Dissertations / Theses: 'English Folklore'

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Harris, Jason Marc. "Folklore, fantasy, and fiction : the function of supernatural folklore in nineteenth and early twentieth-century British prose narratives of the literary fantastic /." Thesis, Connect to this title online; UW restricted, 2001. http://hdl.handle.net/1773/9456.

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Amar, Shruti. "Folklore, myth, and Indian fiction in English, 1930-1961." Thesis, King's College London (University of London), 2018. https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/en/theses/folklore-myth-and-indian-fiction-in-english-19301961(db116252-ebc3-44c9-b02d-c742a0f98c66).html.

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The thesis examines the complex relationship between folklore, myth, and Indian writing in English, with reference to a number of novels and short stories written between 1930 and 1961. I look in detail at the works of five writers: Raja Rao, Mulk Raj Anand, Sudhindra Nath Ghose, R.K. Narayan, and Balachandra Rajan. With the rise of the novel in India during the late nineteenth century, vernacular writers started to experiment with the form and style of fiction. Writing in various regional languages, they frequently drew on oral tales and devised new modes of narration. Such experimentation, however, was not confined to vernacular fiction. In this thesis, I argue that novelists writing in English such as Raja Rao, Mulk Raj Anand, R. K. Narayan and several others similarly developed a distinct style of writing, as influenced by myth, folklore and folk performances. Like the bhasa writers, they too began to experiment with the form of the novel and short-stories by incorporating tales, songs, and proverbs, and their performative dimensions. Folklore centred on women became crucial to this experimentation. It is this engagement with the myths, folk tales, songs and proverbs that this thesis investigates. Along with the novels of Raja Rao, Sudhindra Nath Ghose, R. K. Narayan and Balachandra Rajan, I analyse the short stories of R. K. Narayan and Mulk Raj Anand in order to understand the complex inter-textual links between written and oral traditions. There are two dimensions to my inquiry. First, through a series of close readings, I investigate how - both in terms of theme and structure - the use of myths, folk tales, songs and proverbs help to evoke, dramatise or even ironise complex situations within the text. Second, I pay special attention to the elements of performance in some of these novels. The sustained engagement of these authors with woman-centric folklore remains a strong sub-theme in the thesis; such engagement also encapsulates the various literary debates on the status of woman in South Asia and provides a glimpse into their everyday lives. In each of my chapters, I investigate the method employed to create a new form of fiction and also how such inclusion constructs the characters as well as the relationship between them within the complex strand of caste and gender hierarchies. Though the thesis sets out to broadly discover the intricate yet inevitable relation between the folk and the written, I have kept the time period between 1930 and 1961. The period is in itself relevant in modern South Asian history as it records the transition from the colonial to the postcolonial era and so my focus remains on the texts produced during this phase. The recurrent nationalist discourse that finally culminated in the independence, as well as the partition in 1947, allowed the authors to set their fiction within the backdrop of a complex historical and political situation that offered as well as required various literary responses. The writers I argue particularly borrowed from the native mythology and folklore to respond to this change. The thesis thus intends to provide a broader perspective on the various ways in which pre-colonial and postcolonial narrative forms intermingled with each other to transform the colonial legacy.

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McKinney, Sarah Katherine. "Irreducibly Ever After: Metafantasy as Postmodern Folklore." NCSU, 2007. http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/theses/available/etd-02282007-125257/.

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Literary scholarship has largely ignored the genre of medieval fantasy, dismissing its library as derivative, formulaic and repetitive. In this thesis, I argue that medieval fantasy is more productively framed as myth and folklore, and that what some call ?repetition? would be better named ?iteration.? By functioning via the folkloric process of incremental repetition, various fantastic tale-types adapt to individual novels? purposes in the way that the ancient oral tale once adapted to audience. The advent of the literary fairy tale, which has culminated in the work of Walt Disney, has halted the natural storytelling process and ?frozen? many traditional tales in place. Medieval fantasy actively fights such narrative distillation?which inevitably leads to dogmatic didacticism?by rejecting master narrative and regenerating the active, meaning-making relationship between author and reader. A particular type of fantasy, called ?metafantasy,? makes calling attention to the process of story its primary aim. In so doing, metafantasy fights the tendency to Disneyfication and the appropriation of myth by dominant ideologies. I explicate the folkloric processes of three metafantasy novels here: The Last Unicorn, by Peter Beagle; The Princess Bride, by William Goldman; and Phillip Pullman?s His Dark Materials series.

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Griffith, David Michael. "The significance of folklore in some selected Middle English romances." Thesis, University of Exeter, 1992. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.304285.

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Gashler, Kristina Whitley. ""Tauser Killed Both Dogs" : and other suburban American family folklore /." Diss., CLICK HERE for online access, 2005. http://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/ETD/image/etd876.pdf.

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Boyd, Rebecca. ""Anything Dead Coming Back to Life Hurts": Ghosts and Memory in Hamlet and Beloved." TopSCHOLAR®, 1998. http://digitalcommons.wku.edu/theses/334.

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Ghost stories are an ingrained part of most cultures because, typically, humans must be forced to confront those elements of their individual and communal past that they would prefer to ignore. Accordingly, ghosts have embodied weaknesses and hidden evils that must be assimilated and transcended, and writers have embroidered a variety of subtexts upon the traditional fabric of ghostlore. Specifically, both William Shakespeare's Hamlet and Toni Morrison's Beloved employ ghosts as symbols of man's archetypal desire to hide his past. A careful examination of the texts in these ghost stories, of the cultural folklore included, and of the ghosts' influence on individual characters reveals both writers' insistence that man must find the delicate balance between ignoring/evading the past and being consumed by that past. Both writers also explain that the individual's identity must integrate the past, but not be stifled by it. These works differ in that Shakespeare illustrates how man is destroyed when he does not find that balance and does not incorporate his past into his identity, while Morrison depicts the psychic balm that results from confrontation with and acceptance of the past as her characters face a new, more authentic life. While Shakespeare draws upon his society's widely accepted belief system, Morrison, operating in a culture alienated from its own mythic heritage, consciously constructs a mythic framework acceptable to the skeptical twentieth century reader.

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Suddarth, Linda Ann. "Into the glamoured spot| Numinous nature, fairy-faith, and the imagining psyche." Thesis, Pacifica Graduate Institute, 2013. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=3597066.

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There are places within nature which are imbued with magic and beauty. This dissertation explores the numinous or sacred within nature which creates such a hold upon the imagination. The images of enchantment from fairy-faith open the realms of nature as a threshold experience, explored through the research of W.Y. Evans-Wentz and Katherine Briggs. The concept of the invisibles in nature as "Other" is investigated through the ideas of Mary Watkins.

When one steps into these enchanted spaces, one may want to spontaneously sing, dance, or remember a story. Such an enchanted experience signals that the invisibles or fairy-folk may be present. The Irish poet W. B. Yeats wrote that " . . . the beautiful [fairies] are not far away when we are walking in pleasant and quiet places [. . .] I will explore every little nook of some poor coppice with almost anxious footsteps, so deep a hold has this imagination upon me" (Mythologies 64).

A relationship between the human and natural orders of being encourages the imagination of both worlds. As Gaston Bachelard argues, "The imagination gives more than things and actions, it invents new life, new spirit; it opens eyes to new types of vision" (On Poetic Imagination and Reverie 16). The poetic imagination provides a way to enter the mythical spheres of nature. The imagining psyche, as seen through the lens of alchemy, mysticism, and physics, is explored through the work of W. B. Yeats, Mary Oliver, and William Shakespeare. In their works, the poetic imagination creates stories that give visionary form to the invisibles of nature. This study also investigates the figures of Arthurian legend, Merlin and Vivien, in their fairy aspect. Their story of disappearance into the primeval forest provides metaphors for the workings of numinosity within nature, such as the "return to the forest," and the "sacred marriage," explored through the thought of Heinrich Zimmer, Mircea Eliade, C. G. Jung, and Marie Louise von Franz.

Finally, an accompanying creative component includes a journal of active/guided/shamanic imagination, a journal focusing on travel to Ireland, and a collection of poems, which, taken together, contribute to the exploration of the numinous qualities of nature.

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Parry, Leona Anne. "Is seeing believing? Or, is believing seeing? An exploration of the enduring belief in fairies and little people among contemporary persons with Celtic ancestry." Thesis, Pacifica Graduate Institute, 2015. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=3688091.

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This Humanistic Social Science Dissertation is an exploration of the continuing belief in fairies as real in spite of over a millennium of sociopolitical and religious pressures aimed at the extinguishment of fairies. In this qualitative, phenomenological study, the belief narratives of eight subjects' encounters with fairy beings are examined.

For the purpose of this dissertation, the word fairy is based on but not limited to fairy scholar Katherine Briggs' definition and classification, which includes all spirits of the supernatural realms, except for angels, devils, or ghosts (i). Thus, "fairy" includes sylphs, subtle or intermediate beings, light fairies, nature elementals, pixies, leprechauns, elves, changelings, and brownies to name but a few. The fairy beings encountered by the interviewees are reflected against Celtic folklore established in classic works like Reverend Robert Kirk's 1691 manuscript (47) and Walter Yeeling Evans-Wentz 1911 thesis.

Depth Psychology and science provide two additional lenses to explore fairy phenomena and belief since this dissertation seeks to investigate the relationship between reality and imagination, and between tradition, experiential knowing, and belief. Moreover, counterevidence and arguments to the prevailing cultural wisdom and beliefs that fairies and imaginal beings are impossible are examined. This study approaches the interviews from a perspective of cultural mythology and phenomenology with both emic and etic interests. The subjects experienced a moment of gnosis with fairy encounters and subsequently believed with unshaking resolve that fairies are real and true. In this context, C.G. Jung's concepts of the archetype and Henri Corbin's theories regarding the psychoid realm are helpful in understanding the Celtic Otherworld and Land of Fairy.

A constituent invariant model was developed to organize the data, and facilitated the emergence of key themes, including corroborated sightings, surprising shadows, and messages from nature beings. The belief in fairies continues and is part of an evolving, contemporary, and nature-based mythology that is very much alive.

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Hanes, Stacie L. "The sense and sensibility of the 19th century fantastic." Thesis, Kent State University, 2014. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=3618887.

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While studies of fantastic literature have often focused on their structural and genre characteristics, less attention has been paid to the manner in which they address social issues and concerns. Drawing on theoretical, taxonomic, and historical approaches, this study argues that 19th-century England represented a key period of transformation during which fantastic literature evolved away from its folkloristic, mythic, and satirical origins and toward the modern genres of science fiction, feminist fantasy, and literary horror.

The thesis examines the subversive and transformative function of the fantastic in nineteenth-century British literature, particularly how the novel Frankenstein (1831), the poem “Goblin Market” (1862), and the novel Dracula (1897) make deliberate uses of the materials of fantastic literature to engage in social and cultural commentary on key issues of their time, and by so doing to mark a significant transformation in the way fantastic materials can be used in narrative.

Frankenstein took the materials of the Gothic and effectively transformed them into science fiction, not only through its exploration of the morality of scientific research, but more crucially through its critique of systems of education and the nature of learning. "Goblin Market " transformed the materials of fairy tales into a morally complex critique of gender relations and the importance of women's agency, which paved the way for an entire tradition of such redactions among later feminist writers. Dracula draws on cruder antecedents of vampire tales and the novel of sensation to create the first modern literary horror novel, while addressing key emerging anxieties of nationalism and personal identity.

Although historical connections are drawn between these three key works, written at different points during the nineteenth century, it does not argue that they constitute a single identifiable movement, but rather that each provided a template for how later writers might adapt fantastic materials to more complex literary, social, and didactic ends, and thus provided a groundwork for the more complex modern uses of the fantastic as a legitimate resource for writers concerned with not only sensation, but significant cultural and social concerns.

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Harline, Geneva. "Allowing the Untellable to Visit: Investigating Digital Folklore, PTSD and Stigma." DigitalCommons@USU, 2017. https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/etd/6897.

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In the introduction of 2012 issue of The Journal of Folklore Research, Diane Goldstein and Amy Shuman issue a “call to arms for folklorists … to concentrate on the vernacular experience of the stigmatized.” (Goldstein and Shuman, 2012:116). Drawing on this call to arms, this thesis investigates how Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is portrayed in social media through memes and captioned images. I argue that the genres of memes and captioned images in digital folklore work to help mitigate the stigma of PTSD because the veneer of anonymity in the digital world allows people with PTSD to be willing to share their experiences and struggles. With my findings on the use of memes and captioned images, my research demonstrates how digital folklore can be used to determine what education efforts are needed to mitigate stigma in the offline world. Through the focus on memes and captioned images relating to PTSD, I show that through the normalization of one mental health condition, digital folklore can help to alleviate stigma because the pervasive nature of digital culture allows for an influx of minimally moderated information, creating an avenue for understanding stigmatized groups.

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Randolph, Tamara Lee Dietrich. "Culture-mediated literature adult Chinese EFL student response to folktales /." access full-text online access from Digital dissertation consortium, 2000. http://libweb.cityu.edu.hk/cgi-bin/er/db/ddcdiss.pl?9988979.

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Peretti, Daniel. "The modern Prometheus the persistence of an ancient myth in the modern world, 1950 to 2007 /." [Bloomington, Ind.] : Indiana University, 2009. http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&res_dat=xri:pqdiss&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:3357985.

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Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Folklore and Ethnomusicology, 2009.
Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on Feb. 8, 2010). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 70-05, Section: A, page: 1745. Adviser: Greg Schrempp.

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Pack, Uraina N. "Afrointratextuality as a means of examining folklore in the emancipation narratives of Frederick Douglass, William Wells Brown, and Harriet Jacobs." DigitalCommons@Robert W. Woodruff Library, Atlanta University Center, 1997. http://digitalcommons.auctr.edu/dissertations/2650.

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This study examines the use and documentation of folklore within Emancipation narratives. This examination is predicated on the behavior of the trickster, Br’er Rabbit. Through analysis of Br’er Rabbit’s behavior, three survival techniques used by the authors in this study function as a means of determining his importance to African Americans. Through research and comparison of narratives, examination of historical references, and critical analyses, the researcher evaluated the behavior and experiences of African Americans within captivity to establish the use of folklore as a survival mechanism. By application of a methodology which evaluates African American experience and culture, the researcher sought to reinforce the connection between literature and culture. The researcher determined that cultural retention was evident and necessary to African Americans regardless of their circumstances. The conclusions of this analysis validate the importance of the narrative as a historical and cultural source for African American existence in America. The researcher’s methodology suggests that the use of folklore within the narrative is derivative of the imitation and revision of linguistic and physical motion specific to African American culture.

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Oliver, Cheyenne. "Which witch?| Morgan le Fay as shape-shifter and English perceptions of magic reflected in Arthurian legend." Thesis, Florida Atlantic University, 2016. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=10096028.

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Descended from Celtic goddesses and the fairies of folklore, the literary character of Morgan le Fay has been most commonly perceived as a witch and a one-dimensional villainess who plagues King Arthur and his court, rather than recognized as the legendary King’s enchanted healer and otherworldly guardian. Too often the complexity of Morgan le Fay and her supernatural abilities are lost, her character neglected as peripheral. As a literary figure of imaginative design this thesis explores Morgan le Fay as a unique “window” into the medieval mindset, whereby one can recover both medieval understandings of magic and female magicians. By analyzing her role in key sources from the twelfth to fifteenth century, this thesis uses Morgan le Fay to recover nuanced perceptions of the supernatural in medieval England that embraced the ambiguity of a pagan past and remained insulated from continental constructions of demonic witchcraft.

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Jacobs, Tessa Katherine. "The Monkey in the Looking Glass: Fairies, Folklore and Evolutionary Theory in the Search for Britain's Imperial Self." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2012. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/81.

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In his groundbreaking work of postcolonial theory, Orientalism, Edward Said puts forth the idea that imperial Europe asserted an identity by constructing the character of its colonized subjects. Said writes that his book tries to “show that European culture gained in strength and identity by setting itself off against the Orient as a sort of surrogate and even underground self” (3). The object of this thesis is a related project, for it too is a search for imperial Britain’s surrogate or underground self. Yet rather than positioning this search within the British colonies, this thesis takes as its context a land and people that were at once more intimate and more alien: the races and landscapes of Fairyland. This Thesis attempts to situate the fairy folklore and literature from the Victorian era within the context of greater social and political ideologies of the age, specifically those pertaining to national identity, imperial power and race. In doing so it will analyze Charles Kingsley’s Water-Babies, Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Kenneth Grahame’s The Golden Age, George MacDonald’s The Princess and the Goblin, Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden concluding that the British self proposed by these works was an uncomfortable manifestation, and haunted by the anxieties and discontinuities that arose as imperial Britain attempted to navigate an identity within Victorian conceptions of race and power.

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Naidu, Sam. "Transcribing tales, creating cultural identities an analysis of selected written english texts of Xhosa folktales." Thesis, Rhodes University, 2000. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002229.

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This thesis maps a marriage of postcolonial theory and folklore studies. The progeny of this marriage is an analytic tool which can suitably and effectively tackle the subject of written folktale texts, whether they be part of a nineteenth century colonialist discourse, or a twenty-first century nationalist discourse. First, GM Theal's collection of folktale texts, Kaffir Folklore (1882), is analysed as part of his specific colonialist discourse. Theal formulated for himself, and for the Xhosa peoples, identities which consolidated the colonialisms he supported. I argue that these folktale texts, although a part of Theal's colonialist discourse, are hybrid, containing the voices of both coloniser and colonised. Second, the position of contemporary written folktales in a neo-colonialist and >new nationalist discourse=, is examined. The optimistic belief of scholars and authors, that folktales are a means of bridging cultural gaps, is questioned. Finally, it is shown that authors of folktale texts can synthesise diverse literary traditions in a hybrid artform. This synthesis, to some extent, embodies the >new nationalist= aim of a unified national cultural identity in South Africa. The central value of recognising the role of folktale texts in colonialist and nationalist discourses lies in the awareness that this type of literary activity in South Africa is a cross-cultural practice. The confluence of voices which constitutes these folktale texts, reveals that our stories are intertwined. In the past, the discourses of colonialism and apartheid controlled the formation of the diverse and hierarchised cultural identities of South Africa. But this is not to say that alternative stories of self-fashioning and cultural self-determination did not exist. In the folktale texts of writers such as Mhlope, Jordan, and even in Theal's colonial collection, different mediums, literary heritages and styles converge to create narratives which speak of cross-cultural interaction and the empowerment of the black voice. In post-apartheid South Africa, there is even greater opportunity to reshape stories, to recreate selves, and to redefine intercultural relations. This thesis has outlined how some of those stories, which use folktale texts as their central trope, are constructed and commodified. Not only do these reinvented folktale texts embody the heterogeneous cultural influences of South Africa, they also have the potential to promote, first, the understanding of cultural differences, and second, the acceptance of the notion of cultural hybridity in our society.

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Hakala, Marjorie R. "Are all the fairies dead? : fairy tales and place in Victorian realism /." Connect to online version, 2006. http://ada.mtholyoke.edu/setr/websrc/pdfs/www/2006/151.pdf.

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Brown, Patricia. "The role and symbolism of the dragon in vernacular saints' legends, 1200-1500." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 1998. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/5414/.

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This thesis looks at the role and function of the dragon in the saint's encounter with the monster in hagiographic texts, written primarily in the vernacular, between 1200 and 1500. Those connotations accrued by the dragon which are relevant to this thesis are traced from their earliest beginnings. Although by the middle ages the multi-valency of the dragon is reduced to one primary symbolic valency, that of evil and significantly, the evil of paganism, the dragon never loses completely its ancient associations and they help to colour its function within the narrative. The symbolic use of the dragon in vernacular saints' lives is generally consistent, although allowing for different didactic emphases. However, the two legends on which this thesis concentrates are those of St George from Caxton's Golden Legend and St Margaret from the Katherine Group. Each reveals tensions within the text when the dragon's role departs from the familiar hagiographic topos. Firstly, the role of the hagiographic dragon is identified by a comparison with that of the dragon in romance. Allowing for cross-fertilization, this thesis focuses on the significance of the hero's dragon-fight and the saint's dragon encounter to differentiate between the ethos of the romance and hagiographic genres respectively. Tensions are created in the hagiographic text when the romance topos of the dragon-fight is used in conjunction with the hagiographic dragon encounter, as in the legend of St George. Finally, in the legend of St Margaret, the dragon's appearance unbalances and unsettles the perspective of the narrative when its role and function are deployed in the promulgation of virginity.

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Van, de Water Wesley Colin. "The Bat and the Spider: A Folkloristic Analysis of Comic Book Narratives." DigitalCommons@USU, 2016. https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/etd/4870.

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This thesis examines and argues that superhero narratives, beginning with their comic book origins in the early twentieth century, exhibit many of the qualities found in folklore. Furthermore, these narratives not only demonstrate a folkloric evolution across multi-media formats, including printed work, television, and film, but that they fit within classic hero narrative structures posited by various folklore theorists. The hero theories presented by Lord Raglan, Vladimir Propp, and Joseph Campbell, along with traditional folklore patterns of dynamism and conservatism discussed by Barre Toelken, Alan Dundes, and others, support the assertion that folklore can, and does, exist and propagate in the mass media popular culture sphere. What follows is an academic analysis of core folklore elements, as well as a presentation of how these core qualities can be found in superhero narratives, and how the discipline of folklore may benefit from a study of these narratives.

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Browning, Jimmy. "The Lost Tribalism of Years Gone By: Function & Variation in Gay Folklore in Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City Novels." TopSCHOLAR®, 1992. https://digitalcommons.wku.edu/theses/2173.

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This thesis intends to demonstrate that, because of the unusual circumstances of its writing - a semi-journalistic piece produced during a period of crisis in the real-life community fictionally depicted - Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City series stands as an unusually accurate and reliable ethnographic source for information concerning the gay male subculture of San Francisco in the late 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, not only the practice and behavior themselves, but also reflecting their personal and communal function. The methodology employed in demonstrating this thesis is necessarily subjective. Like gay folklore scholar Joseph P. Goodwin in More Man Than You'll Ever Be, the seminal study of the folklore of gay men in the United States, I am a gay man, who, to some degree, draws on personal knowledge and observation to recognize and identify elements of gay folklore depicted in the fictional milieu I have chosen to study. This is unavoidable to an extent: ethnographic work within the gay communities has been limited by a number of factors, including the covert nature of the group, the biases of exoteric analysts, and the lack of observations informed by insiders' perspectives. Nonetheless, the groundwork that has been accomplished by Goodwin and a handful of other scholars provides an adequate basis for comparison between the "real" world, professional folk study, and the fictive domain of Armistead Maupin. In addition to an examination of gay oral folklore in the novels - including how gay oral tradition informs both the content of the novels and Maupin's authorial voice - this thesis also considers aspects of gay customary folklore and gay material culture, including how the content of the novels chronicles some of those folkloric forms and how the novels themselves have become a significant part of gay customary and material tradition. To a large degree, folklore functions in gay folk culture to encourage communication and cohesion and to divulge important psychological insights into the minds of many group members.

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Butts, IV Leverett Belton. "Heroes with a Hundred Names: Mythology and Folklore in Robert Penn Warren's Early Fiction." Digital Archive @ GSU, 2009. http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/english_theses/71.

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This dissertation examines Robert Penn Warren‘s use of Arthurian legend, Judeo-Christian folklore, Norse mythology, and ancient vegetation rituals in his first four novels. It also illustrates how the use of these myths helps define Warren‘s Agrarian ideals while underscoring his subtle references to these ideals in his early fiction.

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Bowman, Joy. "NEW YEAR, OLD BLUES." UKnowledge, 2017. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/english_etds/64.

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This collection aims through the use of folktale and familial history to investigate the bounds of gender and memory against a rural Appalachian landscape. The work utilizes superstition, myth, and the commonplace to search the shadows for the forbidden and unspoken, in an attempt to redefine and reconcile personal dissonance through an observational and at times, voyeuristic lens.

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Brown, Ian. "History as theatrical metaphor : history, myth and national identities in modern Scottish drama." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2018. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/30714/.

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The completion of History as Theatrical Metaphor, now submitted for consideration for the award of the degree of Doctor of Letters, represents an integration and culmination of a number of related strands arising from both my practice as a playwright over the last five decades and my relevant academic research. Susanne Kries has summarised a key approach underlying my writing of history plays as ‘deconstructing the ideological intent behind the very endeavour of writing history and of revealing the ways by which mythologies are formed’. Much of my related academic research shares this interest. A recurring theme of both playwriting and scholarly writing, central to the work submitted, is the significance of the interaction of drama, language – especially Scots and English – and history. The initial phase in exploring such themes was in my developing professional playwriting practice. In 1967, I wrote the first draft of Mary, eventually produced by the Royal Lyceum Theatre Company in 1977. In this first version I sought to address the theme of the life of Mary, Queen of Scots, but in a revisionary way. The play’s first acts, before Mary arrives on stage, involved an unlikely affair between Mary of Guise, Queen Regent in Mary’s absence in France, and her Secretary of State, Maitland of Lethington, conceived as a cross between a Chief Minister and a Mafia consigliere, a relationship in which Mary of Guise achieved some form of Lawrentian ‘authentic’ sexual release and self-fulfilment through her relationship with a powerful Scots leader. This motif was developed when Mary arrived and proceeded to fall under the magnetic spell of the even more Lawrentian Bothwell, a transformation of her sexuality and identity marked by the fact that about half way through her scenes she stopped speaking in French-inflected English and started to speak in Scots. The play’s tendentiousness was further marked by its being written in Scots-language free verse. The decision to write in Scots was consciously, if superficially, ideological. It sought to reflect the vibrant language amongst which I grew up on a council scheme, although in my home the dominant language was Standard Scottish English. I also sought to take a revisionary view of Scottish history, seeking to avoid what I saw as the sentimentalisation of that history in plays by an older generation like that of Robert McLellan. What I was concerned to do was later outlined explicitly by Tom McGrath in a 1984 interview, talking of his own practice: I suppose at that time we were coming up with a different ideology. We were coming up with a different approach after all that work, work that had been done [by writers like MacDiarmid and McLellan] in Scots language. We were coming up with this street level sound of existentialist man in the street, "black man in the ghetto" type of writing. It just upset the applecart. (Later I would develop a contextual interpretation of the shift McGrath refers to, and which I sought to be part of, in arguing that the use of Scots on stage was key to supporting and enhancing the cultural prestige of Scots in the 2011 chapter, ‘Drama as a Means for Uphaudin Leid Communities’. This – in a continuing conscious intention to assert the potential and status of Scots – while academic in content, was written entirely in Scots.) In short, from the beginning of my professional playwriting, a key strand was experiment in and exploration of the relationship of drama, Scots language, community identity and history, particularly the interrogation of accepted versions of ‘history’. The first draft of Mary came by the early 1970s to seem to me to be unsatisfactory in its exploration of the interaction of drama, language and history. By then, it appeared in its sensationalist version of Scottish history to have fallen into a parallel trap to the earlier one of a sentimental and romanticised view of that history. It certainly had moved away from conventional treatments of Scotland’s past, but was rather tending to a simplistic dramatic interpretation pour épater les bourgeois. Indeed, its attempts at sexual directness made it unacceptable at that time, 1968-69, to the management of the Royal Lyceum. While its Literary Manager Alan Brown spoke positively of the play, he still felt the company could not present it. Within very few years my own view came to be that, while it might substitute a certain late-adolescent Scots-language raunchiness for earlier playwrights’ Scots-language sentimentalities, it was itself somewhat naïve and sentimental. Further, the use of Scots in a free verse form, rather than adding anything to the dramatic potential of Scots language, seemed to remove it from the everyday discourse which inspired me to use it in the first place. This change of critical perspective and creative intention arose from two related developments in my dramaturgy. One was the impact of a variety of late 1960s theatrical experiments which impressed me in dealing with historical and political material in a post-Shavian and post-Brechtian way. These included the 1964 film version of Peter Brook's production of Peter Weiss's Marat/Sade, which I saw in 1968, John Spurling's MacRune's Guevara (1969) and Peter Nichols's The National Health (1969) in the programme of the National Theatre in London, New York’s Negro Ensemble Company's version of Peter Weiss's The Song of the Lusitanian Bogey, which is concerned with Portuguese colonial exploitation, presented in the 1969 London World Theatre Season, and John Arden and Margaretta D'Arcy's version of Horatio Nelson’s life and reputation, The Hero Rises Up, presented by Nottingham Playhouse at the 1969 Edinburgh Festival. I was further impressed by the theatrical techniques of the New York-based LaMama troupe, by its version of Paul Foster's Tom Paine (1967) and the popularised and commercialised exploitation of those techniques in Hair (1967). I had also read Foster's Heimskringla! Or The Stoned Angels (1970), written for LaMama and derived from Norse sagas. All employed varying metatheatrical techniques to deconstruct received versions of history and politics which extended my own understanding of what was creatively possible. The second development was that, as those plays affected my understanding of theatrical possibilities in exploring historically based themes, I was researching and beginning to draft my next play on a historical theme. This explored the life, business ethics and politics of Andrew Carnegie. On top of all of this, at this time, having showed Max Stafford-Clark, Artistic Director of the Traverse Theatre, a first draft of Carnegie, begun during the autumn of 1969, I was invited by him to work, in my first professional theatre role, as a writing assistant on the first Traverse Workshop Theatre Company production, Mother Earth (1970), directed by Stafford-Clark when he ceased to be director of the Traverse itself. With his new company, he was developing the deconstructionist and improvisational rehearsal techniques that would later be more widely thought of as the creative method of his Joint Stock Theatre Company, into which the Traverse Workshop Company morphed in 1974. The dramaturgical lessons learned from the examples cited above and by working with such a creative and methodologically innovative director as Stafford-Clark were allied to my own quizzical view of Carnegie’s reputation. This was partly derived from the fact that my great-grandfather was a first cousin of Carnegie’s. There were family stories which, if they did not fully undermine his philanthropic reputation, suggested there were other sides to his career.

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Marshall, Christine Lowella. "The re-presented Indian: Pauline Johnson's "Strong Race Opinion" and other forgotten discourses." Diss., The University of Arizona, 1997. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/288722.

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The daughter of a Mohawk chief and an English immigrant, Pauline Johnson had an unusual childhood which exposed her to Shakespeare and Byron, as well as to her Mohawk grandfather's ancient stories. Her writing reflected her parents' optimism and belief that her dual heritage was the beginning of a new world in which native values and abilities would be integrated as important contributions to Canadian society as a whole. For nearly seventeen years Johnson toured Canada, the United States, and England, reciting her own poetry and adding her own humorous observations. Aware that her special draw to her audiences was her native heritage, Johnson assumed the stage persona of "The Mohawk Princess," and wore a buckskin dress, moccasins, a bearclaw necklace, and other accouterments as she recited angry poems protesting white treatment of native peoples. In the second half of her performance, however, she changed into an evening gown, thereby subverting her audience's expectation of the stereotyped identity, "Indian." Although her performances succeeded in disrupting, for an evening, the dominant colonial discourse, she was ultimately co-opted as a sentimental trope and today is often dismissed as a serious writer. However, such dismissal overlooks the fact that Pauline Johnson was the first and only native writer to make her living from her writing. During the four years between her retirement from the recital platform and her death in 1913, she produced more than 80 short stories that appeared in national magazines. This dissertation examines examples of the colonial discourse of her contemporaries and Johnson's response to such discourse for clues to her current near-exclusion from the Native American literary canon.

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Greenlee, Jessica. "Folk narrative in the nineteenth-century British novel /." view abstract or download file of text, 2006. http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=1283959861&sid=1&Fmt=2&clientId=11238&RQT=309&VName=PQD.

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2006.
Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 218-228). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

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Ahlstone, Daisy M. "Thylacine Dreams: The Vernacular Resurrection of an Extinct Marsupial." DigitalCommons@USU, 2019. https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/etd/7563.

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This thesis explores the folk resurrection of the thylacine through artwork and symbolic interaction. The thylacine, better known as the Tasmanian tiger, is a marsupial that suffered a government-sanctioned massacre leading to its extinction in 1936. The thylacine’s status as a hidden animal has inspired what folklorists call “ostensive practice”; people not only actively seek out the thylacine in the wilderness of Tasmania today and share their sightings online, but they have also incorporated the thylacine as a symbol of hope and perseverance into various forms of folk art. There have been upwards of five thousand documented sightings of the thylacine since its extinction. This documentation can take the form of amateur or phone-recorded films, or sightings described in interviews for local news agencies. Some people have even found alleged biological remains of the thylacine and have described hearing its unique call. In addition to these types of legend-tripping activities, the thylacine is also represented in a variety of folk-art forms, including digital, painted, and hand-drawn artwork, written fiction, fiber arts, and costuming. This content is shared widely across the internet. Keeping the thylacine alive through the creation of folk art and legend-tripping search parties helps thylacine enthusiasts cope with the guilt for having lost an ecologically important animal due directly to ignorance and financial gain. If the thylacine is resurrected, whether literally or figuratively, people can symbolically undo some of the damage they have caused the natural world. Thus, the vernacular resurrection of the thylacine, understood through a folklorist lens, offers a model for comparing some of the vernacular ways that people are presently dealing with the general loss of wildlife due to climate change.

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Smith, Greta Lynn. "“Full of Fruit, Under ane Fenyeit Fabill:“ Robert Henryson and the Aesopic Tradition." Miami University / OhioLINK, 2010. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=miami1281098001.

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Abbott, William Thomas. "White Knowledge and the Cauldron of Story: The Use of Allusion in Terry Pratchett's Discworld." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2002. https://dc.etsu.edu/etd/630.

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In the last twenty years, Terry Pratchett's Discworld series has become very popular. Pratchett's success hinges in part on his use of allusion, in what Tolkien called the "Cauldron of Story," and what Pratchett refers to as "white knowledge." This paper explores the Discworld novels and illustrates Pratchett's use and success of storytelling through a few key directions: folk tales, fantasy literature, movies, and rock music. Pratchett has received limited critical review, mostly of a negative nature, while producing a strong literary series, one crafted with both obvious and subtle recognition of his genre's sources. While standing on the shoulders of giants, Pratchett both respects and scrutinizes the myths and stories that construct our reality. Critically, Pratchett's fiction deserves more respect and closer study; this paper attempts to give him his due.

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Плахоніна, Г. С., Ірина Карпівна Кобякова, Ирина Карповна Кобякова, and Iryna Karpivna Kobiakova. "Семантичні особливості англійської народної загадки." Thesis, Сумський державний університет, 2016. http://essuir.sumdu.edu.ua/handle/123456789/46649.

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У даний час в лінгвістиці досі семантичні особливості англійської народної загадки є предметом теоретичних досліджень. На думку, більшості філологів, тенденції розвитку англійських народних загадок є безмежними. Англійська народна загадка являє собою невеликий фольклорний твір у вигляді іносказання. В основі якого лежить хитромудре питання, на яке треба знайти відповідь – відгадку. Англійські народні загадки так само специфічні, як і англійський гумор.

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Brandt, Kristen Clark. "Cultural and Narrative Shifts of Nineteenth Century Children's Literature in Hawthorne's Wonder Book for Girls and Boys." TopSCHOLAR®, 2018. https://digitalcommons.wku.edu/theses/3083.

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Both folklorists and literary critics have been drawn to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s body of work because of his distinctive style and incorporation of folk motifs. Such motif-spotting presents no challenge in Hawthorne’s juvenile literature like his retellings from Greek mythology in Wonder Book for Girls and Boys; however, contemporary folklore redirects the focus of this scholarship to “how particular literary uses of folklore fit into a larger, more fundamental concept of what folklore is and how and what folklore communicates” (de Caro & Jordan 2015:15). Hawthorne’s work interacts with other forms of cultural expression in the nineteenth century such as dominant cultural narratives and artwork to transform the classical narratives in Wonder Book for Girls and Boys into narratives that reflect customs in conversational discourse and childrearing practice.

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Shimkus, James Hammond. "Aspects of King MacLain in Eudora Welty's The golden apples." unrestricted, 2006. http://etd.gsu.edu/theses/available/etd-07272006-221111/.

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Thesis (M.A.)--Georgia State University, 2006.
Mode of access: World Wide Web. Title from title screen. Pearl A. McHaney, committee chair; Thomas L. McHaney, Margaret Mills, committee members. Electronic text (83 p.) : digital, PDF file. Description based on contents viewed Apr. 16, 2007. Includes bibliographical references (p. 74-78).

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Stypczynski, Brent. "Evolution of the Werewolf Archetype from Ovid to J.K. Rowling." Kent State University / OhioLINK, 2008. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1222706628.

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Walker, Alison L. "The Cycling and Recycling of the Arthurian Myth in Alfred Lord Tennyson's Idylls of the King." Ohio University / OhioLINK, 2010. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1275590980.

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Vasu, Casandra. "Dyeing Sutton Hoo Nordic Blonde: An Interpretation of Swedish Influences on the East Anglian Gravesite." Bowling Green State University / OhioLINK, 2008. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1208311061.

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Maynard, Rachel L. ""Some Things Grew No Less With Time:" Tracing ATU 510B from the Thirteenth to the Twentieth Century." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2017. https://dc.etsu.edu/etd/3229.

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This thesis provides a comparative analysis of seven different variants of the fairy tale commonly known as “Donkeyskin,” classified in the Aarne-Thompson-Uther folktale motif index as ATU 510B. By comparing so many different iterations of one fairy tale, it is easier to recognize the inherent attitudes concerning women and their place in society contained in this tale. Additionally, reading multiple variants from different centuries lends a perspective on the way that these attitudes changed over the centuries. Each of the thirteenth century texts considered end with their heroines trapped in loveless marriages, much like the seventeenth-century fairy tale, “Donkeyskin,” their direct literary descendant. The nineteenth century texts then present death or marriage as the alternatives for women, while the twentieth century brings the first instance of a heroine choosing for herself. This comparison allows the reader to learn not only what was considered a “happy ending” at the time, but also to gain a better understanding of the means by which a woman could gain agency.

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Davis, Mella. "Zora Neale Hurston: The Voice of the Goddess." TopSCHOLAR®, 1991. https://digitalcommons.wku.edu/theses/2237.

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Zara Neale Purston has re-emerged as an author of promise due to the re-appraisal of her works led by Alice Walker and Robert Hemenway. In both literary and folklore academic circles, Hurston's work has been reclaimed by African-American female scholars and writers, but still a significant study has yet to be done about her ethnographic contributions to folklore and her farsightedness in fieldwork methodology. This thesis seeks to validate her work as a folklorist, thereby dismissing the charges of popularization and amateurishness by re-examining her work. Mules and Men and Jonah's Gourd Vine are Hurston's two most influential folklore texts and will be evaluated for their approach and contribution to the study of ethnography.

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Ingham, Anthea Margaret. "Algernon Charles Swinburne : the causes and effects of his Sapphic possession." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2011. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/1559/.

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The thesis regards the extraordinary power of Sappho in the 1860s as resulting in a form of “Sapphic Possession” which laid hold on Swinburne, shaped his verse, produced a provocative new poetics, and which accounted for a critical reception of his work that was both hostile and enthralled. Using biographical material and Freudian psychology, I show how Swinburne became attracted to Sappho and came to rely on her as a substitute mistress and particular kind of muse, and I demonstrate the pre-eminence of the Sapphic presence in Poems and Ballads: 1, as a dominant female muse who exacts peculiar sacrifices from the poet of subjection, necrophilia, and even a form of “death” in the loss of his own personality; as a result, he is finally reduced to acting as the muse’s mouthpiece, a state akin to that of Pythia or Sibyl. Verse written under such duress instigates a new poetics where the demands and constructs of the muse produce a sublime composed of aberrance, fracture and the darkness of myth. To explicate this argument I read Poems and Ballads: 1 through carnival, a form of Bacchanal or Sapphic Komos which has the effect of blurring the boundaries between life and lyric, and which demands a joyous and reciprocal response from its readers, in which they must acknowledge their own attraction to the Sapphic sublime.

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Heredos, Rosemary M. "Medieval Minstrels and Folk Balladeers: An Analysis of Orfeo in Celtic Music and Literature." Kent State University Honors College / OhioLINK, 2016. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ksuhonors1462977417.

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Christiansen, Bethany Joanne. "Women's Medicine in England, c. 850-1100 CE: Evidence of Medical Manuscripts with a Focus on the Herbarium Tradition." The Ohio State University, 2020. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1576865418758596.

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Green, Jennifer Elizabeth. "Aesthetic Excuses and Moral Crimes: The Convergence of Morality and Aesthetics in Nabokov's Lolita." unrestricted, 2006. http://etd.gsu.edu/theses/available/etd-04272006-134431/.

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Thesis (M.A.)--Georgia State University, 2006.
Title from title screen. Paul Schmidt, committee chair ; Marti Singer, Chris Kocela, committee members. Electronic text (60 p.) : digital, PDF file. Description based on contents viewed Apr. 17, 2007. Includes bibliographical references (p. 55-64).

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Stewart, Kristy Gilbert. "Blogs, Books, & Breadcrumbs: A Case Study of Transmedial Fairy Tales." BYU ScholarsArchive, 2014. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/4319.

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Understanding transmedial storytelling is particularly important to fairy-tale studies. Monomedial views have long been unable to account for all of fairy tale tradition. Although the form originated in oral culture, it has long been a liminal, hybrid form that retains aspects of orality even while its principal mode of transference for some time has been something other than face-to-face communication. Transformations and adaptations across different media and contexts has resulted in a system of fairy-tale tradition that is massively intertextual and transmedial. No one medium can claim primary control over the fairy-tale tradition. Throughout time, oral tellings have inspired literary adaptations; literary renditions have influenced oral and theater performances; oral, print, and theater performances have spawned any number of retellings and adaptations within audiovisual media. This case study, investigates one example of adaptation to social media and integration across media: Tim Manley's satirical blog Fairy Tales for Twenty-somethings and his book Alice in Tumblr-land. In Manley's fairy tale creations, we see an instance of what Henry Jenkins calls convergence culture. This convergence should be of particular interest to folklorists because corporate and mass-media systems continue to influence and integrate with existing forms of interaction. Manley's overall narrative approach integrates two media, which permits him to use fairy tales to express a broader range of narrative impulses than would a project tied to only one medium. Media integration is an important concept to recognize and investigate because so many individuals see different media as inherently combative rather than mutually beneficial systems. Just as intertextuality has become a foundational concept in many humanistic studies, intermediality needs to enter the folklorist's discussions as well. With only some media under consideration, we only get some of the message.

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Schubert, Layla A. Olin 1975. "Material literature in Anglo-Saxon poetry." Thesis, University of Oregon, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/1794/10909.

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x, 208 p. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number.
The scattered instances depicting material literature in Anglo-Saxon poetry should be regarded as a group. This phenomenon occurs in Beowulf, The Dream of the Rood, and The Husband's Message. Comparative examples of material literature can be found on the Ruthwell Cross and the Franks Casket. This study examines material literature in these three poems, comparing their depictions of material literature to actual examples. Poems depicting material literature bring the relationship between man and object into dramatic play, using the object's point of view to bear witness to the truth of distant or intensely personal events. Material literature is depicted in a love poem, The Husband's Message, when a prosopopoeic runestick vouches for the sincerity of its master, in the heroic epic Beowulf when an ancient, inscribed sword is the impetus to give an account of the biblical flood, and is also implied in the devotional poem The Dream of the Rood, as two crosses both pre-and-post dating the poem bear texts similar to portions of the poem. The study concludes by examining the relationship between material anxiety and the character of Weland in Beowulf, Deor, Alfred's Consolation of Philosophy, and Waldere A & B. Concern with materiality in Anglo-Saxon poetry manifests in myriad ways: prosopopoeic riddles, both heroic and devotional passages directly assailing the value of the material, personification of objects, and in depictions of material literature. This concern manifests as a material anxiety. Weland tames the material and twists and shapes it, re-affirming the supremacy of mankind in a material world.
Committee in charge: Martha Bayless, Chairperson, English; James Earl, Member, English; Daniel Wojcik, Member, English; Aletta Biersack, Outside Member, Anthropology

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Gorelick, Adam D. "The Enchanter's Spell: J.R.R. Tolkien's Mythopoetic Response to Modernism." FIU Digital Commons, 2013. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/1022.

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J.R.R. Tolkien was not only an author of fantasy but also a philologist who theorized about myth. Theorists have employed various methods of analyzing myth, and this thesis integrates several analyses, including Tolkien’s. I address the roles of doctrine, ritual, cross-cultural patterns, mythic expressions in literature, the literary effect of myth, evolution of language and consciousness, and individual invention over inheritance and diffusion. Beyond Tolkien’s English and Catholic background, I argue for eclectic influence on Tolkien, including resonance with Buddhism. Tolkien views mythopoeia, literary mythmaking, in terms of sub-creation, human invention in the image of God as creator. Key mythopoetic tools include eucatastrophe, the happy ending’s sudden turn to poignant joy, and enchantment, the realization of imagined wonder, which is epitomized by the character of Tom Bombadil and contrasted with modernist techno-magic seeking to alter and dominate the world. I conclude by interpreting Tolkien’s mythmaking as a form of mysticism.

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Temperton, Barbara. "The Lighthouse keeper's wife, and other stories (novel) ; and Ceremony for ground : narrative, landscape, myth (dissertation)." University of Western Australia. English, Communication and Cultural Studies Discipline Group, 2007. http://theses.library.uwa.edu.au/adt-WU2008.0005.

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The focus of this project is on poetry, narrative, landscape and myth, and the palimpsest and/or hybridisation created when these four areas overlay each other. Our local communities' engagement with myth-making activity provides a golden opportunity for contemporary poets to continue the practice long established by our forebears of utilising folklore and legendary material as sources for poetry. Keeping in mind the words of M. H. Abrams who said

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Dahmer, Cornelia [Verfasser]. "Conduct books für junge Damen des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts : Aufrichtigkeit und Frauenrolle / Cornelia Dahmer." Frankfurt a.M. : Peter Lang GmbH, Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften, 2017. http://d-nb.info/1156019214/34.

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Vrtis, Christina E. 1979. ""Death is the Only Reality": a Folkloric Analysis of Notions of Death and Funerary Ritual in Contemporary Caribbean Women's Literature." Thesis, University of Oregon, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/1794/10697.

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viii, 91 p. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number.
Caribbean cultural ideas and values placed on death and mourning, especially in relation to cultural roles women are expected to perform, are primary motivating factors in the development of female self and identity in Caribbean women's literature. Based on analysis of three texts, QPH, Annie John, and Beyond the Limbo Silence, I argue that notions of death and funerary rituals are employed within Caribbean women's literature to (re)connect protagonist females to their homeland and secure a sense of identity. In addition, while some texts highlight the necessity of prescribing to the socially constructed roles of women within the ritual context and rely on the uproper" adherence to the traditional process to maintain the status quo, other texts show that the inversion or subversion of these traditions is also an important aspect of funerary rituals and notions of death that permeate contemporary Caribbean culture.
Committee in Charge: Dr. Dianne Dugaw, Folklore; Dr. Lisa Gilman, English; Dr. Phil Scher, Anthropology

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Cizakca, Defne. "The Encyclopaedia of Istanbul : a novel ; &, Ottoman crossroads : coffeehouses, politics, theatres and storytelling : critical essays." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2015. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/6713/.

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This Creative Writing PhD consists of a novel, The Encyclopaedia of Istanbul, and accompanying critical essays, Ottoman Crossroads: Coffeehouses, Politics, Theatres and Storytelling. The Encyclopaedia of Istanbul is historical in nature, and magically real in temperament. It is an account of fin de siècle Constantinopolis, and contains forgotten fairy tales, remnants of an ancient manuscript culture, Armenian playwrights, Turkish feminists, Greek fortune-tellers and Sephardim cantors. It tells the tale of six intersecting lives in 1876, a time known as “the year of the three Sultans” in Ottoman history. This period was filled with tensions between traditionalism and Westernization, but also new political possibilities forwarded by the Young Ottomans. While the characters in The Encyclopaedia of Istanbul are fictitious, they are inspired by historical events and figures. The second element of my PhD, Ottoman Crossroads, is made up of four individual essays that focus on selected themes from the novel. They scrutinize, in order of presentation, the history of coffeehouse culture, the secretive society of the Young Ottomans and their political thought, the formation of Armenian-Turkish theatre, and the rediscovery of Ottoman fairy tales. Whilst the novel and essays are coherent independently, they also link to each other in ways that are sometimes direct, and at other times subtle.

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Jones, Malcolm Haydn. "The misericords of Beverley Minster : a corpus of folkloric imagery and its cultural milieu, with special reference to the influence of Northern European iconography on Late Medieval and Early Modern English woodwork." Thesis, University of Plymouth, 1991. http://hdl.handle.net/10026.1/2540.

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The set of 68 misericords in Beverley Minster, Yorkshire, carved in 1520, are considered here both as a corpus of 'folkloric' imagery in their own right, and in a eider cultural context. A detailed iconographic examination of the individual misericords under such headings as 'The Fool and Follies', 'Satires', 'The bestiary' 'Exempla', etc., leads to the isolation of a small number of motifs which are seen not to belong to the native tradition. These non-English motifs are traced to two main sources, the border woodcuts in early Parisian printed Horae and Flemish & German prints. The identification of these sources for the Beverley designs leads to further identifications else here, and especially in the stalls of St. George's Chapel, llindsor, c. 1430. In the case of Beverley it is suggested that the means of transmission of such Continental imagery is via the port of Hull (the Customs Accounts for the port being examined in this light), and the printers and book-sellers of York. The local cultural milieu in which the Beverley stalls were created is examined and Henry Percy, the 'Magnificent' Fifth Earl of Northumberland, shown to be an influential patron of the arts; but other local influences considered include the late medieval dramatic cycles played in Beverley, the town 's patron saint John (portrayed as a 'hairy anchorite') and a York & London printer known to have printed in Beverley, Hugo Goes (whose unique woodblock-printed wallpaper is also discussed). Goes's Flemish origin leads to a consideration of the presence of other alien artists and craftsmen (e. q. ! Maynard Weywick who provided the patterns for Torrigiano's Westminster tombs) at work in late medieval and early Tudor England -- much of it assembled here for the first time.

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North, Naomi. "Fall Like a Man." Bowling Green State University / OhioLINK, 2016. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1460115929.

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Wakefield, Sarah Rebecca. "Folklore-naming and folklore-narrating in British women's fiction, 1750-1880." Thesis, 2002. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/utexas/fullcit?p3086727.

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Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'English Folklore'

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