Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Degree Discipline: English Literature'
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McDougall, Kathleen Lorne. "Discipline and savagery : the spectacle of the post-apartheid South African school." Master's thesis, University of Cape Town, 2003. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/11072.
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Bibliography: leaves 194-203.In describing and evaluating a South African semiotic of order and disorder, this dissertation traces representations of school discipline through examples of colonial and apartheid to key contemporary discursive practices. In this interdisciplinary dissertation three contemporary sets of texts are analysed: the department of education policy document, Alternatives to corporal punishment (2001), news articles on school disruption from the Business Day, Mail & Guardian and the Sowetan newspapers (1996-2002), and photographs on delinquency and discipline taken by a group of Cape Town public secondary school students.
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Bådagård, Elsa. "Dialectal Speech in Literature and Translation : Bachelor Degree Thesis in English Linguistics." Thesis, Högskolan Dalarna, Engelska, 2012. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:du-10126.
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This essay studies how dialectal speech is reflected in written literature and how this phenomenon functions in translation. With this purpose in mind, Styron's Sophie's Choice and Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn are analysed using samples of non-standard orthography which have been applied in order to reflect the dialect, or accent, of certain characters. In the same way, Lundgren's Swedish translation of Sophie's Choice and Ferres and Rolfe's Spanish version of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn are analysed. The method consists of linguistically analysing a few text samples from each novel, establishing how dialect is represented through non-standard orthography, and thereafter, comparing the same samples with their translation into another language in order to establish whether dialectal features are visible also in the translated novels. It is concluded that non-standard orthography is applied in the novels in order to represent each possible linguistic level, including pronunciation, morphosyntax, and vocabulary. Furthermore, it is concluded that while Lundgren's translation intends to orthographically represent dialectal speech on most occasions where the original does so, Ferres and Rolfe's translation pays no attention to dialectology. The discussion following the data analysis establishes some possible reasons for the exclusion of dialectal features in the Spanish translation considered here. Finally, the reason for which this study contributes to the study of dialectology is declared.
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Rondeau, Carol Tripoli. "Tell me a story about feathers: Teaching discipline through literature." CSUSB ScholarWorks, 2005. https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/etd-project/2735.
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This project contends that the instructional time given to language arts is the appropriate time to teach discipline. Sample lesson plans incorporating the teaching of discipline into California's third grade curriculum are offered to inspire and inform educators to become teachers of self-discipline.
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Donnelly, Dianne J. "Establishing Creative Writing Studies as an Academic Discipline." Scholar Commons, 2009. http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/3809.
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The discipline of creative writing is charged "as the most untheorized, and in that respect, anachronistic area in the entire constellation of English studies (Haake What Our Speech Disrupts 49). We need only look at its historical precedents to understand these intimations. It is a discipline which is unaware of the histories that informs its practice. It relies on the tradition of the workshop model as its signature pedagogy, and it is part of a fractured community signaled by its long history of subordination to literary studies, its lack of status and sustaining lore, and its own resistance to reform. These factions keep creative writing from achieving any central core.
I argue for the advancement of creative writing studies. As a scholarly academic discipline, creative writing studies explores and challenges the pedagogy of creative writing. It not only supports, but welcomes intellectual analyses that may reveal new theories.Such theories have important teaching implications and insights into the ways creative writers read, write, and respond. My study explores the history of creative writing, its workshop model as its primary practice, and the discipline's major pedagogical practices. Through its pedagogical and historical inquiry of the field, this study has important implications to the development of creative writing studies. Its research includes a workshop survey of undergraduate creative writing teachers as well as scholarship in the field. My argument envisions a more robust, variable, and intelligent workshop model. It considers how an understanding of our pedagogical practices might influence our teaching strategies and classroom dynamics and how we might provide more meaning to the academy, our profession, and our diverse student body.
At a curricular level, my study offers course and program development, and it justifies the importance of including graduate level training for teacher preparation to further explore the field's history and pedagogy. Through my inquiries and research, I advance creative writing studies, define its academic home, and better position the discipline to stand alongside composition studies and literary studies as a separate-but-equal entity, fully prepared to claim it own identity and scholarship.
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Dingman, Toni SuzAnne. "Facilitating creativity through the discipline of craftsmanship within the writing process." CSUSB ScholarWorks, 1990. https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/etd-project/770.
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Carson, Karen Michelle. "The function and failure of plantation government: interpreting spaces of power and discipline in representations of slave plantations." FIU Digital Commons, 2000. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/2060.
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This investigation focuses on representations of the physical construction and landscape of Southern slave plantations in order to explore the power relationships among inhabitants of those plantations and how those power relationships attempted to function and failed to establish a system of discipline and governance. While every plantation functioned violently in some form, many plantations appear to have attempted to instill a sense of place and permanence of status in slaves with more than just physical violence or obvious and overt forms of mental coercion and abuse. As a supplement to the strategic (and oftentimes random) physical violence inflicted on slaves in the attempts to control their behaviors, owners seem to have also attempted to discipline their slaves through strategic constructions of the plantation landscapes. While concluding that this strategy ultimately failed, this thesis examines attempts by owners to implement particular strategies in regulating and disciplining the behavior of slaves which can be compared with the strategies implemented in a panoptic system as described by Michel Foucault.
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Eleni, Tzimopoulou. "Epistemic Modality in Linguistic and Literature Essays in English : A comparative corpus-based study of modal verbs in student claims." Thesis, Högskolan Dalarna, Engelska, 2016. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:du-22477.
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This study is a corpus-based comparison between student essays written in the subject areas of English linguistics and literature at undergraduate level. They are 200 Bachelor degree theses submitted at a variety of university departments (such as English, Language and Literature, Humanities, Social and Intercultural Studies) in Sweden. The comparison concerns frequencies of core modal verbs and how often they occur together with the I, we and it subject pronouns and in the structures this/the [essay, study, project, thesis] when students attempt to communicate their personal claims. Quantitative and qualitative analyses of the essays show few similarities in the ways that core modal verbs appear in both disciplines. The results indicate mainly distinct differences, especially in relation to clusters and variation of performative verbs. Specific patterns in the ways that students use core modal verbs as hedges have also been identified.Engelska
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Cooke, Simon. "Encyclopaedic fiction, cultural value, and the discourse of the great divide : a thesis submitted to the Victoria University of Wellington in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in English Literature /." ResearchArchive@Victoria e-thesis, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/10063/1312.
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Blackton, Rhona R. "A study of the correlation between the degree of acculturation and scholastic achievement and English gain of ESL students, grades 2-5, Beach School, Portland, Oregon." PDXScholar, 1986. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/3560.
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The purpose of this study is to determine if a correlation exists between the degree of acculturation and achievement in English, reading and math of English as a Second Language (ESL) students in grades 2 to 5. This study is intended to provide insights about the acculturating ESL student, and suggests how educators can best meet students' needs.
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Hubbard, Gillian Chell. ""Acquire and beget a temperance" : the virtue of temperance in The faerie queene book II and Hamlet : a thesis submitted to the Victoria University of Wellington in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English Literature /." ResearchArchive@Victoria e-thesis, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/10063/1261.
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Molloy, Carla Jane. "The art of popular fiction : gender, authorship and aesthetics in the writing of Ouida : a thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English in the University of Canterbury /." Thesis, University of Canterbury. Culture, Literature and Society, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10092/1956.
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This thesis examines the popular Victorian novelist Ouida (Maria Louisa Ramé) in the context of women’s authorship in the second half of the nineteenth century. The first of its two intentions is to recuperate some of the historical and literary significance of this critically neglected writer by considering on her own terms her desire to be recognised as a serious artist. More broadly, it begins to fill in the gap that exists in scholarship on women’s authorship as it pertains to those writers who come between George Eliot, the last of the ‘great’ mid-Victorian women novelists, and the New Woman novelists of the fin de siècle. Four of Ouida’s novels have been chosen for critical analysis, each of which was written at an important moment in the history of the nineteenth century novel. Her early novel Strathmore (1865) is shaped by the rebelliousness towards gendered models of authorship characteristic of women writers who began their careers in the 1860s. In this novel, Ouida undermines the binary oppositions of gender that were in large part constructed and maintained by the domestic novel and which controlled the representation and reception of women’s authorship in the mid-nineteenth century. Tricotrin (1869) was written at the end of the sensation fiction craze, a phenomenon that resulted in the incipient splitting of the high art novel from the popular novel. In Tricotrin, Ouida responds to the gendered ideology of occupational professionalism that was being deployed to distinguish between masculinised serious and feminised popular fiction, an ideology that rendered her particularly vulnerable as a popular writer. Ouida’s autobiographical novel Friendship (1878) is also written at an critical period in the novel’s ascent to high art. Registering the way in which the morally weighted realism favoured by novelists and critics at the mid-century was being overtaken by a desire for more formally oriented, serious fiction, Ouida takes the opportunity both to defend her novels against the realist critique of her fiction and to attempt to shape the new literary aesthetic in a way that positively incorporated femininity and the feminine. Finally, Princess Napraxine (1884) is arguably the first British novel seriously to incorporate the imagery and theories of aestheticism. In this novel, Ouida resists male aesthetes’ exploitative attempts to obscure their relationship to the developing consumer culture while confidently finding a place for the woman artist within British aestheticism and signalling a new acceptance of her own involvement in the marketplace. Together, these novels track Ouida’s self-conscious response to a changing literary marketplace that consistently marginalised women writers at the same time that they enable us to begin to uncover the complexity of female authorship in the second half of the nineteenth century.
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Clark, Fiona R. "Suburban/absurd : subjects of anxiety in the fiction of John Cheever and Richard Ford : a thesis submitted to the Victoria University of Wellington in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in English Literature /." ResearchArchive@Victoria, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/10063/1076.
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White, Edmund C. "The concept of discipline : poetry, rhetoric, and the Church in the works of John Milton." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2013. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:53045aa1-8ed3-4b24-b561-65fc03afaf13.
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Discipline was an enduring concept in the works of John Milton (1608-1674), yet its meaning shifted over the course of his career: initially he held that it denoted ecclesiastical order, but gradually he turned to representing it as self-willed pious action. My thesis examines this transformation by analysing Milton’s complex engagement in two distinct periods: the 1640s and the 1660s-70s. In Of Reformation (1641), Milton echoed popular contemporary demands for a reformation of church discipline, but also asserted through radical literary experimentation that poetry could discipline the nation too (Chapter 1). Reflecting his dislike for intolerant Presbyterians in Parliament and the Westminster Assembly, the two versions of The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce (1643 and 1644) reconsider discipline as a moral imperative for all men, rooted in domestic liberty (Chapter 2). Although written long after this period, the long poetry that Milton composed after the Restoration reveals his continued interrogation of the concept. The invocations of the term ‘discipline’ by Milton’s angels in Paradise Lost (1667) sought to encourage dissenting readers to faithfulness and co-operation (Chapter 3). Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes (1671) advance the concept in the language of ‘piety,’ emphasising that ‘pious hearts’ are the precondition for godly action in opposition to contemporary Anglican ‘holy living’ (Chapter 4). In analysing Milton’s shifting concept of discipline, my thesis contributes to scholarship by showing his sensitivity to contemporary mainstream religious ideas, outlining the Christian—as opposed to republican or Stoic—notions of praxis that informed his ethics, and emphasising the disciplinary aspect of his doctrinal thought. Overall, it holds that in discipline, as word and concept, Milton expressed his faith in the capacity of writing to change its reader, morally and spiritually.
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Laurs, Deborah Elizabeth. ""Ungrown-up grown-ups" : the representation of adolescence in twentieth-century New Zealand young adult fiction : a dissertation presented in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English Literature at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand." Massey University, 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/10179/1255.
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Behaviouralists consider adolescence a time for developing autonomy, which accords with Michel Foucault‘s power/knowledge dynamic that recognises individuals‘ assertion of independence as a crucial element within society. Surprisingly, however, twentieth-century New Zealand Young Adult (YA) fiction tends to disempower adolescents, by portraying an adultist version of them as immature and unprepared for adult responsibilities. By depicting events through characters‘ eyes, a focalising device that encourages reader identification with the narratorial point-of-view, authors such as Esther Glen, Isabel Maud Peacocke, Joyce West, Phillis Garrard, Tessa Duder, Lisa Vasil, Margaret Mahy, William Taylor, Kate de Goldi, Paula Boock, David Hill, Jane Westaway, and Bernard Beckett stress the importance of conforming to adult authority. Rites of passage are rarely attained; protagonists respect their elders, and juvenile delinquents either repent or are punished for their misguided behaviours. ―Normal‖ expectations are established by the portrayal of single parents who behave ―like teenagers‖: an unnatural role reversal that demands a return to traditional hegemonic roles. Adolescents must forgive adults‘ failings within a discourse that rarely forgives theirs. Depictions of child abuse, while deploring the deed, tend to emphasise victims‘ forbearance rather than admitting perpetrators‘ culpability. As Foucault points out, adolescent sexuality both fascinates and alarms adult society. Within the texts, sex is strictly an adult prerogative, reserved for reproduction within marriage, with adolescent intimacy sanctioned only between couples who conform to the middle-class ideal of monogamy. On the other hand, teenagers who indulge in casual sex are invariably given cause to regret. Such presentations operate vicariously to protect readers from harm, but also create an idealised, steadfast sense of adultness in the process.
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Hanson, Paul Michael. "Beyond settler consciousness : new geographies of nation in two novels by Margaret Laurence and Fiona Kidman : a thesis submitted to the Victoria University of Wellington in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in English /." ResearchArchive@Victoria e-Thesis, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10063/916.
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Redmond, Robert Stanley. "Female authors and their male detectives: the ideological contest in female-authored crime fiction : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in English at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand." Massey University, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10179/1057.
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In the nineteen-eighties a host of female detectives appeared in crime fiction authored by women. Ostensibly these detectives challenged hegemonic norms, but the consensus of opinion was that their appropriation of male values and adherence to conventional generic closures colluded with a gender system of male privilege. Academic interest in the work of female authors featuring male detectives was limited. Yet it can be argued that these texts could have the potential to disrupt the hegemonic order through the introduction, whether deliberately, or inadvertently, of a female counterpoint to the hegemony. The hypothesis I am advancing claims that the reconfiguration of male detectives in works authored by women avoids the visible contradictions of gender and genre that are characteristic of works featuring female detectives. However, through their use of disruptive performatives, these works allow scope for challenging normal gender practices—without damage to the genre. This hypothesis is tested by applying the performative theories of Judith Butler to a close reading of selected crime novels. Influenced by the theories of Austin, Lacan and Althusser, Butler’s concept of performativity claims that hegemonic notions of gender are a fiction. This discussion also uses Wayne Booth’s concept of the implied author as a means of distinguishing the performative agency of the text from that of the characters. Agatha Christie, P.D. James, and Donna Leon, each with their male detective heroes, come from different generations. A Butlerian reading illustrates their potential for disrupting gender norms. Of the three, however, only Donna Leon avoids the return to hegemonic control that is a feature of the genre. Christie’s women who have agency are inevitably eliminated, while conformist women are rewarded. James’s lead female character is never fully at ease in her professional role. When thrust into a leadership she proves herself to be competent, but not ready or desirous of the senior position. Instead her role is to mediate the transition of her junior, a male, to that position. Donna Leon is different. The moral and emotional content of her narratives suggests an implied author committed to ideological change. Her characters simultaneously renounce and collude with illusions of patriarchal authority, and could lay claim to be models for Butler’s notion of performative resistance.
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CANTU', VERA. "Hazlitt critico di Shakespeare." Doctoral thesis, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/10280/512.
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La tesi investiga la critica shakespeariana di Hazlitt, concentrandosi sulle analisi alle quattro maggiori tragedie del bardo, Macbeth, Othello, Hamlet e King Lear. Uno dei i principali e più importanti obiettivi della tesi è quello di dimostrare come la critica shakespeariana di Hazlitt si discosti da quello che è solitamente conosciuto come “character criticism”, mettendo in luce l’interesse del critico romantico non soltanto per i personaggi, ma anche per la trama e la struttura generale dei drammi, e per le interpretazioni teatrali dei drammi stessi. Il capitolo uno riunisce le recensioni, i saggi, le lezioni e le pubblicazioni che costituiscono il vasto apparato critico shakespeariano di Hazlitt, fornendo un’interessante ed ampia panoramica delle principali fonti della sua critica shakespeariana. I capitoli due e tre presentando un’analisi puntuale delle letture hazlittiane delle quattro grandi tragedie di shakespeare, rispettivamente di Macbeth e Othello, Hamlet e King Lear. Vengono evidenziati gli elementi che permettono di inserire Hazlitt fra i maggiori esponenti del Romanticismo critico inglese e di proporlo come acuto precursore di argomentazioni novecentesche su Shakespeare.The dissertation investigates Hazlitt’s Shakespearean criticism, focusing mainly on his analysis of Shakespeare’s major tragedies, Macbeth, Othello, Hamlet and King Lear. One of the main and most important objectives of the dissertation is that of demonstrating that Hazlitt’s Shakespearean criticism differs from what is usually known as “character criticism”, underlining the critic’s interest not only for the characters, but also for the plot and the general structure of the plays, and for the theatrical interpretations of the plays themselves. Chapter one collects the reviews, the essays, the lectures and the many publications that constitute Hazlitt’s vast Shakespearean criticism. It provides an interesting and wide overview of the main sources of Hazlitt’s Shakespearean criticism. Chapters two and three present an accurate analysis of Hazlitt’s readings of Shakespeare’s great tragedies, respectively Macbeth and Othello, Hamlet and King Lear. These chapters bring to light the elements that allow Hazlitt to be included among the major English Romantic critics and that establish him as acute forerunner of twentieth-century Shakespearean theses.
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Dockins, Michael Scott. "Letter to So-and-So from Wherever." Digital Archive @ GSU, 2010. http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/english_diss/53.
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Letter to So-and-So from Wherever is a collection of poems, perhaps even a “poem-cycle,” initially inspired by the epistolary poems of Richard Hugo. This dissertation is essentially the author’s second full-length poetry manuscript, and consists of more of a single “project” than the author’s first collection, which was published in 2007. These poems here are rooted in concrete imagery, metaphor, hyperbole, irony, and voice. The style is influenced in part by Beat Generation writers Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, and to some extent Charles Bukowski.
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Smith, Cynthia M. "Walter M. Miller, Jr.’s A Canticle for Leibowitz: A Study of Apocalyptic Cycles, Religion and Science, Religious Ethics and Secular Ethics, Sin and Redemption, and Myth and Preternatural Innocence." Digital Archive @ GSU, 2006. http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/english_theses/10.
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Walter M. Miller, Jr.’s A Canticle for Leibowitz is a timeless story about apocalyptic cycles, conflicts and similarities between religion and science, religious ethics and secular ethics, sin and redemption, myth and preternatural innocence. Canticle is a very religious story about a monastery dedicated to preserving scientific knowledge from the time before nuclear war which devastated the world and reduced humanity to a pre-technological civilization. The Catholic Church and this monastery are portrayed as a bastion of civilization amidst barbarians and a light of faith amidst atheism. Unfortunately, humanity destroys the Earth once again, but Miller ends with two beacons of hope: a starship headed for the unknown to help humanity begin again and the preternaturally innocent Rachel who portends a future for similarly innocent human beings repopulating the Earth. Thus, faith ultimately triumphs over atheism even in the midst of almost total catastrophe.
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Goode, Michael Thomas. "The erotics of historicism : the historical novel, the discipline of history, and the politics of manly feeling, 1790-1890 /." 2001. http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&res_dat=xri:pqdiss&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:3029490.
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Mabunda, Magezi Thompson. "Literary art and social critique : teaching literature for social transformation at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, English Education Discipline." Thesis, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10413/1342.
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"Refiguring Moderation in Eating and Drinking In Late Fourteenth- and Fifteenth- Century Middle English Literature." Doctoral diss., 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/2286/R.I.49265.
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abstract: It has become something of a scholarly truism that during the medieval period, gluttony was combatted simply by teaching and practicing abstinence. However, this dissertation presents a more nuanced view on the matter. Its aim is to examine the manner in which the moral discourse of dietary moderation in late medieval England captured subtle nuances of bodily behavior and was used to explore the complex relationship between the individual and society. The works examined foreground the difficulty of differentiating bodily needs from gluttonous desire. They show that moderation cannot be practiced by simply refraining from food and drink. By refiguring the idea of moderation, these works explore how the individual’s ability to exercise moral discretion and make better dietary choices can be improved. The introductory chapter provides an overview of how the idea of dietary moderation in late fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Middle English didactic literature was influenced by the monastic and ascetic tradition and how late medieval authors revisited the issue of moderation and encouraged readers to reevaluate their eating and drinking habits and pursue lifestyle changes. The second chapter focuses on Langland’s discussion in Piers Plowman of the importance of dietary moderation as a supplementary virtue of charity in terms of creating a sustainable community. The third chapter examines Chaucer’s critique of the rhetoric of moderation in the speech of the Pardoner and the Friar John in the Summoner’s Tale, who attempted to assert their clerical superiority and cover up their gluttony by preaching moderation. The fourth chapter discusses how late Middle English conduct literature, such as Lydgate’s Dietary, revaluates moderation as a social skill. The fifth chapter explores the issue of women’s capacity to control their appetite and achieve moderation in conduct books written for women. Collectively, the study illuminates how the idea of moderation adopted and challenged traditional models of self-discipline regarding eating and drinking in order to improve the laity’s discretion and capacity to assess its own appetite and develop a healthy lifestyle for the community.Dissertation/Thesis
Doctoral Dissertation English 2018
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Simpson, Andrea Marie. "'Navigating the tidal pull' : representations of the modern-postmodern tension in Michael Ondaatje's The English patient and Anil's ghost : a thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in English at the University of Canterbury /." 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10092/1981.
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Lauder, Ingrid. "An ethically charged event : Styron, Rushdie and the right to speak : a thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Arts in English in the University of Canterbury /." 2006. http://library.canterbury.ac.nz/etd/adt-NZCU20061207.115025.
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Ritchie, Jessica. "Revisiting the murderess : representations of Victorian women's violence in mid-nineteenth- and late-twentieth-century fiction : a thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in English in the University of Canterbury /." 2006. http://library.canterbury.ac.nz/etd/adt-NZCU20060925.121109.
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Koay, Elvina. "Building Blocks : Children's Literature and the Formation of a Nation, 1750-1825." Thèse, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/1866/9692.
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«Building Blocks: Children’s Literature and the Formation of a Nation, 1750-1825» examine la façon dont la littérature pour enfants imprègne les jeunes lecteurs avec un sens de nationalisme et d'identité nationale à travers la compréhension des espaces et des relations spatiales. La thèse étudie les œuvres d’enfants par Thomas Day, Sarah Fielding, Mary Wollstonecraft, Richard Lovell et Maria Edgeworth, Charles et Mary Lamb, Sarah Trimmer, Lucy Peacock, Priscilla Wakefield, John Aikin, et Anna Laetitia Barbauld. Les différents sujets thématiques reflètent la façon dont les frontières entre les dimensions extérieures et intérieures, entre le monde physique et le domaine psychologique, sont floues. En s'appuyant sur les travaux de penseurs éducatifs, John Locke et Jean-Jacques Rousseau, les écritures pour les enfants soulignent l'importance des expériences sensorielles qui informent l’évolution interne des individus. En retour, la projection de l'imagination et l'investissement des sentiments aident à former la manière dont les gens interagissent avec le monde matériel et les uns envers les autres afin de former une nation. En utilisant une approche Foucaldienne, cette thèse montre comment la discipline est inculquée chez les enfants et les transforme en sujets réglementés. Grâce à des confessions et des discours, les enfants souscrivent à la notion de surveillance et de transparence tandis que l'appréciation de l'opinion publique encourage la pratique de la maîtrise de soi. Les enfants deviennent non seulement des ébauches, sensibles à des impressions, mais des corps d'écriture lisibles. Les valeurs et les normes de la société sont internalisées pendant que les enfants deviennent une partie intégrale du système qu'ils adoptent. L'importance de la visibilité est également soulignée dans la popularité du système de Linné qui met l'accent sur l'observation et la catégorisation. L'histoire naturelle dans la littérature enfantine renforce la structure hiérarchique de la société, ce qui souligne la nécessité de respecter les limites de classes et de jouer des rôles individuels pour le bien-être de la collectivité. Les connotations religieuses dans l'histoire naturelle peuvent sembler justifier l'inégalité des classes, mais elles diffusent aussi des messages de charité, de bienveillance et d'empathie, offrant une alternative ou une forme d’identité nationale «féminine» qui est en contraste avec le militarisme et le nationalisme patricien. La seconde moitié de la thèse examine comment la théorie des « communautés imaginées » de Benedict Anderson devient une possibilité à travers le développement du goût national et une compréhension de l'interconnexion entre les individus. Le personnage du barde pointe à la centralité de l'esprit communautaire dans l'identité nationale. Parallèlement à la commercialisation croissante de produits culturels et nationaux durant cette période, on retrouve l’augmentation de l’attachement affectif envers les objets et la nécessité de découvrir l'authentique dans la pratique de la réflexion critique. La propriété est redéfinie à travers la question des «vrais» droits de propriété et devient partagée dans l'imaginaire commun. Des cartes disséquées enseignent aux enfants comment visualiser des espaces et des frontières et conceptualisent la place de l’individu dans la société. Les enfants apprennent que des actions disparates effectuées dans la sphère domestique ont des répercussions plus importantes dans le domaine public de la nation.“Building Blocks: Children’s Literature and the Formation of a Nation, 1750-1825” examines how children’s literature imbues young readers with a sense of nationalism and national identity through the understanding of spaces and spatial relationships. The thesis studies various children’s works by Thomas Day, Sarah Fielding, Mary Wollstonecraft, Richard Lovell and Maria Edgeworth, Charles and Mary Lamb, Sarah Trimmer, Lucy Peacock, Priscilla Wakefield, John Aikin, and Anna Laetitia Barbauld. The various thematic subjects utilised reflect how boundaries between the exterior and interior dimensions, between the physical world and the psychological realm, are blurred. Drawing from the works of educational thinkers, John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, writings for children highlight the importance of sensory experiences, which inform the internal developments of individuals. In return, the projection of imagination and the investment of feelings help shape the way people interact with the material world and with one another to form a nation. Using a Foucauldian approach, this thesis shows how discipline is instilled in children, turning them into regulated subjects. Through confessions and discourse, children subscribe to the notion of surveillance and transparency while an appreciation of public opinion further encourages the practice of self-control. Children become not only blank slates, susceptible to impressions, but readable bodies of writing. The values and norms of society are internalised, as children become part of the system that they adopt. The significance of visibility is also underscored in the popularity of the Linnaean system, which emphasises close observation and categorisation. Natural history in children’s literature reinforces the hierarchical structure of society, underscoring the need to respect class boundaries and perform individual roles for the wellbeing of the collective. The religious connotations in natural history may seem to justify class inequality; however, they also disseminate messages of charity, benevolence, and empathy, offering an alternative or “feminine” form of national identity that stands in contrast with militarism and patricianism. The second half of the thesis looks at how Benedict Anderson’s “imagined communities” becomes a possibility through the development of national taste and an understanding of the interconnection between individuals. The figure of the bard points to the centrality of communal spirit in national identity. Alongside the growing commercialisation of cultural and national products in the period were increasing emotional attachments to objects and the necessity in discovering the authentic in the practise of critical reflection. Property is redefined in the question of “true” ownership and becomes shared in the communal imagination. Dissected maps teach children how to visualise spaces and boundaries and conceptualise one’s place within society. Children learn that disparate actions performed in the domestic sphere have larger implications in the public realm of the nation.
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Sanders, Leonard Patrick. "Postmodern orientalism : William Gibson, cyberpunk and Japan : a thesis presented in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English at Massey University, Albany, New Zealand." 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10179/816.
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Taking the works of William Gibson as its point of focus, this thesis considers cyberpunk’s expansion from an emphatically literary moment in the mid 1980s into a broader multimedia cultural phenomenon. It examines the representation of racial differences, and the formulation of global economic spaces and flows which structure the reception and production of cultural practices. These developments are construed in relation to ongoing debates around Japan’s identity and otherness in terms of both deviations from and congruities with the West (notably America). To account for these developments, this thesis adopts a theoretical framework informed by both postmodernism as the “cultural dominant” of late capitalism (Jameson), and orientalism, those discursive structures which produce the reified polarities of East versus West (Said). Cyberpunk thus exhibits the characteristics of an orientalised postmodernism, as it imagines a world in which multinational corporations characterised as Japanese zaibatsu control global economies, and the excess of accumulated garbage is figured in the trope of gomi. It is also postmodernised orientalism, in its nostalgic reconstruction of scenes from the residue of imperialism, its deployment of figures of “cross-ethnic representation” (Chow) like the Eurasian, and its expressions of a purely fantasmatic experience of the Orient, as in the evocation of cyberspace. In distinction from modern or Saidean orientalism, postmodern orientalism not only allows but is characterized by reciprocal causality. This describes uneven, paradoxical, interconnected and mutually implicated cultural transactions at the threshold of East-West relations. The thesis explores this by first examining cyberpunk’s unremarked relationship with countercultural formations (rock music), practices (drugs) and manifestations of Oriental otherness in popular culture. The emphasis in the remainder of the thesis shifts towards how cyberpunk maps new technologies onto physical and imaginative “bodies” and geographies: the figuration of the cyborg, prosthetic interventions, and the evolution of cyberspace in tandem with multimedia innovations such as videogames. Cyberpunk then can best be understood as a conjunction of seemingly disparate experiences: on the one hand the postmodern dislocations and vertiginous moments of estrangement offset by instances of intense connectivity in relation to the virtual, the relocation to the “distanceless home” of cyberspace. As such it is an ever-expanding phenomenon which has been productively fused with other youth-culture media, and one with specifically Japanese features (anime, visual kei, and virtual idols).
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Hoffman, Katie F. "The Out of Way." 2010. https://scholarworks.umass.edu/theses/439.
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These stories are markers of temporal planes, the physical and the emotional, the swift and the fell. They operate at two ends; they are written and so are finitely formed and they are read indefinitely and yet only exist when they are read again. As a writer, this is my means of extension, waiving at the future with my ghost in the voices of my characters. They are also my archive, preserving instances of personal observation in the description of the body, still and living, moving in scene. For accuracy, I've done my best to emulate their movement. The analogy might be of a puppeteer pretending she has strings or better, the sand castles she's made are first only etchings at the shore; their formations quickly washed away and begun again then built better inland. To push metaphor: the description of body and movement within these stories are one kind of mirror and the author is another. The simultaneity of the reader lies between both. Perhaps this is paradoxical: these stories are archival and yet emulate timeless human occasion. I've desired to push metaphor and yet keep clear. My place between clarity and complexity is yet to melt-down from its oasis and gather into something drinkable.
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Le, Marquand Jane Nicole. "'I'm not a woman writer, but--' : gender matters in New Zealand women's short fiction 1975-1995 : a thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand." 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/10179/1462.
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From the late 1970s, New Zealand women short story writers increasingly worked their way into the literary mainstream. In the wake of the early, feminist-motivated years of the decade their gender, which had previously been the root of their marginalized position, began to work for them. However, rather than embracing womanhood, this growth in gender recognition led to many writers rejecting overt identification of their sex. To be a labeled a woman writer was considered patronising, a mark of inferiority. These women wanted to be known as writers only, some even expressing a hope for literature to reach a point of androgyny. Their work, however, did not convey an androgynous perspective. Just as the fact of their gender could not be avoided, so the influence their sex had on their creativity cannot be denied. Gender does matter and New Zealand women's short fiction published in the 1975-1995 period illustrates its significance. From the early trend for adopting fiction as a site for social commentary and political treatise against patriarchy's one-dimensional image of woman, these stories show a gradually increasing awareness of fictional possibilities, allowing for celebration of the multiplicity of female experience and capturing a process of redefinition rather than rejection of 'women's work'. Though in the later 1990s it may no longer have been politically 'necessary' to promote women's work on the grounds of gender, on a personal level the 'difference of view' of the woman writer remained both visible and vital. An increasing sense of woman-to-woman communication based on shared experience emerges: women are writing as women, about women, for women.
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Hansen, Tessa. "Illegitimacy in the mid-Victorian novels of Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins : a thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in English in the University of Canterbury /." 2006. http://library.canterbury.ac.nz/etd/adt-NZCU20061108.145806.
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Johnston-Ellis, Sarah Jane. "David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas : "revolutionary or gimmicky?" : a thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in English at Massey University, Manawatu, New Zealand." 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/10179/1685.
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This thesis will examine David Mitchell’s use of postmodern narrative structures and strategies in Cloud Atlas and how these relate to his overtly political concerns regarding relations of power between individuals and between factions. This will involve a discussion of debates surrounding the political efficacy of postmodern narrative forms. I will consider Mitchell’s prolific use of intertextual and intratextual allusion and his mimicry of a wide range of narrative modes and genres. These techniques, along with the complex structural iterations in the novel and the ‘recurrence’ of characters between its parts, appear to reinforce a thematic concern with the interconnectedness — indeed, the repetition — of human activity, through time and a fatalistic conception of being that draws on two central Nietzschean notions, eternal recurrence and the will to power. The vision of humanity and human relations of power that is expressed within Cloud Atlas is open to extended analysis in Foucauldian terms. Against this apparently nihilistic backdrop, Mitchell appears to promote a notion of (albeit limited) individual agency and the capacity for creative narration and reinterpretation of the past as a means to devise new ‘truths’ and explore new ‘meanings’ for the present and the future. I will explore the ways in which Mitchell’s metafictional self-reflexivity (and that of his protagonists), offers a vision of hope and political agency that counters the apparent (Nietzschean) fatalism of the novel.
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Shaw, Kirsten Elizabeth. "Neoliberalism and social patterns : constructions of home and community in contemporary New Zealand fiction : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Arts in English at Massey University, Albany, New Zealand." 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/10179/736.
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Constructions of home, family and community as ways of belonging have been ongoing discourses in New Zealand. This thesis examines constructions of home and family in works of fiction by four contemporary New Zealand authors: Alice Tawhai, Charlotte Grimshaw, Witi Ihimaera and Damien Wilkins. It asks how the main sociological characteristics of the period are presented and performed through fiction. Through these characters and their situations these authors expose the social fantasy of contemporary New Zealand society: that of individual reflexive opportunity. The twentieth century has seen a changing social fabric with loosening of bonds and the increase of individualism. The New Zealand way of life is changing, with increasing interconnectedness of the world through globalisation. Neo-liberal ideology, itself a response to globalising effects, has exacerbated social fragmentation and income disparity. Neoliberalism, a retreat of the state from both financial control and support of individuals, presumes a logic of market-forces and rational choice based on the maximisation of opportunity. This has implications for the individual’s sense of self and ways of belonging as the New Zealand subject is increasingly premised on personal responsibility. This thesis looks at the economic and sociological analyses of neoliberalism and asks if they are confirmed in the fiction.
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White, Mandala. "From the sublime to the rebellious : representations of nature in the urban novels of a contemporary New Zealand author : a thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Arts in English in the University of Canterbury /." 2007. http://library.canterbury.ac.nz/etd/adt-NZCU20070525.152454.
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Barker, Derek Alan. "English academic literary discourse in South Africa 1958-2004: a review of 11 academic journals." Thesis, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/10500/898.
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This thesis examines the discipline of English studies in South Africa through a review of articles published in 11 academic journals over the period 1958-2004. The aims are to gain a better understanding of the functions of peer-reviewed journals, to reveal the presence of rules governing discursive production, and to uncover the historical shifts in approach and choice of disciplinary objects. The Foucauldian typology of procedures determining discursive production, that is: exclusionary, internal and restrictive procedures, is applied to the discipline of English studies in order to elucidate the existence of such procedures in the discipline. Each journal is reviewed individually and comparatively. Static and chronological statistical analyses are undertaken on the articles in the 11 journals in order to provide empirical evidence to subvert the contention that the discipline is unruly and its choice of objects random. The cumulative results of this analysis are used to describe the major shifts primarily in ranges of disciplinary objects, but also in metadiscursive and thematic debates. Each of the journals is characterised in relation to what the overall analysis reveals about the mainstream developments. The two main findings are that, during the period under review, South African imaginative written artefacts have moved from a marginal position to the centre of focus of the discipline; and that the conception of what constitutes the `literary' has returned to a pre-Practical criticism definition, broadly inclusive of a variety of types of artefact including imaginative writing, such as autobiography, letters, journals and orature.English Studies
D. Litt. et Phil. (English)
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Hall, Mark Webster. ""Repetition to the life" : liminality, subjectivity, and speech acts in Shakespearean late romance : a thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in English at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand." 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10179/754.
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One key debate in the critical reception of Shakespearean late romance concerns how best to approach the functionality of the dramatised worlds that constitute it. What I call ‘containment’ readings of late romance argue that the alternative realities explored in the plays – realities of miraculous revivals, pastoral escapes and divine interventions, – serve to affirm the inevitable return of extant power structures. Utopian readings dispute this, making the case that the political and existential destructurations exposed in these plays point toward a new orientation for the dramatic subjects they produce. With the aim of contributing to the debate between containment and utopian readings, I explore in this thesis how late romance produces its subjects. I interrogate the plays’ structures with the help of the anthropological model of the limen, which is shown to be a useful category through which to educe the meaningfulness of certain ritual sequences. The limen’s three phases – separation; limen; aggregation – are employed to make sense of the transitions that subjects undergo in the four plays studied: Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale, and The Tempest. To study the liminality of these plays is, I argue, to study how dramatic subjects are produced therein, guided by the fact that their language shares properties with ritual discourse. When studying this discourse the focus falls on that class of language which impinges most lastingly on subjects: performatives. How performatives function in late romance will show us how real the changes induced in liminal subjects are. I examine the four plays in turn and find that their performative language produces subjects in a limen-consistent fashion. Aristocratic subjects are first of all estranged from those discursive practices that nourish their identity; their subjectivities are then glued back together in the ritualised, emblematising language of the limen. The conclusion I draw from my interrogation of the liminal patterns uncovered is that the functionality of late romance is broadly consistent with containment readings; I claim to have extended such readings, however, in showing that Shakespeare’s dramatisation of the state’s return to power usefully exposes its logic and symbolic grammar.
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Fisher, Rebecca Maree. "An exploration into the use of the biblical narrative of the fall within the children's series The chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis and His dark materials by Philip Pullman : a thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in English by the University of Canterbury /." 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10092/1786.
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