Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Australian fiction – 20th century – History and criticism'

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1

Wang, Labao. "Australian short fiction in the 1980s : continuity and change." Thesis, The University of Sydney, 1999. https://hdl.handle.net/2123/27583.

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This thesis offers a critical survey and a comprehensive bibliography of the Australian short story in the 1980s. Conceived partly as an continuation of Stephen Torre’s study of Australian short fiction of the 1940-1980 period, it starts where Torre’s thesis stopped, focusing on Australian short story writing published in the ten years between 1981 and 1990. Torre has summed up the 1940-1980 period as ‘a time of development and innovation’ in the history of Australian short fiction. In comparison, the 1980s is probably best described as a decade of unprecedented expansion and diversification. During that time, Australian short fiction broke away from its earlier domination by monolithic traditions and became a much more eclectic and pluralistic form. Contributing to this eclecticism and plurality were five different streams of story writing created by five separate groups of writers. Due to constraints of space, the critical text of the thesis examines only four of them.
2

Bell, Pamela. "Art that never was : representations of the artist in twentieth-century Australian fiction." Thesis, The University of Sydney, 2003. http://hdl.handle.net/2123/7310.

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This thesis traces the development of the artist figure as a leading character in twentieth-century Australian novels. In Australia there have always been complex interconnections between the worlds of art and literature, perhaps the most obvious being the cluster of artists and writers centred on the journal Vision, co-edited by Norman Lindsay’s son Jack with Kenneth Slessor, who was heavily influenced by Lindsay. Slessor’s poem “Five Bells”, an elegy for his artist friend Joe Lynch, later became the subject of a mural painted for Sydney Opera House by John Olsen. Although this and other connections between poetry and art are of interest, this thesis concentrates on fiction only.
3

Behin, Bahram. "Aspects of the role of language in creating the literary effect : implications for the reading of Australian prose fiction /." Title page, contents and abstract only, 1997. http://web4.library.adelaide.edu.au/theses/09PH/09phb419.pdf.

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4

Penazzi, Leonardo. "The fellow (novel) ; and Australian historical fiction, debating the perceived past (dissertation)." University of Western Australia. School of Social and Cultural Studies, 2008. http://theses.library.uwa.edu.au/adt-WU2008.0070.

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Novel The Fellow What is knowledge? Who should own it? Why is it used? Who can use it? Is knowledge power, or is it an illusion? These are some of the questions addressed in The Fellow. At the time of Australian federation, the year 1901, while a nation is being drawn into unity, one of its primary educational institutions is being drawn into disunity when an outsider challenges the secure world of The University of Melbourne. Arriving in Melbourne after spending much of his life travelling around Australia, an old Jack-of-all-trades bushman finds his way into the inner sanctum of The University of Melbourne. Not only a man of considerable and varied skill, he is also a man who is widely read and self-educated. However, he applies his knowledge in practical ways, based on what he has experienced in the
5

Thoday, Heather Frances. "Lived spaces of representation : thirdspace and Janette Turner Hospital's political praxis of postmodernism /." Title page, abstract and table of contents only, 2004. http://web4.library.adelaide.edu.au/theses/09PH/09pht449.pdf.

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6

Weeda-Zuidersma, Jeannette. "Keeping mum : representations of motherhood in contemporary Australian literature - a fictocritical exploration." University of Western Australia. School of Social and Cultural Studies, 2007. http://theses.library.uwa.edu.au/adt-WU2007.0054.

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[Truncated abstract] This thesis argues that the non-representation and under-representation of mothering in contemporary Australian literature reflects a much wider cultural practice of silencing the mother-as-subject position and female experiences as a whole. The thesis encourages women writers to pay more attention to the subjective experiences of mothering, so that women’s writing, in particular writing on those aspects of women’s lives that are silenced, of which motherhood is one, can begin to refigure motherhood discourses. This thesis examines mother-as-subject from three perspectives: mothering as a corporeal experience, mothering as a psychological experience, and the articulations and silences of mothering-as-subject. It engages with feminist, postmodern and fictocritical theories in its discussion of motherhood as a discourse through these perspectives. In particular, the thesis employs the theoretical works of postmodern feminists Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigaray and Julia Kristeva in this discussion . . . A fictional narrative also runs through the critical discussion on motherhood. This narrative, Catherine’s Story, gives a personal and immediate voice to the mother-as-subject perspective. In keeping with the nature of fictocriticism, strict textual boundaries between criticism and fiction are blurred. The two modes of writing interact and in the process inform and critique each other.
7

Grogan, Bridget Meredith. ""Abject dictatorship of the flesh" : corporeality in the fiction of Patrick White." Thesis, Rhodes University, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1001554.

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8

Lyons, Sara J. "The sacrifice of honey (fiction) ; The depiction of the media in The shark net, Evil angels and The sacrifice of honey (thesis)." University of Western Australia. English, Communication and Cultural Studies Discipline Group, 2006. http://theses.library.uwa.edu.au/adt-WU2006.0055.

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9

Chan, Wing-chun Julia, and 陳永晉. "Towards an aesthetics of cliché: cultural recycling and contemporary fiction." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2009. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B42182311.

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10

阮慧娟 and Wai-kuen Jeannie Yuen. "Crisis and negotiation: a study of modern chinese fiction in the eighties." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 1994. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B31212050.

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11

胡從經 and Cong-jing Hu. "A criticism of the studies of Chinese fiction during the period 1900 to 1950." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 1994. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B31234173.

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12

Madi, S'Bongile Emmily. "Ukuvezwa kwabalingiswa kumanoveli wesiZulu amane ka 1990." Thesis, Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2001. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/52596.

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Thesis (MA)--University of Stellenbosch, 2001.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This work investigates characterisation in four modern Zulu novels. The objective of the study is to examine whether or not there is development in the portrayal of characters in recently published Zulu novels. The study is prompted by the view that a high number of novels in African languages have inadequate portrayal of characters (Zulu 1998). Focus has been placed on the following four Zulu novels: Izibiba Ziyeqana, Asikho Ndawo 8akithi, Isidleke Samanqe, and Itshwele Lempangele. The novels were published between 1995 and 1998 and all have won literary prizes in recognition of their high literary qualities. It has been found in the study that the way characters are portrayed in the four novels shows some signs of development. All the chief characters are 'round' in the sense that they change and adapt to changes and circumstances. Even though there are serious problems, the characters are seen to be fighting like ordinary human beings to better their lives. It is also found in the study that antagonists in some novels are round characters. It is concluded that this study identifies positive properties about the development of characterisation in the Zulu novel of the late 1990's.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie studie ondersoek karakterisering in vier moderne Zulu novelles. Die hoofdoelstelling van die studie is om vas te stel of daar 'n ontwikkeling in die voorstelling van karakters in onlangs-gepubliseerde Zulu novelles is. Die studie is gemotiveer deur die siening wat bestaan dat 'n groot aantal novelles in Afrikatale 'n onvoldoende voorstelling van karakters toon (Zulu, 1998). Die fokus van die studie val op die volgende vier Zulu novelles: Izibiba Ziyeqana, Asikho Ndawo Bakithi, Isidleke Samanqe en Itshwele Lempangele. Hierdie novelles is gepubliseer tussen 1995 en 1998 en het almal literere pryse gewen ter erkenning van hulle uitstaande letterkundige meriete. Die studie het bevind dat die wyse waarop die karakters voorgestel is in al vier novelles verskeie tekens van ontwikkeling ten opsigte van die Zulu letterkunde toon. AI die hoofkarakters is "rond" in die sin dat hulle verander en aanpas na gelang van veranderinge en omstandighede. Selfs onder ernstige omstandighede, veg die karakters soos gewone mense om hulle lewens te verbeter. Daar is ook in die studie bevind dat die antagoniste in sommige novelies ronde karakters is. Die studie identifiseer positiewe kenmerke t.o.v. die ontwikkeling van karakterisering in die Zulu novelle in die laat 1990's.
IQOQO Lomsebenzi ubhekane nokuvezwa kwabalingiswa emanovelini amane wesiZulu. Kubhekwe amanoveli amasha ngenjongo yokuthola ukuthi ngabe kukhona yini ukuthuthuka ngokuvezwa kwabalingiswa. Okwaziwayo okwamanje wukuthi ukuvezwa kwabalingiswa emanovelini amaningi wabomdabu kusezingeni eliphansi (Zulu 1998), yingakho-ke lomsebenzi ubuzama ukuthola ukuthi ngabe luyabonakala yini loguquko Iwemqubekela phambili. Kukhethwelamanoveli alandelayo: Izibiba Ziyeqana, Asikho Ndawo Bakithi Isidleke Samanqe, kanye ne-Itshwele Lempangele lapho kucubungulwa loshintsho lokuvezwa kwabalingiswa ngababhali bemnyaka yabo 1990. Lamanoveli angawoshicilelo olusuka ku-1995 ukuya ku-1998. Kuye kwakhethwa lamanoveli ngoba azuze imiklomelo yokuthi abhalwe ngezinga eliphezulu. Okutholwe kulomsebenzi ukuthi ukuvezwa kwabalingiswa yilababhali balamanovela kubonisa impumela phambili. Bonke abalingiswa abaphambili batholakala beyizindilinga. Umlingiswa nomlingiswa lapho ehlangabezana nezingqinamba uyaguquguquka azifune ebuhleni ngempilo yakhe. Nanoma kunobunzima sibathola ngasosonke isikhathi balwisana nabo bazama izindlela ezizobasa empumelelweni. Kutholakale futhi ukuthi bonke labalingiswaabangabaphikisi (antagonists)babonakala bakhula. Lomsebenzi uphethwa ngokuthi ziyabonakala zrmpewu zokukhula nokuthuthuka ekuvezweni kwabalingiswa emanovelini wesiZulu wababhali bango1990.
13

Zaharchenko, Tanya. "Where the currents meet : frontiers of memory in the post-Soviet fiction of East Ukraine." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2014. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.708117.

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14

Ingham, Michael Anthony. "Theatre of storytelling : the prose fiction stage adaptation as social allegory in contemporary British drama /." Thesis, Hong Kong : University of Hong Kong, 1998. http://sunzi.lib.hku.hk/hkuto/record.jsp?B20275961.

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15

Pinson, Guillaume 1973. "Fiction du monde : analyse littéraire et médiatique de la mondanité, 1885-1914." Thesis, McGill University, 2005. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=102151.

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This work proposes a double analysis of the mundane society representations between 1885 and 1914, in the press and the novel. This analysis separates these two categories of media to insist on their particularities, and tries to think of them in terms of an interaction.
A first part explores the organisation of the topics and the main genre of the mundane society in the press, applying the social discourse theory. The analysis is based on the perusal of a set of representative daily newspapers (Le Gaulois, Le Figaro) and of weekly and monthly publications (Le Grand monde, La Vie parisienne, Femina notably, as well as around thirty other titles). It shows that the mundane society in the newspaper is constrained by a poetics stemming from the characteristics of press writing: collective writing, periodicity of the publication, text length limitation and reference to reality. Some texts are tempted by fiction, even though they keep a reality-based referential, whereas other texts that are openly fictitious, fit the mundane fiction into the newspaper.
The second part is based on the general conclusion of the first part: the mundane society in the newspaper is a represented society, made of for a distant and anonymous public. With the advent of the medias in the 19th century, the mundane society has entered into the era of mediations and "industrial writing". Some writers, from Bourget to Proust, take these upheavals into account and present the mundane society as a metaphor of the mass media society. This is done following three main axes: the temptation of withdrawal of the fiction into a closed world (psychological and mundane movement impulsed by Goncourt with Cherie, prolonged by Bourget and Hervieux notably); the games of exchange between the novel and the newspaper (Maupassant, Toulet, Legrand, amongst others); and finally, the isolation of the mundane world and the aesthetic work on mediations (Rolland, Colette, Mirbeau, Lorrain et Gide notably). All these writings address the question of sociability at the era of the triumph of mediations: what room is left for the mundane society, for direct encounter, for exchange, in a world of mediation and mass media coverage? for immediate connections in a society of mediated ties? The epilogue proposes a journalistic reading of A la recherche du temps perdu, synthesis-work which inaugurates a modern and sociological perception: it is in the world of the imagined mundane society, distant and represented in the mass media, that the narrator draws the resources for his observation of the world.
16

Shao, Dong, and 邵棟. "A study of yingxi fiction in the early republican China = Min chu ying xi xiao shuo yan jiu." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10722/206447.

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The dissertation attempted to study Yingxi Fiction, a genre of fiction, which emerged and prevailed in Shanghai during the early two decades of the twentieth century. The majority of writers of Yingxi fiction at that time were literati of the Mandarin Duck and Butterfly School. After watching the imported silent movies, they recorded the contents and adapted them as fictional texts for the purpose of introducing the stories to those who could not afford to watch the films. This type of genre was named Yingxi fiction and had been welcomed by public readers at leisure. In fact Yingxi fiction had implied how traditional literati received and absorbed western cultural elements on their way to pursue Chinese modernity. This study would like to conduct a close examination of Yingxi fiction, which has been previously ignored, through in-depth analysis of the texts and investigation of its social as well as cultural significance. This dissertation consisted of five chapters. Chapter One was an introduction of the popular fiction, movie and Yingxi fiction in Early Republican China. Previous studies on Yingxi fiction were briefly presented as well. Chapter Two dealt with the emergence of Yingxi fiction. The prefaces and peer reviews of some works of this genre would be especially studied in order to explore the motivations of the writers and their approaches to compose the Yingxi fiction. Three Yingxi fiction writers, Zhou Shoujuan (1895-1968), Bao Tianxiao (1875-1973) and Lu Dan’an(1894-1980), were comprehensively illustrated as case studies. Chapter Three focused on the application of “Paradigm” in textual analyses of Yingxi fiction. Serving as an unusual spectacle, paradigm provided a thorough understanding of the hybrid narrative style of the stories. By discussing the narrative pause, redundancy, story modes and language usage, the way in which the paradigm of Chinese fiction influenced by western literature would been exposed. Chapter Four discussed the graph-text conversion in Yingxi fiction. It was suggested that writers’ failure in identifying the moral issues and female images in western movies could be explained and might be regarded as the writers’ skills of adaptation of the stories for the sake of Chinese representations. Lastly, the conclusion chapter summed up the distinctive features of Yingxi fiction, the prominence of the genre and its significance in modern Chinese literature. Besides, the limitations and reasons of fading away of Yingxi fiction would also be expounded.
published_or_final_version
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Master of Philosophy
17

Blatchford, Mathew. "The old New Wave : a study of the 'New Wave' in British science fiction during the 1960s and early 1970s, with special reference to the works of Brian W. Aldiss, J.G. Ballard, Harry Harrison and Michael Moorcock." Master's thesis, University of Cape Town, 1989. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/22150.

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Bibliography: pages 174-184.
This thesis examines the 'New Wave' in British science fiction in the 1960s and early 1970s. The use of the terms 'science fiction' and 'New Wave' in the thesis are defined through a use of elements of the ideological theories of Louis Althusser. The New Wave is seen as a change in the ideological framework of the science fiction establishment. For oonvenience, the progress of the New Wave is divided into three stages, each covered by a chapter. Works by the four most prominent writers in the movement are discussed.
18

Rivest, Mélanie. "Nouveau théatre et nouveau roman : la quête d'un art perdu." Thesis, McGill University, 2004. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=79975.

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The histories of the Theater and of the Novel have rarely been linked to one another. Nevertheless, studying the evolution of the two arts as of the seventeenth century, allows us to pinpoint and define the sources of contamination. It is more precisely in the nineteenth century that the history of both the Theater and the Novel became envenomed, going from fresh influences to disloyal relations during which time the Theater faded by admitting romanesque realism to take the stage. By denying its capacity to reveal the "real", the Theater failed its possibilities and let its art be disinterested from the theatricality showing all that should have been evoked. Men of theater participated at recapturing the theatrical art so to regain confidence on stage and near 1950, an avant-garde movement flourished to favor a renewal of vitality for the theater with a new language which utilizes all of what the scene could provoke. This "New Theater" is soon followed by a similar romanesque enterprise, the "New Novel", a group of novelists also wishing to acknowledge the right to explore a new style of writing.
19

Shishkin, Timur. "Marginalized Characters in Contemporary American Short Fiction." PDXScholar, 2011. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/297.

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The focus of the present research work is the contemporary American short stories that bring up issues of compulsory norm and the conflict between marginalized characters and their environment. This research was based on those short stories that seemed to represent the idea of being "different" in the most complex and multilayered way, and its goal was to unfold new aspects of the conflict between "normal" and "abnormal"/"different". Variations of norm as well as diversity within the marginalized raise a number of questions about the reasons for their inability to coexist peacefully. The close reading and the analysis of the selected stories show that all the conflicts in them, in one way or another, repeat similar patterns and lead to the same root of the problem of misunderstanding, which is fear. To be more precise, all the cases of hate towards "different" characters can be explained by the hater's explicit or implicit fear of death in its various forms: inability to procreate one's own kind, cultural or personal self-identity loss, actual life threat in the form of a reminder of possible physical harm and death. Most often it would be the case where shame and fear of death overlap in a very complex way. In general, the cases of characters' otherness fall into three major groups. The nature of the alienation for each of these groups is described and analyzed in three separate chapters. Prejudice and stereotypes are playing a great role in formation of fears and insecurities which need to be dismantled in order to make peaceful coexistence possible. This work concludes with pointing out the crucial role of taking an approach of representation of various perspectives and diversification of voices in creative writing, academia and media in the context of multicultural society.
20

Elbaum, Henry. "Rhetoric and fiction : interaction of verbal genres in the Soviet literature of the twenties and thirties." Thesis, McGill University, 1988. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=75698.

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Soviet literature of the twenties and thirties is examined in the present study in its relationship to other verbal genres, primarily, the speeches of Party leaders, newspaper rhetoric and political posters. The first four chapters of the dissertation focus on such topics as the reception of Marxist-Leninist discourse by peasants and workers as well as its representation in fiction; the refraction of official discursive formulas in characters' speech and the dialogization of Party rhetoric; the integration of political documents into fiction and their structural function. Particular attention is paid to the way the contamination of Party rhetoric by substandard language and its contextual defamiliarization lead, depending on the overall authorial intention, either to a parodic subversion of official cliches or to the internalization of didactic discourse and the enhancement of its communicative effectiveness.
The theme of industrialization is examined in the last two chapters of the thesis in its dialectic interaction with various Neo-Rousseauist conceptions, which either reflect the authors' own ambivalence about socialist construction, or constitute a rhetorical device used in order to reinforce dialogically industrialist ideology.
21

Ho, Julie Elaine. ""Half of life": male voices in the novels of Carol Shields." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2000. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B31222596.

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Fong, Sing-ha, and 方星霞. "Continuity and transcendence of Jing School." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2007. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B39558228.

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Sabatini, Sandra. "Making babies, representations of the infant in 20th century Canadian fiction." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 2001. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk3/ftp04/NQ60564.pdf.

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許子東 and Zidong Xu. "Narratives of the "Cultural Revolution" in contemporary Chinese fiction." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 1997. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B31237915.

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李仕芬 and Shi-fan Lee. "The male characters in the fiction of contemporary Taiwanese women writers." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 1997. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B31235979.

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Abu-Manneh, Bashir. "Fiction of the New statesman, 1913-1939." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2002. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:a2444f4a-ee6b-4063-afbf-26348bd22356.

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This thesis is the first systematic study of short stories published in the New Statesman [NS] weekly magazine from its foundation in 1913 to 1939. The main question it seeks to address is what type of fiction did a mainstream socialist publication like the NS publish then? By chronologically charting dominant literary figures and themes, the thesis aims to discern significant cultural tendencies and editorial principles of selection. Following Raymond Williams' 'cultural materialism', fiction is read in its relation to social history, as a 'representation of history'. Chapter 1 deals with the foundation of the journal and its first year of publication, mapping out the contradictions between Fabian collectivist ideology and ethical socialism, urban realism and literary Georgianism, country and city. A focus on urban problems of poverty unemployment, philanthropy, and machinofacture is at the heart of the NS's literary concern, in 1913. Chapter 2 focuses on stories published during World War I, and goes up to 1926. It argues that the reality of the War was falsified as a time of rest and relaxation, in line with the journal's political policy of supporting the war effort. The immediate post-war period is read as a time of disappointment and intensified social conflict and struggle. The General Strike of 1926 is a turning point in interwar history. It also ushers in a period of unprecedented cultural activity in the NS. As Chapters 4 and 5 show, the post-Strike period is characterised by the consolidation of the working-class fiction of socialist R. M. Fox; by the rise of the countryside realism of H. E. Bates; and by the rise of the colonial fiction of E. R. Morrough on Egypt (which is examined in the context of Leslie Mitchell's, E. M. Forster's, and William Plomer's responses to empire). Significant contributions by women writers (such as Faith Compton Mackenzie) about travel, duty, and oppression are also made in the late 20s, early 30s. Chapter 6 is dedicated to the magnificent place that Russian fiction occupies in the 30s through the work of Michael Zoshchenko. Though written during the free and experimental 20s, his satiric fiction is published as a sample of Soviet literature of the 30s, thus consolidating the Stalinist line dictated by the political editor, Kingsley Martin, that 'self-criticism' is a central part of Soviet politics and society. Chapter 7 is a tribute to the NS's contribution to reconstructing British realism away from both Victorian moralism and European naturalism. The stories of Bates, V. S. Pritchett, and Peter Chamberlain are dominant, conveying different ways of negotiating the pressures of documentary realism and the political developments of the 30s. Also discussed is the unique modernist contribution of neglected Stella Benson, which presents a strong challenge to the usual representationalism of NS fiction. The concluding chapter reads NS fiction in the whole period between 1913 and 1939 as the cultural expression of the new petty bourgeoisie, especially its progressive, politically and socially engaged side. With its focus on ordinariness and lived experience, and its formal experimentation and innovation, NS fiction exemplifies artistic commitment par excellence, a conscious cultural alignment with the actuality and potentiality of the new petty bourgeoisie.
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Wagenaar, Peter Simon. "The shadowed corners of sunlit ruins: Gothic elements in twentieth century children's adventure fiction." Thesis, Rhodes University, 1991. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002293.

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This thesis examines the way in which children's adventure fiction makes use of Gothic features, how these features have been modified for a younger audience and how these modifications have been influenced by other developments in children's and popular fiction: Chapter One sets out to define the nature of Gothic and isolate those aspects of it relevant to the proposed study. It puts forward a theory to account for the movement of Gothic trends into later children's fiction. Chapter Two examines the use of landscape, setting and atmospheric effects in Gothic and the way in which children's fiction has used similar trappings to create similar effects. Children's fiction, emphasising pleasurable excitement rather than fear has, however, muted these effects somewhat and played down the role of the supernatural, so intrinsic to Gothic. Chapter Three emphasises the Gothic's use of stereotypes, focusing on the portrayal of heroes and heroines. Those of children's fiction are portrayed very similarly to those of Gothic and the chapter compares and, on occasion, contrasts them noting, inter alia, their adherence to rigid moral codes and narrowly defined norms of masculine and feminine behaviour. Chapter Four looks at the portrayal of villains and the way in which their appearance defines them as such (as, indeed, does that of heroes and heroines). It examines in some detail their relationship to and interaction with the heroes and heroines, noting, for example, the 'pseudo-parental' role of villains who are characteristically older and in socially approved positions to exert power over heroes and heroines. The Conclusion addresses the fantasy aspect of these novels,referred to several times in passing in the course of earlier chapters, and comments on how the features detailed in Chapters Two, Three and Four all operate within the conventions of a fantasy.
28

Masters, Benjamin Scott. "The ethics of excess : style and morality in British fiction since the 1960s." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2014. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.648740.

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程雲峰 and Wan-fung Ching. "The images of peasants in modern Chinese fiction." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 1989. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B31209166.

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Strecker, Geralyn. "Reading prostitution in American fiction, 1893-1917." Virtual Press, 2001. http://liblink.bsu.edu/uhtbin/catkey/1213148.

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Many American novels of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries discuss prostitution. Some works like Reginald Wright Kauffman's The House of Bondage, (1910) exaggerate the threat of "white slavery," but others like David Graham Phillips's Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise (1917) more honestly depict the harsh conditions which caused many women to prostitute themselves for survival. Contemporary critical interpretations of novels addressed in this dissertation began before major shifts in women's roles in the workplace, before trends towards family planning, before women could respectably live on their own, and especially before women won the right to vote. Yet, a century of progress later, this vestigal criticism still influences our study of these texts.Relying on primary source materials such as prostitute autobiographies and vice commission reports, I compare fictional representations of prostitution to historical data, focusing on the prostitute's voice and her position in society. I examine actual prostitutes' life stories to dispel the misconception that prostitution was always a lower-class business. My chapters are ordered in regards to the prominence of the prostitute characters' voices: in Stephen Crane's Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893) the heroine seldom speaks for herself; in two Socialist novels--Upton Sinclair's The Jungle (1906) and Estelle Baker's The Rose Door (1911)--prostitutes debate low wages, political corruption, and organized vice; and in Phillips's Susan Lenox, the title character is almost always allowed to speak for herself, and readers can see what she is thinking as well as doing. As my chapters progress, I demonstrate how the fictions become more like the prostitutes' own autobiographies, with self-reliant women telling their stories without shame or remorse. My conclusion, "Revamping `Fallen Women' Pedagogy for Teaching American Literature," suggests how social history and textual scholarship of specific "fallen women" novels should affect our teaching of these texts.
Department of English
31

Leister, Lori, and University of Lethbridge Faculty of Arts and Science. "Closing the circle: A novel with critical commentary." Thesis, Lethbridge, Alta. : University of Lethbridge, Faculty of Arts and Science, 1998, 1998. http://hdl.handle.net/10133/355.

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There are two parts to this thesis: a novel, Closing the Circle, and a critical commentary on the process of writing a novel from beginning to end. The novel tells the story of Natasha, a young, late twentieth century woman who searches for her "roots." It begins in southern Alberta and she eventually travels to Eastern Europe where she uncovers the voices in her dreams and from the past. It deals with the metaphysical question of a collective unconscious that houses past symbols pertinent to her search as well as the question as to the validity of dreams and memory in human life. The critical commentary addresses issues involved in writing a fiction vis a vis structure and other literary devices. It also addresses questions that come with taking personal familial historical events and writing them into "story."
28 cm.
32

Karolyi, Julian. "Literary renewal and the reader : the multiple pleasures of La Nouvelle Fiction." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 1998. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/13406.

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In this thesis I seek to describe, analyse and characterise the contemporary literary movement La Nouvelle Fiction, a group that has received no critical attention to date. The movement is examined first in terms of its place in French literary history, taking as reference points both literary and theoretical trends: in particular, the nouveau roman and aspects of post-structuralism, with both of which the Nouvelle Fiction implicitly compares or contrasts itself. In Part I, I go on to analyse the theory of the fantastic and detective fiction, both genres that influence the Nouvelle Fiction, and provisional descriptions of the Nouvelle Fiction are thereby developed based on Umberto Eco's theory of the 'model reader'. I suggest that the Nouvelle Fiction demands a particularly active interpretative role of its reader, which is compared in the texts with moral competence in the world. Through analysis of key narrative strategies in Part II (circular narrative structures, unreliable narrative voices, parody, and mise en abyme), the movement is examined for its internal characteristics, and specific differences in practice are established between the Nouvelle Fiction and the nouveau roman. In Part III, aspects of reader-reception are examined, first, through the use of Barthes's anatomy of textual pleasure, second, through the relationship between fiction, the world and identity, and thirdly, through discussion of the extent engagement is possible in these ludic and interpretatively ambiguous texts. I argue that a picture thus emerges of a fiction that heralds a heightened role for the active reader of texts that represent a renewed relationship with reality and with the way narrative shapes it, after the reaction against representation that was an important characteristic of the modernist aesthetic.
33

Skyes, Gillian E. "The new woman in the new world : fin-de-siècle writing and feminism in Australia." Phd thesis, Faculty of Arts, 2002. http://hdl.handle.net/2123/16473.

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34

Stewart, Robert Earl. "The catastrophe of entertainment : televisuality and post-postmodern American fiction." Thesis, McGill University, 1999. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=30220.

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This thesis examines the effects of television and entertainment culture on American fiction. Focusing primarily on the novels of Don DeLillo and David Foster Wallace, with a secondary focus on the films of American film director David Lynch, the thesis proposes that post-postmodern fiction, fiction in which the familiarizing trends of postmodern fiction are reversed, is a response to the powerful influence of television and other forms of electronic media on American culture.
35

Samperi-Mangan, Jacqueline. "Narrativa della Svizzera italiana dal '60 a oggi." Thesis, McGill University, 1999. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=36700.

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This study provides an overview of the literature of the Italian-speaking regions of Switzerland. It presents well-known authors but also lesser-known writers who have made an important contribution to the literature of the Ticino and Grigioni cantons. Dating from the 1960s to the present, the corpus bears witness to a remarkable vitality and innovative spirit, which on occasion overflow political borders and find their way into the much larger Italian market. The dynamism of local publishers has contributed to focusing attention on the high quality and importance of the literature produced by Swiss authors writing in Italian. The distinctive character of this literature lies in the unique combination of disparate factors. Italian language, Swiss culture, and European concerns interact with emotional ties to the local communities in a rich social context marked by past misery and a present characterized by advanced capitalism.
The choice of authors is based on the desire to trace the evolution of narrative literature during the last four decades and present a wide range of themes and styles. In addition to the renowned Giovanni Orelli, this study considers the equally important works of writers such as Alberto Nessi, Claudio Nembrini, Anna Felder, Elda Guidinetti, Silvana Lattmann, Ennio Maccagno, among others. Very young writers whose first efforts are shaping the future of Swiss literature in Italian are also examined.
A special chapter is devoted to women writers. The goal is to identify the style and set of themes which distinguish their contribution from that of their colleagues. The study also discusses the importance of their presence on the literary scene after a time, not so far in the past, when women were confined to writing, in dialect, diaries and letters to relatives who had emigrated.
The discussion of the corpus is prefaced by a detailed presentation of the geographical, social and political context which often determines the literary outcome. The importance of this context has also influenced the way in which the texts are approached. The narratives studied reflect and interpret the problems society was facing at a particular time, as well as the intellectual movements that characterize each period. A chronological presentation of each individual author would have fragmented the dynamic background from which his or her works emerge and within which such works must be located. The name of an author will therefore resurface in different contexts when one of his or her works is discussed in connection with the given period or intellectual movement under examination. The literary history of each author, however, can be easily reconstructed through an attentive reading. What emerges at the end of the study is a widened field of knowledge for Italian studies, whose object can no longer be seen to coincide with the literary production within the borders of the Italian state.
36

Wong, Chi-hung, and 黃自鴻. "Space in Taiwan urban novels." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2006. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B35808068.

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37

Kwong, Tsz Ching. "The archived future : North American apocalyptic fiction and the ambiguous construction of the present." HKBU Institutional Repository, 2013. http://repository.hkbu.edu.hk/etd_ra/1514.

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38

Chan, Wai-ying, and 陳惠英. "Chinese lyrical fiction in the period 1919-1989." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 1995. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B31212864.

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39

Yu, Yuen-yee Frankie, and 余婉兒. "Living on the margin." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2005. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B45015168.

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40

Duggan, Lucy. "Reading the city : Prague in Czech and Czech-German narrative fiction since 1989." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2016. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:3827cf9c-fa91-4fb5-aa7e-8942de885729.

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In the course of its history, Prague has been the site of many significant cultural confrontations and conversations. From the medieval chronicle of Cosmas to the work of contemporary writers, the city has taken shape in literature as a multivalent space where identities are constructed and questioned. The evolution of Prague's literary significance has taken place in an intercultural context: both Czech-speaking and German-speaking writers have engaged with the city and its past, and their texts have interacted with each other. The city has played a central part in many collective narratives in which myth, history and literature intertwine. Looking at contemporary prose fiction written in both Czech and German, this thesis explores continuities and contrasts in the literary roles played by Prague. It analyses two German-speaking emigrant authors, Libuše Moníková (1945-1998) and Jan Faktor (1951- ), viewing them alongside three Czech writers, Jáchym Topol (1962- ), Daniela Hodrová (1946- ), and Michal Ajvaz (1949- ). Through close readings of eight texts, the thesis approaches the imagined city from four angles. It discusses how contemporary authors portray the search for meaning in the city by imagining Prague as two contrasting realms (the 'real' city and the 'other' city), how the discontinuities of the city are reflected by the fragmentation of the authorial stance, how these authors assemble new Prague myths from the vestiges of older topoi, and how they confront the contradictory urges to uphold the boundaries of the city and to transgress them. In post-1989 Prague, authors explore the unstable spaces between continuity and discontinuity, constructing an authorial ethos in these areas of tension.
41

Kocela, Christopher. "Fetishism as historical practice in postmodern American fiction." Thesis, McGill University, 2002. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=38213.

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This study contends that postmodern American fiction dramatizes an important shift of philosophical perspective on the fetish in keeping with recent theories of fetishism as a cultural practice. This shift is defined by the refusal to accept the traditional Western condemnation of the fetishist as primitive or perverse, and by the effort to affirm more productive uses for fetishism as a theoretical concept spanning the disciplines of psychoanalysis, Marxian social theory, and anthropology. Analyzing the depiction of fetishistic practices in selected contemporary American novels, the dissertation utilizes fetish theory in order to clarify the unique textual and historiographic features of postmodernist fiction. It also emphasizes the way in which conventional ideas about history and teleology are necessarily challenged by an affirmative orientation toward the fetish. Part One of the dissertation, comprising the first two chapters, traces the lineage of Western thinking about fetishism from Hegel, Marx, and Freud to Derrida, Baudrillard, and Jameson, among others. Recognizing that traditional theories attribute the symbolic power of the fetish to its mystification of historical origins, Part One posits that poststructuralist and postmodernist contributions to the subject enable, but do not develop, an alternative concept of fetishism as a practice with constructive historical potential. Part Two of the study seeks to develop this historical potential with reference to prominent descriptive models of postmodernist fiction, and through close readings of five contemporary American authors: Thomas Pynchon, Kathy Acker, Robert Coover, John Hawkes, and Don DeLillo. The four chapters of Part Two each examine the fictional representation of fetishism within a different theoretical framework, focusing on, respectively: temporality and objectivity in postmodern fiction theory; the interrelation between psychoanalytic theory and female fetishism in novels by Pynchon and Acker
42

Johnson, Alfred B. "Net work : social networks, disruptive agency, and innovation in Howells, Fitzgerald, Heller, Pynchon, and Gibson." Virtual Press, 2006. http://liblink.bsu.edu/uhtbin/catkey/1343471.

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This study uses concepts from network science to analyze the agency of outsider characters who cause change or disruption without necessarily securing economic or political power for themselves. Network science as theorized by thinkers like Duncan Watts (Six Degrees, 2003) and Albert-Laszlo Barabasi (Linked, 2002) explains social networks in terms of social structures: clusters of people, bridges between them, pathways through them. Michel Foucault (The Archaeology of Knowledge, 1971) suggests that new notions must enter public or personal awareness on "surfaces of emergence"—institutions like families and social groups. Michel de Certeau (The Practice of Everyday Life, 1974) looks at inventive ways that users repurpose products, both industrial and cultural, and so become "secondary producers." To analyze the influential-outsider agency of the fictional characters featured in this study, I theorize the clusters, bridges, and pathways of network science as surfaces of emergence on which "secondary productions" can appear and then spread through a social network.The introductory chapter explores and explains the general application of network science to literary criticism. In subsequent chapters, I use a networks-based approach to examine the agency of William Dean Howells's Tom Corey (The Rise of Silas Lapham, 1884), F. Scott Fitzgerald's Jay Gatsby (The Great Gatsby, 1925), Joseph Heller's Milo Minderbinder (Catch-22, 1961), Thomas Pynchon's Pierce Inverarity (The Crying of Lot 49, 1965), and William Gibson's Cayce Pollard (Pattern Recognition, 2003). These characters do unusual things with and from the subject positions in which they find themselves, and—whether or not they are or remain marginalized characters in their social systems—they are innovative and influential in ways that other characters do not understand or anticipate. All five novels depict the diffusion of innovative ideas and practices as a process of unplanned, non-coercive social negotiation, where innovation can originate with any person or group of people in the social network and is dependent on the complex interaction of liminal notions and mainstream thinking. The networking approach to these novels clarifies the ways that their authors have imagined social networks to function and the particular interactions they have imagined to lead to change or disruption.
Department of English
43

李仕芬 and Shi-fan Lee. "Love and marriage." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 1989. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B31208721.

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44

Hutchison, Lorna. "Strategies of the grotesque in Canadian fiction." Thesis, McGill University, 2005. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=100627.

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In this study of narration, feminist theory, and grotesque Canadian fiction, my aim is to provide a narrative model with which to read characters portrayed as both female and monstrous in a way that criticism on the grotesque does not. I provide two systems for the methodology of this study: via negativa, a well-established philosophical system of definition by negation, which shows the strength of the grotesque to represent a subject that is inherently paradoxical; and a narrative model called the "middle voice," which I developed to examine narratives that confuse or render ambiguous the identity of subjects. Through these distinct but complementary frameworks I illustrate a literary phenomenon in fiction of the grotesque: that authors develop and reveal the subjectivity of characters by confounding identities.
Although I provide a concise definition of the term "grotesque," my focus is on feminist theoretical approaches to the grotesque. However, whereas feminist theory on the grotesque examines the binary opposition of woman to man, this study shows that the grotesque bypasses the "male/female" dichotomy in the representation of fictional characters. Instead, the sustained contradiction of the central opposition "woman/monster" works to undermine the notion of fictional characterization.
Specifically, this study focuses on the grotesque as a narrative strategy and examines the use of the grotesque in the portrayal of female narrators. The prevalence of female grotesque characters in recent Canadian fiction combined with the rapid growth of interest in the critical concept of the "female grotesque" requires a theoretical analysis of the literature.
In the fiction I examine by Canadian authors Margaret Atwood, Lynn Coady, Barbara Gowdy, Alice Munro, and Miriam Toews, narrators are contradictory. As subjects, they have doubled identities. Authors situate identity ("subjectivity") in the realm of paradox, rather than in the realm of clarity and resolution. As a result, readers and critics must rely on ambiguity and subversion as guides when posing the ultimately irresolvable question "who is speaking?" Through analysis of this fiction, then, I argue for nothing short of a new conceptualization of subjectivity.
45

Kwan, Wing-ki Koren, and 關詠琪. "Experiments in subjectivity: a study of postmodern science fiction." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2005. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B3681250X.

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46

Brazil, Kevin. "The work of art in postwar fiction, 1945-2001." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2014. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:f8102451-09cf-4f92-8e6e-e7c1ced2641c.

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'The Work of Art in Postwar Fiction 1945-2001' explores the responses of postwar novelists to visual art by focusing on the work of Samuel Beckett, William Gaddis, John Berger and W.G. Sebald. In doing so, it opens up a new approach to understanding the relationship between fiction and art in the postwar period as a whole, for what distinguishes these writers is that they use an engagement with visual art in order to historicize their own work as distinctly 'postwar' fiction. This thesis shows that in the writings of these novelists, long running aesthetic issues in the study of the relationship between text and image are reformulated and transformed: medium specificity; ekphrasis; and visual representation as a model for literary realism. Drawing throughout on original archival research, The Work of Art in Postwar Fiction 1945-2001 traces what T.J. Clark terms the 'processes of conversion and relation' between art, its contexts and its commentators, and it is by studying these mediations that the literary consequences of the work of art for these writers are shown. With a historicizing approach throughout, and an interest in the ways in which postwar novelists mediate their engagement with art through history, this thesis contributes to a new understanding of the literature and art of the postwar era, or what Amy Hungerford has called 'the period formerly known as contemporary'. This thesis offers a revisionary account of a relationship previously subsumed under the dominant logic of postmodernism, which according to Fredric Jameson was defined by a 'waning of historicity'. In returning historicity as method and theme to the study of the relationship between literature and art since 1945, The Work of Art in Postwar Fiction 1945-2001 shows the diverse ways in which postwar writers historicized their writing, and reflected on their techniques, in dialogue with visual art. Concerning itself with the distinct challenges posed by focusing on what Hannah Ardent called the 'most recent' past, this thesis also develops new ways of thinking more broadly about the relationships between literature, art and history. Chapter 1, 'Reviewing Postwar Fiction', situates this thesis within recent debates in literary studies surrounding what Mark McGurl has termed a discipline-wide 'hegemony of history'. Chapter 2, on Samuel Beckett, argues that Beckett's postwar art criticism responds to a specific strand of Marxist humanist aesthetics developed after the war, and it studies Beckett's manuscripts to show the relationship between this criticism and the composition of The Unnamable. Chapter 3 discusses William Gaddis's 1955 novel The Recognitions, arguing that the novel pivots around some of the central cruxes of postwar American aesthetic debate: Clement Greenberg's theory of abstraction, and Michael Fried's identification of the problem of 'art and objecthood'. Chapter 4 discusses the work of the British art critic and novelist, John Berger. It shows that Berger's critical account of Cubism shaped the narrative forms of his novels A Painter of Our Time and G., and that these narrative innovations were central to his theory of the artistic and revolutionary 'moment'. Chapter 5 focuses on the relationship between photography, painting and aesthetics in the work of W. G. Sebald. It argues that aesthetic concepts such as 'the readymade' and 'objective chance' offer a better account of Sebald's engagement with art than accounts which draw on trauma theory. The thesis concludes with a short discussion of how the writers studied in this thesis have influenced the contemporary fiction of Jonathan Franzen, Teju Cole, and Tom McCarthy.
47

Kisawadkorn, Kriengsak. "American Grotesque from Nineteenth Century to Modernism: the Latter's Acceptance of the Exceptional." Thesis, University of North Texas, 1994. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc278030/.

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This dissertation explores a history of the grotesque and its meaning in art and literature along with those of its related term, the arabesque, since their co-existence, specifically in literature, is later treated by a well-known nineteenth-century American writer in Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque- Theories or views of the grotesque (used in literature), both in Europe and America, belong to twelve theorists of different eras, ranging from the sixteenth century to the present period, especially Modernism (approximately from 1910 to 1945)--Rabelais, Hegel, Scott, Wright, Hugo, Symonds, Ruskin, Santayana, Kayser, Bakhtin, (William Van) O'Connor, and Spiegel. My study examines the grotesque in American literature, as treated by both nineteenth-century writers--Irving, Poe, Hawthorne, and, significantly, by modernist writers--Anderson, West, and Steinbeck in Northern (or non-Southern) literature; Faulkner, McCullers, and (Flannery) O'Connor in Southern literature. I survey several novels and short stories of these American writers for their grotesqueries in characterization and episodes. The grotesque, as treated by these earlier American writers is often despised, feared, or mistrusted by other characters, but is the opposite in modernist fiction.
48

Hill, Colin. "The modern-realist movement in English-Canadian fiction, 1919-1950." Thesis, McGill University, 2003. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=19471.

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This dissertation offers the first comprehensive examination of realism in English-Canadian fiction of the early twentieth century. It argues for the existence of a "modern-realist" movement that is Canada's unique and unacknowledged contribution to the collection of international movements that makes up literary modernism. This argument involves a detailed analysis of the aesthetics, aims, preoccupations, and techniques of the modern realists, a reexamination of the oeuvres of the movement's most prominent writers, and a critical reevaluation of the "modernity" of Canada's three most significant realist sub-genres—prairie realism, urban realism, and social realism. This study also provides a literary-historical overview of the movement as a whole, which begins with the inauguration of the Canadian Bookman in 1919, and concludes with the emergence of a contemporary Canadian fiction in the 1950s. The conclusions arrived at in this work are based upon a reading of dozens of novels and works of short fiction, many of them unpublished and/or critically neglected and forgotten. The findings in this study are also based on original research into archival materials from seven institutions across Canada.
49

Slaughter, Carolyn Overton. "Language as disclosure in five modernist American works." Diss., The University of Arizona, 1987. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/184311.

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"Language as Disclosure in Five Modernist American Works" comprises a series of Heideggerian readings of James's The Turn of the Screw, Williams's In the American Grain, Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, Hemingway's Death in the Afternoon, and Barth's Lost in the Funhouse. Each text is taken as a single and separate performance of poetic language. The readings do not interpret or explain the texts but attempt to follow them in a thinking, to map what shows up and in what relations. The attempt is to get past the roadblock of "ambiguity" that characterizes modernist texts, not by deciding the undecidable but by exploring it. The dissertation explores the nature or function of language. In James literality works to indicate, to evoke, to found and maintain as well as to violate or subvert a human order. Language borders and opposes the abyss in the story, and it is at this border and in this conflict that reality originates. Williams too revises the notion of origin as he proposes a new "method" of "composition" whereby a poet in the act of asserting and proving himself sets forth not only his own potency but that of his ground, his locality, his period and his time. In the Faulkner story representative language has become disconnected from life, is irrelevant, ineffectual, dysfunctional. However, in spite of its explicit indictment of words, the work discloses a new ontology, a new standard of value, and an originary function for words. In the Hemingway story language or the work of art (the bullfight, here) is the site, the occasion, and the agency in and by which "facts," things that actually happen, rise into appearance upon the horizon of death. In these modernist works we find the function of language to be, in some sense, disclosure. With the Barth story we pass into a milder postmodern atmosphere, but we find the same antagonists, language and not-language. Ostensibly language is impotent; thematically the rational paradigm is overwhelmed by objectivity. I claim, however, that language diminished and exposed is still working by modernist standards to provoke into view the potentiality that representative language cannot express.
50

Pu, Fangzhu, and 濮方竹. "A critical study of Chi Li's urban fiction." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2012. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B4961812X.

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The dissertation attempted to study the urban fiction of Chi Li (1957- ) through a detail analysis of her texts. Being one of the leaders of Chinese New Realism, Chi Li always tried to write about the real life and living conditions of urban people, which actually expressed her understanding and interpretation of city. This thesis would like to discuss the images of cities in Chi Li’s writings, her feelings on urbanization, and also try to evaluate her contribution to the evolution of contemporary Chinese urban fiction. The thesis consisted of five chapters. Chapter one clarified the basic concepts of urban literature and reviewed the development of Chinese urban fiction. Besides, previous research works on Chi Li were briefly introduced. The second chapter studied the urban-rural relations in Chi Li’s textual depiction. City and countryside, bearing two different characteristics of social life and culture, had met and influenced each other in a large scale twice after The thesis consisted of five chapters. Chapter one clarified the basic concepts of urban literature and reviewed the development of Chinese urban fiction. Besides, previous research works on Chi Li were briefly introduced. The second chapter studied the urban-rural relations in Chi Li’s textual depiction. City and countryside, bearing two different characteristics of social life and culture, had met and influenced each other in a large scale twice after
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Master
Master of Philosophy

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