plot of marriage.
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Schweers, Ellen H. "Moral Training for Nature's Egotists: Mentoring Relationships in George Eliot's Fiction." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2001. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc2868/.
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George Eliot's fiction is filled with mentoring relationships which generally consist of a wise male mentor and a foolish, egotistic female mentee. The mentoring narratives relate the conversion of the mentee from narcissism to selfless devotion to the community. By retaining the Christian value of self-abnegation and the Christian tendency to devalue nature, Eliot, nominally a secular humanist who abandoned Christianity, reveals herself still to be a covert Christian. In Chapter 1 I introduce the moral mentoring theme and provide background material. Chapter 2 consists of an examination of Felix Holt, which clearly displays Eliot's crucial dichotomy: the moral is superior to the natural. In Chapter 3 I present a Freudian analysis of Gwendolen Harleth, the mentee most fully developed. In Chapter 4 I examine two early mentees, who differ from later mentees primarily in that they are not egotists and can be treated with sympathy. Chapter 5 covers three gender-modified relationships. These relationships show contrasting views of nature: in the Dinah Morris-Hetty Sorrel narrative, like most of the others, Eliot privileges the transcendence of nature. The other two, Mary Garth-Fred Vincy and Dolly Winthrop-Silas Marner, are exceptions as Eliot portrays in them a Wordsworthian reconciliation with nature. In Chapter 6 I focus on Maggie Tulliver, a mentee with three failed mentors and two antimentors. Maggie chooses regression over growth as symbolized by her drowning death in her brother's arms. In Chapter 7 I examine Middlemarch, whose lack of a successful standard mentoring relationship contributes to its dark vision. Chapter 8 contains a reading of Romola which interprets Romola, the only mentee whose story takes place outside nineteenth-century England, as a feminist fantasy for Eliot. Chapter 9 concludes the discussion, focusing primarily on the question why the mentoring theme was so compelling for George Eliot. In the Appendix I examine the relationships in Eliot's life in which she herself was a mentee or a mentor.
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Roy, Sneharika. "The Migrating Epic Muse : conventions, Contraventions, and Complicities in the Transnational Epics of Herman Melville, Derek Walcott, and Amitav Ghosh." Thesis, Paris 3, 2013. http://www.theses.fr/2013PA030108.
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Cette thèse propose une lecture croisée des épopées traditionnelles et postcoloniales dans un cadre transculturel. Une analyse comparée de Moby Dick de Herman Melville, Omeros de Derek Walcott et la trilogie de l’Ibis d’Amitav Ghosh nous permet de cerner spécificités de l’épopée moderne postcoloniale. Celle-ci s’inscrit dans la lignée des épopées traditionnelles d’Homère, Virgile, Arioste, Camões et Milton, tout en rivalisant avec elles. Les épopées traditionnelles et modernes ont recours à des conventions qui esthétisent l’expérience collective comme les comparaisons épiques, la généalogie présentée sous forme de prophétie et la mise en abyme ekphrastique. L’épopée traditionnelle met en avant la vision d’une société unifiée grâce à des conjonctions harmonieuses entre le trope et la diégèse, des continuités généalogiques entre l’ancêtre et le descendant ainsi que des associations autoréflexives ekphrastiques entre l’histoire impériale et le texte qui la glorifie. Dans cette perspective, la spécificité de l’épopée postcoloniale semble résider dans l’articulation ambivalente de la condition postcoloniale. Ainsi, chez Melville, Walcott et Ghosh, le style héroï-comique contrebalance les comparaisons épiques opérant des transfigurations héroïques. De même, de nouvelles affiliations hybrides forgées par les personnages coexistent avec des généalogies discontinues, sans en combler toutes les lacunes créées par le déracinement et la violence coloniale. Cette vision équivoque trouve son expression la plus franche dans les séquences ekphrastiques où les textes sont confrontés au choix impossible entre commémoration de l’expérience et regard critique vis-à-vis d’elleThis thesis offers collocational readings of traditional and postcolonial epics in transcultural frameworks. It investigates the specificities of modern postcolonial epic through a comparative analysis of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, Derek Walcott’s Omeros, and Amitav Ghosh’s Ibis trilogy. It explores how these works emulate, but also rival, the traditional epics of Homer, Virgil, Ariosto, Camões, and Milton. Both traditional and postcolonial epic rely on generic conventions in order to aestheticize collective experience, setting it against the natural world (via epic similes), against history and imperial destiny (via genealogy and prophecy), and against the epic work itself (via ekphrasis). However, traditional epic emphasizes a unified worldview, characterized by harmonious conjunctions between trope and diegesis, genealogical continuities between ancestor and descendant, and self-reflexive ekphrastic associations between imperial history and the epic text commissioned to glorify it. From this perspective, the specificity of postcolonial epic can be formulated in terms of its ambivalent articulation of the postcolonial condition. In the works of Melville, Walcott, and Ghosh, tropes of heroic transfiguration are held in check by the mock-heroic, while empowering self-adopted hybrid affiliations co-exist, but cannot entirely compensate for, discontinuous genealogies marked by displacement, deracination, and colonial violence. This ambivalence finds its most powerful expression in the ekphrastic sequences where the postcolonial texts are most directly confronted with the impossible choice between commemorating experience and being critical of such commemoration
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Pimentel, A. Rose. "'The divine voice within us' : the reflective tradition in the novels of Jane Austen and George Eliot." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/2583.
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This thesis argues that a ‘tradition of moral analysis’ between Jane Austen and George Eliot — a common ground which has been identified by critics from F.R. Leavis to Gillian Beer, but never fully explored — can be illuminated by turning to what this thesis calls ‘the reflective tradition’. In the eighteenth century, ideas about reflection provided a new and influential way of thinking about the human mind; about how we come to know ourselves and the world around us through the mind. The belief in the individual to act as his/her own guide through the cultivation of a reflective mind and attentiveness to a reflective voice emerges across a wide range of discourses. This thesis begins with an examination of reflection in the philosophy, children’s literature, novels, poetry, educational tracts and sermons that would have been known to Austen. It then defines Austen’s development of reflective dynamics by looking at her six major novels; finally, it analyzes Middlemarch to define Eliot’s proximity to this aspect of Austen’s art. The thesis documents Eliot’s reading of Austen through the criticism of G. H. Lewes to support a reading of Eliot’s assimilation of an Austenian attention to mental processes in her novels. Reflection is at the heart of moral life and growth for both novelists. This thesis corrects a tendency in Austen’s reception to focus on the mimetic aspect of her art, thereby overlooking the introspective sense of reflection. It offers new insights into Austen’s and Eliot’s work, and it contributes to an understanding of the development of the realist novel and the ethical dimension in the role of the novel reader.
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White, Michael James. "The theme and poetic function of space in Theodor Fontane's works." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/969.
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This thesis proposes a new view of space in Theodor Fontane’s writing as both a mode of literary expression and an object of literary inquiry: space serves a poetic function and is a thematic concern. The research draws on theories of literary space which focus on spatial structures and topographies, as well as those which provide critical tools for analysing individual passages of description, especially focalisation, which elucidates the influence of the viewing figure in the text. Significantly, the subjective experience of a perceptive observer is central to Fontane’s conception of aesthetic processes, and as a result, an analysis of spatial representation often uncovers reflexive discourses on art, its function and value. On the basis of this insight, this study provides new readings of a range of texts, including less well-established and non-fictional works, as well as recognised masterpieces. In Fontane’s local travelogues, the Wanderungen, the poetic function of space is rare, while many passages reflect on the environment’s potential significance. The early novels explore spatial representation as a means of constructing textual symbolism. Spatial representation in Vor dem Sturm functions as a strategy of relativisation; in Schach von Wuthenow and Graf Petöfy topographies and pregnant descriptions serve as commentaries on characters’ levels of awareness. The mature novels Irrungen Wirrungen and Unwiederbringlich explore the sources and practical implications of reading objects in the world as signs. Space retains its formal role, but the represented figural experience of the novels’ worlds becomes a vehicle for reflexive analysis of the world’s perceived meanings. Similarly, in Der Stechlin different types of relationships with exterior reality are expressed spatially, and, as elsewhere, the capacity for aesthetic appreciation is represented positively. This entails and indeed produces critical distance towards modernity: isolated Stechlin is a locus of poetry, a testament to literature’s importance and vitality.
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Casagrande, Giuliano Tommasini 1980. "Deus, a alma imaterial e a dúvida global : as ¿Meditações¿ cartesianas à luz da crítica de Schlick e Carnap aos enunciados metafísicos." [s.n.], 2013. http://repositorio.unicamp.br/jspui/handle/REPOSIP/281922.
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Orientador: Enéias Júnior ForlinDissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas
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Resumo: Nas Meditações, Descartes faz uso de todos os argumentos céticos imagináveis com o objetivo de abalar as crenças em que se baseia a visão natural de mundo e descobrir se há alguma verdade infensa à dúvida. Após constatar a existência indubitável do eu pensante e determinar sua natureza, Descartes procura salvar, por meio da demonstração da existência de um Deus veraz, o valor objetivo das idéias sensíveis. Neste trabalho, partindo da premissa de que o único subjetivismo autêntico é originário de uma dúvida cética como a cartesiana, investigaremos a hipótese de que tal solo da subjetividade é desprovido de sentido porque a atitude crítica de avaliação do conhecimento de que ele resulta pressupõe uma ordem de generalização e de abrangência naturalmente insustentáveis. Para tanto, utilizaremos a crítica de Schlick e Carnap às proposições externas (globais). Com efeito, a dúvida cartesiana não diz respeito a uma parcela do mundo, mas ao mundo em sua totalidade. O problema estaria na extensão da dúvida e no caráter espiritual atribuído ao ego. De maneira análoga, o conceito de um Deus metafísico (indiferente aos elementos do sistema do mundo empírico) estaria sujeito à mesma acusação de falta de sentido formulada por Schlick-Carnap
Abstract: In his Meditations, Descartes employs all imaginable skeptical arguments in order to shake the beliefs that ground the natural worldview and to find if there is some truth beyond doubt. After discovering the indubitable existence of the thinking self and determining its nature, Descartes tries to save, by demonstrating the existence of a truthful God, the objective value of sensible ideas. In this work, assuming that the only genuine subjectivism comes from a skeptical doubt like Descartes', we will investigate the hypothesis that such subjectivism is devoid of any sense, because the critical attitude of evaluation of knowledge from where it results presupposes a naturally unsustainable generalization and scope. In order to do that, we will employ the critique of external (global) propositions developed by Schlick and Carnap. Indeed, the Cartesian doubt is not related to a part of the world, but to the world as whole. The problem would lie in the extent of doubt and in the spiritual character assigned to the ego. In the same way, the concept of a metaphysical God, indifferent to the elements of the empirical framework, would be subjected to the same accusation of lack of sense formulated by Schlick-Carnap
Mestrado
Filosofia
Mestre em Filosofia
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崔雪櫻. "胡適詞學主張及創作實踐." Thesis, University of Macau, 2011. http://umaclib3.umac.mo/record=b2485504.
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Alves, Carlos Miguel Botao. "Os sonetos de Antero de Quental : uma leitura do Budismo Indiano." Thesis, University of Macau, 1998. http://umaclib3.umac.mo/record=b1636637.
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Batista, Miguel. "Bildung and initiation : interpreting German and American narrative traditions." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2003. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/14616.
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This thesis is divided into two main parts. The first, comprising the three initial chapters, looks, in chapter one, at the specifically German origins of the Bildungsroman, its distinctive features, and the difficulties surrounding its transplantation into the literary contexts of other countries. Particular attention is paid to the ethical dimension of the genre, i.e. to the relation between the individual self and the exterior world, and how it affects individual formation. The focus then shifts to American literature, and the term 'narrative of initiation' is recommended as a credible alternative to 'Bildungsroman'. Allowing for similarities between them, it is none the less strongly suggested that the Bildungsroman of German origin and the American narrative of initiation should be seen as being intrinsically different, principally because of the different cultural backgrounds that shaped them. Several features of the theme of initiation are postulated as decisive factors in the discrepancies between the initiatory narrative and the Bildungsroman. Analysis of six texts - three of each literary tradition - follows, to provide support for the theoretical discussion of the terms introduced in chapter one. Three Bildungsromane are considered in the second chapter, namely Goethe's Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, Stifter's Der Nachsommer and Keller's Der grune Heinrich, and three narratives of initiation in chapter three: Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Crane's The Red Badge of Courage and Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio. Their relevance to the tradition of German and American fiction as a whole and as precursors of Mann's Der Zauberberg and Hemingway's The Nick Adams Stories is considered. A direct comparison between Mann's and Hemingway's texts constitutes the second part of this thesis, wholly contained in chapter four. In addition to a comprehensive critical reading of both narratives, the contemporaneity of Der Zauberberg and The Nick Adams Stories is taken into account, and consequently special consideration is given to the texts' close relation with the cultural and historical realities of the early twentieth century, particularly the impact of the First World War. With the assistance of Jung's theories, an increased awareness of death and of the dark side of the psyche - though dealt with differently in both texts - is put forward as a significant factor in the deviation of Der Zauberberg and The Nick Adams Stories from the traditions of the Bildungsroman and of the narrative of initiation. This departure leads to a re-appraisal of the relation between the protagonists and their society, and to a new ethical attitude that presupposes different, more modem conceptions of what Bildung and initiation represent in the context of the early twentieth century. How and why they changed and if they survived as literary notions are questions this thesis attempts to answer.
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Phiri, Aretha Myrah Muterakuvanthu. "Toni Morrison and the literary canon whiteness, blackness, and the construction of racial identity." Thesis, Rhodes University, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002255.
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Toni Morrison, in Playing in the Dark, observes the pervasive silence that surrounds race in nineteenth-century canonical literature. Observing the ways in which the “Africanist” African-American presence pervades this literature, Morrison has called for an investigation of the ways in which whiteness operates in American canonical literature. This thesis takes up that challenge. In the first section, from Chapters One through Three, I explore how whiteness operates through the representation of the African-American figure in the works of three eminent nineteenth-century American writers, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Walt Whitman, and Mark Twain. The texts studied in this regard are: Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Leaves of Grass, and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. This section is not concerned with whether these texts constitute racist literature but with the ways in which the study of race, particularly whiteness, reveals the contradictions and insecurities that attend (white American) identity. As such, Morrison’s own fiction, written in response to white historical representations of African-Americans also deserves attention. The second section of this thesis focuses on Morrison’s attempt to produce an authentically “black” literature. Here I look at two of Morrison’s least studied but arguably most contentious novels particularly because of what they reveal of Morrison’s complex position on race. In Chapter Four I focus on Tar Baby and argue that this novel reveals Morrison’s somewhat essentialist position on blackness and racial, cultural, and gendered identity, particularly as this pertains to responsibilities she places on the black woman as culture-bearer. In Chapter Five I argue that Paradise, while taking a particularly challenging position on blackness, reveals Morrison’s evolving position on race, particularly her concern with the destructive nature of internalized racism. This thesis concludes that while racial identities have very real material consequences, whiteness and blackness are ideological and social constructs which, because of their constructedness, are fallible and perpetually under revision.
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Hennequet, Claire. "L'identité poétique de la nation. Walt Whitman, José Marti, Aimé Césaire." Thesis, Paris 3, 2014. http://www.theses.fr/2014PA030085/document.
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Dans l’Amérique et les Caraïbes des XIXe et XXe siècles, l’œuvre du poète national est au cœur d’un trafic d’images qui nourrit un lien social fragile dans un temps où les collectivités reposent moins sur un lien direct entre leurs membres que sur un lien imaginé. Prenant ses distances vis-à-vis des représentations en circulation à son époque, comme les représentations exotiques de la nature, le poète offre une vision démocratique ambitieuse pour l’avenir de la communauté à travers des images nouvelles du territoire, du peuple, de l’esclavage et de l’histoire. L’ethos auctorial encourage l’appropriation de ce discours par le lecteur en désignant le poète comme figure de référence. Mais c’est surtout à travers son procédé d’écriture qui met à mal les normes littéraires de son temps que celui-ci est à même d’influer sur la société. Plutôt qu’ils ne parviennent à saisir l’esprit de leur peuple, Whitman, Martí et Césaire participent par leur travail sur le fragment, les formes populaires ou le tremblement du sens à la création d’un devenir collectifIn 19th and 20th centuries America and West Indies, the national poet’s works lay at the centre of a traffic of images. This traffic feeds the fragile social ties of young collectivities, at a time when communities are bound by imagination rather than by direct contact between their members. Distancing themselves from the representations of the community circulating at that time, like the exotic images of the New World’s nature, the poet offers an ambitious democratic vision for the future which is channeled through images of the territory, the people, slavery and history. The poet’s ethos encourages the reader to appropriate this discourse by presenting the author as a role model. However, it is mainly thanks to his style, at odds with the literary norms of his time, that the poet is able to act upon society. Whitman, Martí and Césaire do not so much contrive to capture their people’s spirit, as they participate through their work on the fragment, on popular poetical forms or on the destabilizing of meaning, in the creation of a common devenir
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Guérin, Hélène. "François Sabatier (1818-1891) : lire, traduire et écrire l'histoire l'art : les chemins d'un critique d'art et mécène fouriériste vers une Histoire de l'art." Thesis, Montpellier 3, 2015. http://www.theses.fr/2015MON30074.
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Notre thèse porte sur François Sabatier (1818, Montpellier – 1891, Lunel), époux de la cantatrice Caroline Ungher, traducteur de Goethe et Schiller, connu comme critique et mécène fouriériste à travers la publication de son Salon de 1851 à la Librairie phalanstérienne et la commande du décor de son palais florentin à des artistes fouriéristes (Bouquet, Ottin, Papéty). L'utilisation de sources inutilisées, ses manuscrits et la reconstitution de sa bibliothèque léguée à Montpellier permettent de reconsidérer les rapports à l'art de François Sabatier. Sa formation, entre fréquentation des artistes (Courbet, Hébert, Ricard, Lefuel, Lessore), voyages, séjours et résidences (Allemagne, Grèce, Italie), lectures et rencontres des auteurs est ainsi mieux connue. Ce que sa critique doit à celle-ci est éclairé de même que son ambition théorique. Enfin, sa participation pratique à des débats artistiques et historiques contemporains, le réalisme, l'attribution du palais de la Zisa à Palerme et les techniques de restaurations des mosaïques en Sicile, font apparaître d'importantes contributions. Les réseaux qui constituent sa sociabilité et ses engagements révèlent des auteurs comme Amari, Di Marzo, Michelet, Villari, Schnaase, Gregorovius, et des acteurs de la conservation des œuvres, Salinas, Riolo. La démarche suivie, qui s'est appuyée sur le catalogage de sa bibliothèque et le relevé des dédicaces et notes en marge des ouvrages, permet donc de préciser la nature de ses rapports à l'art, plus étendus que la critique, le mécénat et la collectionThis thesis focuses on François Sabatier (1818, Montpellier - 1891, Lunel), husband of the singer Caroline Ungher and translator of Goethe and Schiller, known as a patron and Fourierist critic through the publication of his Salon de 1851 in the Librairie phalanstérienne and his selection of the decor of his Florentine palace by Fourierist artists (Bouquet, Ottin, Papety). The utilisation of previously unused historical sources, of his manuscripts and the reconstruction of his library, which was bequeathed to Montpellier, allow one to reconsider Sabatier's relationship to art. As a result, his formation, which includes his association with artists (Courbet, Hébert, Ricard, Lefuel, Lesscore), his journeys and residencies (in Germany, Greece, Italy), his readings and meetings with authors is now better known. Consequently, his critique and his theoretical ambitions appear in a new light. Finally, his engagement in contemporary artistic and historical debates, realism, awarding of the Zisa palace to Palermo and techniques for restauring mosaics in Sicily all exemplify his important contributions. The networks constituting his sociability and engagements include authors such as Amari, Di Marzo, Michelet, Villari, Schnaase, Gregorovius, and such conservators of art works as Salinas and Riolo. The approach followed here is based on the cataloging of his library and the recording of his inscriptions and marginal notes in books, and allows one to specify the nature of his relationship to art, which goes far beyond critique, patronage and collection
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Figueira, Vinicius Duarte. "Jornada rumo ao crepúsculo : uma leitura nietzschiana de Moby-Dick." reponame:Biblioteca Digital de Teses e Dissertações da UFRGS, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/10183/10975.
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Este trabalho é de natureza teórica e estuda a obra Moby-Dick, de Herman Melville, à luz da filosofia antimetafísica de Friedrich Nietzsche, mais especificamente como está concretizada em Sobre verdade e mentira em sentido extramoral e Crepúsculo dos ídolos. Demonstra-se que as indagações de fundo ontológico presentes na obra de Melville encontram resposta parcial na noção de impossibilidade metafísica do pensador alemão. Para tal demonstração, recorre-se, em primeiro lugar, a uma sistematização do pensamento de Nietzsche e, em segundo, a uma abordagem interpretativa e compreensiva do texto de Melville, acentuada por meio do diálogo com a filosofia do próprio Nietzsche e, alternativamente, de Heidegger. Em conformidade com Iser, a compreensão dos sentidos do texto literário aqui estudado é realizada pelo trabalho de interpretação e estabelecimento de sentidos perpetrado pelo leitor, seja na fixação do que está claramente dado no texto, seja na busca dos sentidos lacunares, não claramente formulados e verbalizados.This is a theoretical work on Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick and its relation with the anti-metaphysical philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche as found especially in Twilight of the Idols and On Truth and Lie in an Extramoral Sense. It is shown that the ontological nature of Moby-Dick, the novel, finds a partial answer in the notion of metaphysical impossibility developed by the German philosopher. In order to accomplish this goal, a systematization of Nietzsche’s thought was made, so that an interpretative approach of the literary text could be carried out emphasizing a dialogue with his philosophy, and, alternatively, Heidegger’s. In compliance with Iser, this study takes into consideration the fact that comprehension is achieved through interpretation and what the reader is able to perceive in the literary text, either reinforcing what is already given there, or searching for what is unformulated and non-verbalized in it.
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Long, Kim Martin. "The American Eve: Gender, Tragedy, and the American Dream." Thesis, University of North Texas, 1993. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc277633/.
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America has adopted as its own the Eden myth, which has provided the mythology of the American dream. This New Garden of America, consequently, has been a masculine garden because of its dependence on the myth of the Fall. Implied in the American dream is the idea of a garden without Eve, or at least without Eve's sin, traditionally associated with sexuality. Our canonical literature has reflected these attitudes of devaluing feminine power or making it a negative force: The Scarlet Letter, Moby-Dick, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Great Gatsby, and The Sound and the Fury. To recreate the Garden myth, Americans have had to reimagine Eve as the idealized virgin, earth mother and life-giver, or as Adam's loyal helpmeet, the silent figurehead. But Eve resists her new roles: Hester Prynne embellishes her scarlet letter and does not leave Boston; the feminine forces in Moby-Dick defeat the monomaniacal masculinity of Ahab; Miss Watson, the Widow Douglas, and Aunt Sally's threat of civilization chase Huck off to the territory despite the beckoning of the feminine river; Daisy retreats unscathed into her "white palace" after Gatsby's death; and Caddy tours Europe on the arm of a Nazi officer long after Quentin's suicide, Benjy's betrayal, and Jason's condemnation. Each of these male writers--Hawthorne, Melville, Twain, Fitzgerald, and Faulkner--deals with the American dream differently; however, in each case the dream fails because Eve will not go away, refusing to be the Other, the scapegoat, or the muse to man's dreams. These works all deal in some way with the notion of the masculine American dream of perfection in the Garden at the expense of a fully realized feminine presence. This failure of the American dream accounts for the decidedly tragic tone of these culturally significant American novels.
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Goodrum, Emily A. "Herman Melville's Moby-Dick : hermeneutics and epistemology in Ishmael's seafaring." Thesis, 2002. http://hdl.handle.net/1957/27534.
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Goldfarb, Nancy D. ""Charity Never Faileth": Philanthropy in the Short Fiction of Herman Melville." Thesis, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/1805/6298.
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Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)This dissertation analyzes the critique of charity and philanthropy implicit in Melville’s short fiction written for periodicals between 1853 and 1856. Melville utilized narrative and tone to conceal his opposition to prevailing ideologies and manipulated narrative structures to make the reader complicit in the problematic assumptions of a market economy. Integrating close readings with critical theory, I establish that Melville was challenging the new rhetoric of philanthropy that created a moral identity for wealthy men in industrial capitalist society. Through his short fiction, Melville exposed self-serving conduct and rationalizations when they masqueraded as civic-minded responses to the needs of the community. Melville was joining a public conversation about philanthropy and civic leadership in an American society that, in its pursuit of private wealth, he believed was losing touch with the democratic and civic ideals on which the nation had been founded. Melville’s objection was not with charitable giving; rather, he objected to its use as a diversion from honest reflection on one’s responsibilities to others.
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Murray, E. M. "The significance of utterance and silence in the shift from rebellion to continuity in George Eliot's novels." Thesis, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10210/9383.
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D.Litt. et Phil. (English)This study investigates George Eliot's approach to the existential dilemma of her times, the collision of the individual with the general. It takes into account the historical context in which political radicalism and religious controversy threatened the stability and continuity of the individual and of society. The novels fictionalize the philosophical ideas expressed in earlier writings in terms of the individual experience of the characters. Each of the eight chapters is devoted to one ofthe novels and is discussed in chronological order of publication. Reference is made to George Eliot's letters and essays where relevant. The affinities of George Eliot with Auguste Comte and with Wordsworth are also considered. The nature and extent of a protagonist's rebellion is defined as it appears in each specific novel. The forms of active and passive rebellion are diverse. An utterance, usually an extended speech act made in complete sincerity, is a visible sign of the shift of consciousness which occurs when the individual moves from a state of rebellion to one of continuity of being. The two main categories of utterance are those of confession and those of commitment. The continuity of being towards which the individual strives consists of a belief in the innate goodness of the individual and trust in another sympathetic human being to release the good. Chapter One, Scenes of Clerical Life and Chapter Two, Adam Bede, emphasize the ceI,ltral role of a confessional utterance in the attainment of coherence of self. Chapters Three to Six focus on the novels published between 1860 and 1866 that are marked by key utterances of commitment and belief, arising from a sympathetic feeling towards another person. In The Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner and Romola, the pervasive Antigone theme is evaluated in which there is an opposition of two equally valid claims proposed by characters uttering contrary points of view in their expression of a rebellion against accepted norms. With the novel Felix Holt in Chapter Six, a political dimension appears and is further emphasized in the criticism of contemporary mores of the last two...
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Tridgell, Susan. "Treatment of emotion in the novels of George Eliot." Master's thesis, 1997. http://hdl.handle.net/1885/145286.
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Beales, Brodie Jane. "Becoming-Dionysian : art, exploration and the human condition in the works of Rimbaud, Burroughs and Bacon / Brodie Beales." 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/2440/22229.
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Bibliography: p. 313-324.xii, 324 p., [31] leaves of plates : col. ill. ; 30 cm.
Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library.
Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, School of Humanities, 2005
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"李劼人三部曲硏究." 2002. http://library.cuhk.edu.hk/record=b5895967.
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黃華昌."2002年5月"
論文 (哲學碩士)--香港中文大學, 2002.
參考文獻 (leaves 98-102)
附中英文提要.
"2002 nian 5 yue"
Huang Huachang.
Lun wen (zhe xue shuo shi)--Xianggang Zhong wen da xue, 2002.
Can kao wen xian (leaves 98-102)
Fu Zhong Ying wen ti yao.
Chapter 第一章. --- 李劼人生平、作品及其研究槪況 --- p.1
Chapter 第二章. --- 三部曲與歷史小說 --- p.8
Chapter 2.1 --- 歷史小說文類介說 --- p.8
Chapter 2.2 --- 三部曲的歷史小說特色 --- p.17
Chapter 2.2a --- 《死水微瀾》´ؤ´ؤ淡遠的歷史背景下的小鎭故事 --- p.18
Chapter 2.2b --- 《暴風雨前》´ؤ´ؤ風雨將至，歷史的步履漸重 --- p.25
Chapter 2.2c --- 《大波》´ؤ´ؤ滾滾浪濤，何以安身 --- p.32
Chapter 2.3 --- 三部曲與中國現代歷史小說 --- p.41
Chapter 第三章´Ø --- 三部曲的「民間」寫作與三十年代文學 --- p.46
Chapter 第四章´Ø --- 李劼人的三部曲與茅盾的《子夜》´ؤ´ؤ兩種敘述歷史的模式 --- p.61
Chapter 第五章. --- 男女情慾故事´ؤ´ؤ個人空間與歷史空間 --- p.71
Chapter 第六章´Ø --- 新舊版《大波》比較 --- p.81
Chapter 第七章´Ø --- 總結 --- p.93
附錄：保路運動大事表 --- p.95
參考書目 --- p.101
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Thomas, Christian Erik. ""Ich werde ganz einfach telegraphieren" : Subjekte, Telegraphie, Autonomie und Fortschritt in Theodor Fontanes Gesellschaftsromanen." Thesis, 2002. http://hdl.handle.net/2429/13565.
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"Ich werde ganz einfach telegraphieren" — Subjekte, Telegraphie, Autonomie und
Fortschritt in Theodor Fontanes Gesellschaftsromanen
Electronic media influence our thoughts and behaviours. Our present situation resembles
that of the industrial world in the late nineteenth century, when electrical telegraphy, the
precursor of today's media technologies, gained a dominant position in
telecommunications. In our day, conditioning prevents us from reaching a deeper
understanding of our relationship to technical media. Because electrical media were still
new in the late nineteenth century, observers then were more readily able to analyse their
effects and to recognize potentials of subjects in their accounts. In Germany the writer
Theodor Fontane demonstrated through depictions in his late novels of society that, by
reflecting on the nature of the self and its relation to telegraphy and concomitant
ideologies, subjects have the capacity to become aware not only of factors that control
them, but also of their autonomous potentials. This consciousness provides the basis for
their self-empowerment in the use of telegraphy. However, because Fontane critically
depicts Wilhelminian society, his protagonists only attain this level of Consciousness in
isolated instances. Its realisation is continuously achieved through Fontane's narrative
depiction and its reconstruction by the readers. The image of the subject and its
potentials that emerges in this reconstruction provides valuable insights applicable also to
evaluations of our present media involvement. Contrary to a wide-spread belief as to
subjects'powerlessness and insignificance, our findings imply that the position of
subjects in relation to media can be described more positively.
Fontane's depiction is concentrated in three identifiable areas, in which the
conjunction of telegraphy and ideology exerts a controlling influence on subjects. In
accordance with this focus our study examines the views of nature and technology as
fateful forces, the alteration of time- and space experiences, and the construction of
German, foreign and technical cultures.
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Van, Hyning Jennifer Lyn. "Narrating the self: realism in the works of Theodor Fontane and Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach." Thesis, 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/2152/2354.
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