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Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Literary representations'
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1
Baylis, Gail S. "Literary representations of London 1660-1760." Thesis, University of Ulster, 1990. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.481115.
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Odell, Heather Miranda. "Ex manubiis : literary representations of Flavian spectacle." Thesis, University of British Columbia, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/2429/52866.
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The Roman emperor Vespasian was declared emperor in absentia at the end of 69 CE, the Year of the Four Emperors; he was the first man from outside the Julio-Claudian family to hold imperial power for more than a few months, remaining in power until his death in 79 CE and succeeded by his son Titus. Vespasian won the conflict with military force, but once in power he faced the unique challenge of demonstrating the legitimacy of his reign without the pedigree of an old Roman family name to draw upon, and so he relied on other means of stabilizing his power. Vespasian returned to Rome bearing an influx of wealth from the Judaean War, and he funded lavish spectacles and buildings like the Colosseum from the spoils (ex manubiis).
Vespasian’s buildings and spectacles were impressive displays of his wealth and generosity to the people of Rome, but spectacles can only awe and impress the immediately present audience in Rome for the short time that they last; the Colosseum stays standing as a reminder, but it is inert without its shows. Written descriptions of the spectacle, on the other hand, could travel widely and cheaply, extending the reach of Vespasian’s grand displays through time and space. This thesis is concerned with two such pieces of writing: Josephus’ description in Bellum Judaicum of Vespasian and Titus’ double triumph in 71 CE; and Martial’s Liber Spectaculorum, a collection of epigrams about the inaugural games of the Colosseum in 80 CE. I argue that these literary representations of spectacle effectively reproduced the original spectacles for the reading audience through a variety of rhetorical and literary techniques, ultimately presenting an affirmative view of Flavian rule over the Roman empire, and Roman rule over the world.Arts, Faculty of
Classical, Near Eastern and Religious Studies, Department of
Graduate
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Vaai, Sina Mary Theresa, and n/a. "Literary representations in western Polynesia : colonialism and indigeneity." University of Canberra. Communication, Media & Tourism, 1995. http://erl.canberra.edu.au./public/adt-AUC20061109.163049.
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Images of Oceania and Polynesia have traditionally been exoticised and
romanticised by Western representations of a "paradise" populated by primitive
natives with grass skirts and ukuleles. However, the movement towards
political independence in the 1960s and 1970s has seen the emergence of a
corpus of indigenous representations that depict and portray the real situation.
These indigenous representations speak of subjugation and moreover testify to
the debilitating effects colonialism has on cultural identities.
The geographical area covered by this thesis is Western Polynesia,
specifically the Pacific Island nations of Fiji, Tonga and Western Samoa and is
concerned with literary representations.
The thesis examines significant developments and trends in the
creative writing of indigenous and migrant writers in these three countries of
Western Polynesia: Western Samoa, Tonga and Fiji, seeing these literary
representations from within as a writing out of multi-faceted aspects of the
shifting identities of Pacific peoples in a post-colonial world.
The introduction focuses on the historical colonial/post-colonial context
of Western Polynesian writing and the socio-political imperatives for change
which have had an impact on these writers and the texts they have produced. It
also discusses the literary and anthropological representation of these
Islanders from the 'outside', from the perspective of a European hegemonic
self, forming the 'orientalist' stereotypes against which the initial texts written by
the Pacific's colonised 'others' in the early 1970's reacted so strongly. Chapter
One sets out the conceptual framework within which these texts will be
discussed and analysed, beginning with indigenous and local concepts which
indigenous and migrant Pacific Islanders use to connect and accommodate
different 'ways of seeing' this representative body of literature, then moving on
to other theorists concerned with literary representation and post-coloniality.
Chapters Two to Nine explore the writing of these three countries,
beginning with the fiction of Albert Wendt, one of the major writers from
Western Polynesia who has an established regional and international literary
reputation, and then progressing to focus on other selected representative
writers of the three countries, including those in the early stages of attempting
publication.
The thesis concludes by discussing the texts from all three countries and
tying them together in the various thematic strands of cultural clash, the
widening of borders, the quest for self-definition and national identity in the
contemporary Pacific, reiterating major points and examining possible future
directions in Western Polynesian writing.
The study takes an interdisciplinary approach to the critical analysis of
Western Polynesian literature, maintaining the importance of seeing them as
important forms of cultural communication in post-colonial contexts, as literary
representations from the inside, writing out of a cultural consciousness which
values the various 'pasts' of Polynesia as definitive 'maps' which provide the
grids and bridges which Pacific Islanders in this part of Oceania can utilise to
mediate their experiences and articulate their identities, to fit the widening
boundaries of the Pacific into a post-colonial global context.
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Byrne, Kirsty Nicola. "Literary representations of maternity in the eighteenth century." Thesis, Durham University, 1993. http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/5803/.
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The primary concern of this thesis is the representation, in the eighteenth century, of mothers' bodies. It is also concerned with the treatment of domestic duties which were supposed a consequence of a woman's very nature. Throughout the first seven decades of the century, medical men and virtuosi demonstrated particular interest in the nature of physicality, and especially in women's bodies, pregnancy, and childbirth. 1 will be testing out a widely-held view that dissection and new anatomical findings regarding women's bodies produced a new idealisation of motherhood, and that this was immediately translated into lay-medical and related discourse, and was thus firmly established in middle-class culture by the end of the century. The relationship between primary medical and lay-medical literature raises several questions: my work asks whether lay-medical literature mirrored medical writing, and whether there was a direct translation of material from one to the other. Lay-medical texts for women are especially interesting. They offer an insight into precisely what examples of female nature and correspondingly 'natural' behaviour were intended for women readers. Representations of maternity in specific forms of writing which rely heavily upon women for subject matter are further extended in the second half of this study. 1 have focussed upon two genres, conduct literature and narrative fiction. Neither is conventionally associated with medical or lay-medical discourse, yet both have significant links with these. Conduct literature and narrative fiction have much to offer in this attempt to recover what women were being taught about their bodies and roles; both were concerned with what the body displays externally, and with corresponding ideas of 'naturalness'. Conduct literature for women was enjoying a period of growth and change, and has obvious, direct links with medical texts. Narrative fiction also had important links with medical writing, and 1 will describe these. The dissemination of medical representations of the maternal body was a process which contributed to a contradictory cultural sense of female identity.
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Zuniga, Roxana Guadalupe. "The literary representations and interpretations of La Matanza." Thesis, Wayne State University, 2015. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=3700700.
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This dissertation examines the literary representations and interpretations of La Matanza, a Salvadoran massacre that occurred in 1932. A peasant-led uprising resulted in the assassination of thousands of campesinos and indigenous people by General Maximiliano Hernández Martínez's repressive military regime. As a result of government repression and censorship, the events surrounding La Matanza were intentionally omitted from Salvadoran history for many decades. Despite these censorship efforts, writers like Roque Dalton, Claribel Alegría, Salarrué and Manlio Argueta defied authoritarian government repression and incorporated the events of La Matanza into their writing. The literary texts that this dissertation analyzes are: Salarrué's "Mi respuesta a los patriotas" (1932), "El espantajo," (1954), Dalton's Miguel Mármol: Los sucesos de 1932 en El Salvador (1971), "Todos," "Viejuemierda," "Hechos, cosas y hombres de 1932," Alegría's Cenizas de Izalco (1966) and Argueta's Un día en la vida (1980) and Cuzcatlán donde bate la mar del sur (1986).
These authors exemplify multiple and often conflicting perspectives concerning the massacre. Each of them offers a unique interpretation of this event, emphasizing issues such as class, identity, gender and race, among others. However, all of them share the attempt to use literature as a vehicle to lend a voice to populations that did not have a place in official historical accounts. This study draws upon subaltern, postcolonial, feminist and other theories, in order to highlight the particular position of each author. Moreover, in this dissertation I argue that, the colonial, racist and patriarchal discourse that was used to justify the massacre was also used to justify the atrocities of the civil war in the 1980s. In addition, this analysis emphasizes the links between the peasant resistance of the 1930s and that of the 1980s. Furthermore, this dissertation stresses the importance of remembering El Salvador's complex history of violence in order to better understand the post-war era.
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Yu, Siu-hung. "Representations of Chinese women in three modern literary texts." Click to view the E-thesis via HKUTO, 2005. http://sunzi.lib.hku.hk/hkuto/record/B31988271.
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Jones, Megan Elizabeth. "Constructing the city : literary representations of Johannesburg, 1921-2006." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2010. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.608486.
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Yu, Siu-hung, and 余小紅. "Representations of Chinese women in three modern literary texts." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2005. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B31988271.
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Kennedy, Kathleen Erin. "Maintaining injustice literary representations of the legal system C1400 /." Connect to this title online, 2004. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc%5Fnum=osu1085059076.
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Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2004.Document formatted into pages; contains 213 p. Includes bibliographical references. Abstract available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center; full text release delayed at author's request until 2009 May 29.
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Brennan, Zoe. "Representations of older women in contemporary literature." Thesis, University of the West of England, Bristol, 2003. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.271040.
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This study argues that novels by contemporary women writers, such as Doris Lessing, May Sarton, Barbara Pym and Jenny Diski, through their representation of older female protagonists, create alternative discourses of ageing to those that dominate Western society. By placing these figures at the centre of their narratives, the texts counteract the silence and pejorative stereotyping that routinely surrounds the lives of the aged. The technique of studying literary representations of women is not new; in fact, it is a trusted part of feminist methodology. However, one of the assertions of this dissertation is that it is rarely used to investigate texts about the senescent, reflecting feminism's failure to include the older women in their theories. Part one of the dissertation examines such issues in depth, setting out the theoretical orientation of the study. It considers popular representations and paradigms of ageing, as well as considering the power of normalising discourse and dynamics of representation. Part two uses this material to analyse the strategies that British and North American authors have employed, since the 1960's, to challenge common stereotypes of older women. The first three chapters focus on novels that portray protagonists who display emotions, not usually associated with the old, which are revealed in relation to different aspects of ageing: anger and frustration (dependency); passion and desire (sexuality); and contentment (daily life). Chapter 7, 'The Wise and Archetypal Older Woman', shifts its attention away from more realist texts to study characters who emerge from the covers of ratiocinative fiction. It argues that conventional critiques of the genre often negate its more polemical elements, which is a result of their failure to use an age- and gender-aware approach and a problem that generally greets intelligent novels about female senescence. This thesis sees itself as part of a movement that aims to create a space in which older female characters' voices can be heard and recognised. It contends that the authors treated here produce visions of ageing that are not solely concerned with stagnation and decline. They represent a varied and compelling group of protagonists and, in doing so, illustrate that older women are worthy of literary, social and feminist interest.
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Mayes-Elma, Ruthann Elizabeth. "A Feminist Literary Criticism Approach to Representations of Women's Agency in Harry Potter." Oxford, Ohio : Miami University, 2003. http://www.ohiolink.edu/etd/view.cgi?miami1060025232.
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Pisac, Andrea. "Trusted tales : creating authenticity in literary representations from ex-Yugoslavia." Thesis, Goldsmiths College (University of London), 2010. http://research.gold.ac.uk/4751/.
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This research deals with questions of authority and authenticity and how they are expressed, constructed, and appropriated within the Anglophone book market. It considers the body of literature written about ex-Yugoslavia since the 1990s Balkan conflicts by exiled writers from the region which has entered the international literary canon. Books’ routes from original publishers into English translation are discussed through practices of trust, one of the crucial social devices underpinning their exchange. Within these cross-cultural processes, the role of cultural brokers is crucial. Symbolic and cultural resources are specifically mobilised through their powerful author brands. By exploring authenticity in the context of book publishing, I further look at how ideas and practices of community are employed and negotiated by writers and those who promote their books. My field is multi-sited and fluid, reflecting how different individual and national positions are enacted and performed through strategies ranging from unconscious dispositions to deliberate intentions. This research thus brings together ideas of the author as an authentic, representative voice together with exile as a position that grants them a new lease of relevancy in the post-socialist context. Although ex-Yugoslav books occupy a ‘high end’ niche of the UK market, constrained by commercial as well as political, cultural, and institutional forces, in public discourse ideas of the ‘free market’ and ‘free speech’ are mobilised to produce various types of modernisation narratives. The (post)socialist production of literature is perceived as having to ‘evolve’ into a capitalist model: this would allow not only healthy competition and consumer choice but guarantee an individual writer ‘free speech’ as a basic human right. Therefore, the most general question this research raises is what kind of foreign literature gets translated into English, under what socio-cultural conditions and which politics of representation it serves within the project of world literature.
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Barta, Petr. "Literary Representations of the American Western Steamboat c. 1811-1861." Thesis, University of Kent, 2009. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.527584.
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Nyambi, Oliver. "Nation in crisis : alternative literary representations of Zimbabwe Post-2000." Thesis, Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/85652.
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Thesis (PhD)-- Stellenbosch University, 2013.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The last decade in Zimbabwe was characterised by an unprecedented economic and political crisis. As the crisis threatened to destabilise the political status quo, it prompted in governmental circles the perceived 'need‘ for political containment. The ensuing attempts to regulate the expressive sphere, censor alternative historiographies of the crisis and promote monolithic and self-serving perceptions of the crisis presented a real danger of the distortion of information about the situation. Representing the crisis therefore occupies a contested and discursive space in debates about the Zimbabwean crisis. It is important to explore the nature of cultural interventions in the urgent process of re-inscribing the crisis and extending what is known about Zimbabwe‘s so-called 'lost decade‘. The study analyses literary responses to state-imposed restrictions on information about the state of Zimbabwean society during the post-2000 economic and political crisis which reached the public sphere, with particular reference to creative literature by Zimbabwean authors published during the period 2000 to 2010. The primary concern of this thesis is to examine the efficacy of post-2000 Zimbabwean literature as constituting a significant archive of the present and also as sites for the articulation of dissenting views – alternative perspectives assessing, questioning and challenging the state‘s grand narrative of the crisis. Like most African literatures, Zimbabwean literature relates (directly and indirectly) to definite historical forces and processes underpinning the social, cultural and political production of space. The study mainly invokes Maria Pia Lara‘s theory about the ―moral texture‖ and disclosive nature of narratives by marginalised groups in order to explore the various ways through which such narratives revise hegemonically distorted representations of themselves and construct more inclusive discourses about the crisis. A key finding in this study is that through particular modes of representation, most of the literary works put a spotlight on some of the major talking points in the political and socio-economic debate about the post-2000 Zimbabwean crisis, while at the same time extending the contours of the debate beyond what is agreeable to the powerful. This potential in literary works to deconstruct and transform dominant elitist narratives of the crisis and offering instead, alternative and more representative narratives of the excluded groups‘ experiences, is made possible by their affective appeal. This affective dimension stems from the intimate and experiential nature of the narratives of these affected groups. However, another important finding in this study has been the advent of a distinct canon of hegemonic texts which covertly (and sometimes overtly) legitimate the state narrative of the crisis. The thesis ends with a suggestion that future scholarly enquiries look set to focus more closely on the contribution of creative literature to discourses on democratisation in contemporary Zimbabwe.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die afgelope dekade in Zimbabwe is gekenmerk deur ‗n ongekende ekonomiese en politiese krisis. Terwyl die krisis gedreig het om die politieke status quo omver te werp, het dit die ‗noodsaak‘ van politieke insluiting aangedui. Die daaropvolgende pogings om die ruimte vir openbaarmaking te reguleer, alternatiewe optekenings van gebeure te sensureer en ook om monolitiese, self-bevredigende waarnemings van die krisis te bevorder, het 'n wesenlike gevaar van distorsie van inligting i.v.m. die krisis meegebring. Voorstellings van die krisis vind sigself dus in 'n gekontesteerde en diskursiewe ruimte in debatte aangaande die Zimbabwiese krisis. Dit is gevolglik belangrik om die aard van kulturele intervensies in die dringende proses om die krisis te hervertolk te ondersoek asook om kennis van Zimbabwe se sogenaamde 'verlore dekade‘ uit te brei. Die studie analiseer literêre reaksies op staats-geïniseerde inkortings van inligting aangaande die sosiale toestand in Zimbabwe gedurende die post-2000 ekonomiese en politiese krisis wat sulke informasie uit die openbare sfeer weerhou het, met spesifieke verwysing na skeppende literatuur deur Zimbabwiese skrywers wat tussen 2000 en 2010 gepubliseer is. Die belangrikste doelwit van hierdie tesis is om die doeltreffendheid van post-2000 Zimbabwiese letterkunde as konstituering van 'n alternatiewe Zimbabwiese 'argief van die huidige‘ en ook as ruimte vir die artikulering van teenstemme – alternatiewe perspektiewe wat die staat se 'groot narratief‘ aangaande die krisis bevraagteken – te ondersoek. Soos met die meeste ander Afrika-letterkundes is daar in hierdie literatuur 'n verband (direk en/of indirek) met herkenbare historiese kragte en prosesse wat die sosiale, kulturele en politiese ruimtes tot stand bring. Die studie maak in die ondersoek veral gebruik van Maria Pia Lara se teorie aangaande die 'morele tekstuur‘ en openbaringsvermoë van narratiewe aangaande gemarginaliseerde groepe ten einde die verskillende maniere waarop sulke narratiewe hegemoniese distorsies in 'offisiële‘ voorstellings van hulself 'oorskryf‘ om meer inklusiewe diskoerse van die krisis daar te stel, na te vors. 'n Kernbevinding van die studie is dat, d.m.v. van spesifieke tipe voorstellings, die meeste van die letterkundige werke wat hier ondersoek word, 'n soeklig plaas op verskeie van die belangrikste kwessies in die politieke en sosio-ekonomiese debatte oor die Zimbabwiese krisis, terwyl dit terselfdertyd die kontoere van die debat uitbrei verby die grense van wat vir die maghebbers gemaklik is. Die potensieel van letterkundige werke om oorheersende, elitistiese narratiewe oor die krisis te dekonstrueer en te omvorm, word moontlik gemaak deur hul affektiewe potensiaal. Hierdie affektiewe dimensie word ontketen deur die intieme en ervaringsgewortelde geaardheid van die narratiewe van die geaffekteerde groepe. Nietemin is 'n ander belangrike bevinding van hierdie studie dat daar 'n onderskeibare kanon van hegemoniese tekste bestaan wat op verskuilde (en soms ook openlike) maniere die staatsnarratief anngaande die krisis legitimeer. Die tesis sluit af met die voorstel dat toekomstige vakkundige studies meer spesifiek sou kon fokus op die bydrae van kreatiewe skryfwerk tot die demokratisering van kontemporêre Zimbabwe.
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Prono, Luca. "Radical discontinuities : literary and sociological representations of Chicago 1915-1948." Thesis, University of Nottingham, 2002. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.270287.
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Arellano-neri, Olimpia. "Cinematographic and Literary Representations of the Femicides in Ciudad Juarez." University of Cincinnati / OhioLINK, 2013. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1368013240.
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Biro, David Eric. "The rhetoric of pain : literary and theoretical representations of bodily suffering." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1993. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.357322.
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Karakulina, Natalia. "Representations of Vladimir Maiakovskii in the post-Soviet Russian literary canon." Thesis, University of Exeter, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/10871/24330.
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This thesis examines the position of the most canonical of official Soviet poets, Vladimir Maiakovskii, in the post-Soviet Russian literary canon. Maiakovskii’s status in the USSR was unchallengeable due to Stalin’s endorsement of him in 1935 as ‘the best, most talented poet’ of the Soviet era. This work will assemble evidence from a range of post-1991 publications to show how Maiakovskii’s position has been affected by the wide-ranging rejection of writers strongly identified as part of official Soviet culture, and examine the extent to which he has nevertheless retained his canonical status. A central question for discussion is how the representation of Maiakovskii has changed after the collapse of the Soviet Union. I analyse three different socio-cultural fields, which each have the potential to shape the literary canon: school education, literary anthologies and the public media. It is apparent that while Maiakovskii retains his canonical position, his representation has not only changed, but it also remains fluid, and several different (often contrasting) trends of representing the poet exist side by side. In each case I review how post-Soviet representations differ from the Soviet image of the poet. Taking into account the abrupt changes which the Russian literary canon went through in the 1990s and the intended target audience for each case of Maiakovskii’s representation to be investigated, I outline the reasons for these multiple versions of the poet’s life and legacy and argue how this multiplicity became possible in the first place. This work is designed to aid those who wish to have a deeper understanding of the particular position of Vladimir Maiakovskii within the contemporary canon. It also seeks to contribute to the body of research analysing the development of the Russian literary canon in the post-Soviet period.
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Dolan, Jr Richard L. "Buttressing a Monarchy: Literary Representations of William III and the Glorious Revolution." Digital Archive @ GSU, 2005. http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/english_diss/1.
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This study examines ways in which supporters of William III and his opponents used literature to buttress their respective views of government in the wake of the Glorious Revolution. Understanding the polemical character of this art provides more insight both into the literature of the 1690s and into the modes of political debate in the period. As the English people moved from a primarily hereditary view of monarchy at the beginning of the seventeenth century to a more elective view of government in the eighteenth century, the Glorious Revolution proved to be a watershed event. Those favoring James II relied on patriarchal ideas to characterize the new regime as illegitimate, and supporters of the coregent asserted the priority of English and Biblical law to assert that the former king forfeited his right to rule. Chapter one examines three thinkers – Robert Filmer, John Milton, and John Locke – whose thought provides a context for opinions expressed in the years surrounding William of Orange’s ascension to the English throne. In chapter two, John Dryden’s response to James II’s abdication is explored. As the deposed Poet Laureate and a prominent voice supporting of the Stuart line, Dryden sheds light on ways in which Jacobites resisted the authority of the new regime through his response to the Glorious Revolution. Chapter three addresses the work of Thomas Shadwell, who succeeded Dryden as Laureate, and Matthew Prior, whose poetry Frances Mayhew Rippy characterizes as “unofficial laureate verse.” These poets rely on ideas similar to those expressed by Milton and Locke as they seek to validate the events of 1688-1689. The final chapter explores the appropriation of varied conceptions of government in pamphlets and manuscripts written in favor of James II and William III. Focusing on the polemical character of these works from the late 1680s and the 1690s enhances our understanding of the period’s literature and the prominent interaction of politics and writing.
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Summer, Saralyn Ellen. ""Like Another Esther": Literary Representations of Queen Esther in Early Modern England." Digital Archive @ GSU, 2006. http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/english_diss/3.
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This dissertation explores the significance of Queen Esther in early modern England by examining her literary representations in light of historical, religious, political, and social contexts. Although she is often linked to Deborah and Judith, Esther’s multifaceted character allows for greater flexibility in representation than is the case with other biblical heroines. The differing aspects of her character – obedient orphan, beautiful virgin, clever and courageous queen, savior of Diaspora Jews – inspire multiple, at times even contradictory, depictions of Esther in early modern literature. Whether Protestant or Catholic, male or female, Queen or commoner, sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English writers appropriate Esther in ways that paradoxically challenge and support women’s traditional roles in society. Chapter One introduces the Esther narrative as presented in the Old Testament and Apocrypha. Chapter Two examines Esther in relation to female authority, focusing specifically on references to Queen Elizabeth as an Esther figure. Chapter Three studies the dramatic interlude Godly Queen Hester, while Chapter Four analyzes works of prose featuring Esther as an exemplum for virtuous and heroic women. Chapter Five studies poetic depictions of Esther, and Chapter Six concludes the study by noting briefly how women authors engaged in the querelle des femmes enlist Esther to refute their opponents.
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Dolan, Richard L. "Buttressing a monarchy literary representations of William III and the Glorious Revolution /." unrestricted, 2005. http://etd.gsu.edu/theses/available/etd-04142005-124115/.
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Thesis (Ph.D.)--Georgia State University, 2005.Ttitle from title screen. Tanya Caldwell, committee chair; Malinda G. Snow, Stephen B. Dobranski, committee members. 333 p. [numbered vi, 325]. Description based on contents viewed Feb. 26, 2007. Includes bibliographical references (p. 318-325).
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Summer, Saralyn Ellen. ""Like another Esther" literary representations of Queen Esther in early modern England /." unrestricted, 2005. http://etd.gsu.edu/theses/available/etd-12012005-104141/.
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Thesis (Ph. D.)--Georgia State University, 2005.Title from title screen. Paul J. Voss, committee chair; Stephen B. Dobransk, Paul H. Schmidt, committee members. Electronic text (171 p.) : digital, PDF file. Description based on contents viewed May 25, 2007. Includes bibliographical references (p. 159-171).
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Fontenot, Kara. "The Sociopolitical Construction of Race and Literary Representations of the Biracial Subject." Master's thesis, University of Central Florida, 2006. http://digital.library.ucf.edu/cdm/ref/collection/ETD/id/6219.
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Twentieth-century American literature incorporates interracial and biracial themes that bring to light the often unnamed and unrecognized biracial identities of many Americans. Unfortunately, despite the potential value for a deeper understanding of the construction of race, these themes have seldom been seriously considered in the context of reevaluating the nature of the system that creates racial labels and categories until the recent emergence of postmodern critical theories. This thesis examines the black-white interracial themes and biracial protagonists in Nella Larsen's Quicksand (1928) and Danzy Senna's Caucasia (1998) in order to explore the texts' representations of systems of hegemonic power that create racial labels and categories. I discuss the binary sociopolitical construction of race in the United States (black-white) and the complexity of biracial identities as a foundation for my examination of literary representations of biracial subjectivity, racial passing, primitive exoticism, and the intersections between race, class and gender. I conclude that a study of the interracial theme in literature is a dive into the chasm between margin and center, the enunciative split between the binary racial signifiers black and white. Therefore, representations of biracial subjectivity provide a unique vantage point for surveillance of the complexities of the human struggle to gain and maintain power.M.A.
Masters
English
Arts and Humanities
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Melrose, Andrew. "Literary representations of eighteenth century Scots law : a #golden age' so called." Thesis, University of Sussex, 1994. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.260582.
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Schwartz-Leeper, Gavin. "Turning princes into pages : sixteenth-century literary representations of Thomas Cardinal Wolsey." Thesis, University of Sheffield, 2013. http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/3735/.
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This thesis considers a range of sixteenth-century literary texts in order to trace the evolution of the public image(s) of Thomas Cardinal Wolsey (c.1470-1530), Henry VIII’s chief minister from 1515 until 1529. The aim of this thesis is to demonstrate and explore the genesis and subsequent evolution of literary characterizations of Wolsey. This process in turn reveals much about the individual authors, editors, and playwrights who generated these images; the readers and audiences who received them; and the social, political, and religious events to which they responded and with which they interacted. Moreover, this thesis argues that through analyzing case studies (like Wolsey’s), we can better understand how sixteenth-century authors conceptualized and represented history itself, as well as the uses to which these histories might be put. To explore this concept, this thesis creates a framework of ‘mimetic’, ‘poetic’, and ‘documentary’ representations of history to better distinguish how Tudor authors organized and created their respective histories. In order to identify common themes and highlight evolving textual features, this thesis moves chronologically through a diverse corpus, looking at early satires in doggerel poetry and drama; biography and de casibus verse; Elizabethan historiographies (both religious and secular); and Jacobean drama. This approach demonstrates how the public images of Tudor political figures were constructed in a web of interconnected texts, and how authors constructed and adapted representations of history over the course of the sixteenth century. In addition, this thesis considers how characterizations of Wolsey in particular demonstrate the means by which a particular image could be adapted to interact with a rapidly changing public sphere.
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Sandison, Simon Robert. "The post-athletic identity : literary and cultural representations of U.S. spectator sport." Thesis, University of Leeds, 2015. http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/11254/.
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Previous scholarship concerning the representations of spectator sport in US literature has tended to focus on its tropic representations of exceptional masculinity. In this dissertation I instead propose that this literature is predominantly preoccupied with the physical and emotional decline of athletes after their involvement in sport has ceased. My original contribution to knowledge lies in this exploration of a post-athletic identity commonly characterised by painful nostalgia, disenfranchisement, and bodily deterioration. In the national imagination, US sports are regularly held up as the epitome of popular culture; since the nineteenth century they have been increasingly seen to present and represent a hegemonic, patriarchal and exceptionalist model of the United States. While populist dialogues regularly endorse these appearances, work by American authors and artists – including Jonathan Franzen, Bernard Malamud, Don DeLillo, David Hammons, F.X. Toole and Jenifer Levin – about and featuring athletes upsets these conservative conventions. This iconoclastic challenge is particularly prevalent after 1950, the period during which the majority of texts in this study are written, as spectator sport and the embodied labour of athletes is commodified by promoters, league administrators, and team owners. I identify a series of designations that representations of spectator sport commonly assign to it, including authenticity, nostalgia, form, and risk. I then explore how the covalent literary and cultural representations adopt and rephrase these in a manner that diverts attention from the athletic spectacle and onto the athletes and their development of a post-athletic identity. The speculative definitions given to these terms by the jurisdictive frameworks that uphold contemporary spectator sport are capitalised on by authors who underline the incongruously incomplete experience of their athletes. Finally, I argue that, by removing athletes from models of conventional athleticism, gender and, to a lesser extent, celebrity offer a means of completing this ongoing project of disruption.
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Hunt, Alice Mary Maitland. "'What art thou, thou idol ceremony?' : Tudor coronations and literary representations, 1509-1559." Thesis, Birkbeck (University of London), 2005. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.416906.
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Bodard, Gabriel. "Witches, cursing and necromancy : literary representations of 'magic' in archaic and classical Greece." Thesis, University of Reading, 2004. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.413504.
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Stokes, Christina E. "Re-envisioning history memory, myth and fiction in literary representations of the Trujillato /." [Gainesville, Fla.] : University of Florida, 2009. http://purl.fcla.edu/fcla/etd/UFE0021390.
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Mayes-Elma, Ruthann. "A Feminist literary criticism approach to representations of women's agency in Harry Potter." Oxford, Ohio : Miami University, 2003. http://www.ohiolink.edu/etd/view.cgi?miami1060025232.
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Thesis (Ph. D.)--Miami University, Dept. of Educational Leadership, 2003.Title from first page of PDF document. Document formatted into pages; contains vii, 147 p. Includes bibliographical references (p. 125-141).
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Eberly, Charlene. ""Across the colour wall:" Gullah linguistic and literary representations in Dubose Heyward's Porgy." FIU Digital Commons, 2004. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/3112.
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The purpose of this research was to examine a classic text - DuBose Heyward's Porgy (1925) - associated with Southern Literature in relation to its connections to the Gullah culture and language. Close critical scrutiny was made of the 1925 text, two early manuscripts, manuscript fragments, revisions, research notes, and other personal papers from Heyward's estate. Access to these papers helped establish his influences and motivations in writing Porgy.
Employing both linguistic and literary analyses, the findings establish the verisimilitude of Heyward's representation of the Gullah language, rhetorical patterns, culture, beliefs, and practices, linking Porgy to a Gullah literary tradition.
Examination of Heyward's life and times reveals why Porgy sits squarely within the early 20th Century literary genre, African American Literary Realism and thematically anticipates the Harlem Renaissance period. Breaking the mold of the "old South" minstrel-syle depictions of black life, Heyward portrayed the Gullah people with integrity and respect.
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Kyte, Jacqueline. "Literary representations of safety in British fiction of the long decade, 1939-1950." Thesis, Birkbeck (University of London), 2017. http://bbktheses.da.ulcc.ac.uk/207/.
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During and after the Second World War – a time of acute national danger – British authors reflected the huge premium placed on safety, exploring and expressing it in various manifestations. Safety is a fundamental human need, and yet it is a contingent concept. A major component of being safe is not being endangered – and the novelists addressed in this thesis were alert to the reciprocal relationship between the safe and the unsafe, between the desire for safety and the presence of danger. Critical work has largely been concerned with the crisis of conflict, with depictions of heroic combat or the impact of bombing raids on the Home Front; safety and its cognates have received little, if any, attention. This thesis investigates the protean representations of safety during the long decade, 1939–1950, in four key manifestations. Safekeeping: psychological and emotional safety may not be coincident with physical safety. The novels selected – Saplings (1945) by Noel Streatfeild, Doreen (1946) by Barbara Noble and Charley is My Darling (1940) by Joyce Cary – assimilate the ground-breaking advances in child developmental psychology to represent the contingency of safety in the figure of the child evacuee. Safe home: home is widely construed as safe and unsafe. Winifred Peck depicts how safe home is destabilised in wartime in House-Bound (1942), while Pied Piper (1942) by Nevil Shute and Hangover Square (1941) by Patrick Hamilton narrate safety in relation to rescue, homecoming and states of interior exile. Safe talk: talking can be safe, as in the therapeutic talking cure, and unsafe (‘Careless Talk Costs Lives’). Pretend I Am a Stranger (1949) by Jack Aistrop and Mine Own Executioner (1945) by Nigel Balchin represent conflicted experiences of talk for the war veteran and the lay analyst respectively. In Tell It to a Stranger (1947), Elizabeth Berridge captures the powerful currency of talk, juxtaposing its operations of openness and secrecy, which are compromised when mediated by technology. Safety and grief: grieving can be a disorderly, unsafe process but also a way back to psychological and emotional safety. Back (1946) by Henry Green, The World My Wilderness (1950) by Rose Macaulay and Little Boy Lost (1949) by Marghanita Laski are read in relation to models of healthy (safe) and unhealthy (unsafe) grieving. Building on the work of David Bromwich in Skeptical Music (2001), this thesis also engages with larger questions of representational intent, in which the desire for safety is often commingled with the allure of danger. Exploring fictional representations of safety enables us to think about literature’s specific and heightened response to wartime and postwar conditions and its resonances for contemporary readings in our own time.
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Heyam, Kit Rafe. "Literary and historical representations of Edward II and his favourites, c.1305-1700." Thesis, University of Leeds, 2017. http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/18616/.
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This thesis examines the development of Edward II’s historiographical reputation during the period 1305-1700, focusing on the developing consensus concerning the sexual and romantic nature of his relationships with his male favourites and the anally penetrative nature of his murder. It considers this consensus as shaped by chronicle/historical texts, poetry, drama and political writings. Three techniques are central to the study: a historicist approach to the terminology and conceptualisation of sex; analysis of individual texts in relation to wider historiographical traditions and their own historical contexts; and consideration of literary concerns (elements that contribute to the creation of an enjoyably readable narrative) when accounting for decisions made by writers of all genres. The thesis is structured thematically, beginning with a detailed examination of the terminology with which sexual transgression is discussed in medieval and early modern texts and the formation of a consensus concerning Edward’s sexual behaviour (Chapter 1). I explore the representation of Edward’s relationships with his favourites as transgressive, in terms of their romantic and sexual nature and the favourites’ undesirable characteristics (Chapter 2); the use of Edward’s reign by English and French political writers (Chapter 3); and the role of literary decisions, principally the persistence of sensational details and the use of de casibus narrative structure, on the development of accounts of Edward’s deposition, imprisonment and death (Chapter 4). I engage in and contribute to debates concerning the changing nature of Edward’s reputation for sexually transgressive behaviour; to the analysis of the individual texts which constitute that reputation; to the interpretation of the penetrative murder narrative; and to the historiography of sex between men in medieval and early modern England. An appendix table collates the textual history, sources, influence and significance of the majority of accounts of Edward’s reign written during the period 1305-1700.
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Weder, Nandi. "Urban space in transformation : reading social change in Vladislavic's Johannesburg Pamuk's Istanbul and Dalrymple's Delhi." Diss., University of Pretoria, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/2263/62670.
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Our cultural values and socio-political perspectives are perhaps most clearly reflected in our material environment. When this environment is subjected to drastic change, the effects on these values and perspectives are likely to be profound. This dissertation considers the wide-ranging socio-cultural effects of material change through a close reading of three literary texts, each of which presents a portrait of a particular city in transition. The three texts which form the basis of this study are Orhan Pamuk's Istanbul: Memories and the City, William Dalrymple's City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi, and Ivan Vladislavic's Portrait with Keys: The City of Johannesburg Unlocked. In my reading of the effects of material change as depicted in these texts, I draw on architectural theorist Fred Scott's three possible approaches to existing material and cultural infrastructure, namely demolition, preservation and re-appropriation. Using this framework, and extending it in several ways, I discuss the ways in which processes of demolition/destruction, preservation, and adaptation/re-appropriation are inscribed in these texts. In Pamuk's Istanbul, the founding of the modern nation state of Turkey is shown to have stimulated two opposing responses, namely Mustafa Kemal's discourse of Turkification, concerned with development and modernity, and a reactionary melancholy yearning for the past, called hüzün. Dalrymple's City of Djinns highlights the various forms of socio-cultural destruction which accompanied Partition while also documenting the many examples of accidental preservation within the rapidly modernising city; also important in City of Djinns are descriptions of material and cultural re-appropriation, highlighted in depictions of urban resilience and the formation of new heterogeneous communities capable of transcending former divisions. Vladislavic's Johannesburg is also concerned with three possible responses to change in the urban environment after the abolition of apartheid: the urge to demolish and emigrate, the contrary need to preserve and fortify, as well as the compromise offered by the decision to re-appropriate and adapt.Orhan Pamuk
Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2017.
English
MA
Unrestricted
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Scott, Bede Tregear. "Literature, community, and the Nation-state : literary representations of the 1947 Partition of India." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2006. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.613962.
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Warrington, Paula Frances Tarratt. "Memory and remembering : Anglo-Saxon literary representations and current interpretations of the phenomena considered." Thesis, University of Leicester, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/2381/28783.
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Striking similarities between Anglo-Saxon and present-day notions of MEMORY and REMEMBERING can be discerned through close analysis of Old English representations of these phenomena. Where there are significant dissimilarities, these are manifested as culturally specific nuances rather than fundamental differences between the two forms of expression. In this thesis, Anglo-Saxon literary representations of MEMORY and REMEMBERING are considered in comparison with current interpretations of the concepts as revealed through idiomatic Modern English and also in scientific discourse. Although the Anglo-Saxons did not have the same understanding of MEMORY as is found in modern scientific accounts, these do provide a comparatively objective measure against which to gauge the remembering activities portrayed in Old English texts and Modern English idiom. A detailed exploration of the memory retrieval continuum, together with close examination of actual language use, allows for a degree of quantification not achievable through more impressionistic approaches to the field. This is achieved by analysing the contexts in which the Old English verb gemunan and noun gemynd are used: the figurative representations of MEMORY and REMEMBERING adopted by both Old English and Modern English speakers are also considered. Misconceptions about tenth-century MEMORY representation -- that Anglo-Saxon writers have no notion of 'self', or that nostalgia is the dominant aspect of REMEMBERING within Old English texts -- are challenged by my findings. In order to arrive at a definition for each specific occurrence of an Old English MEMORY term, a range of contextual factors needs first be considered: manuscript context and the type of text, who is remembering and what they are remembering, and what other mental or emotional activities are occurring concurrently. A better understanding of the role of MEMORY is attained through recognition of its critical place within the wider field of COGNITION.
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Burrow, Janice. "History's ghosts : representations of slavery and the supernatural in selected North American literary works." Thesis, University of Newcastle Upon Tyne, 2003. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.289090.
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Newport, Sarah. "Writing otherness : uses of history and mythology in constructing literary representations of India's hijras." Thesis, University of Manchester, 2018. https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/theses/writing-otherness-uses-of-history-and-mythology-in-constructing-literary-representations-of-indias-hijras(d884b37f-417b-478d-9f19-e00d2129c327).html.
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This thesis explores the construction and use of the hijra figure in fictional literature. It argues that hijras are utilised as both symbols of deviance and central points around which wider anti-sociality circulates. In order to contextualise these characters and offer a deeper understanding of the constructed nature of their representations, this thesis works with four frames of reference. It draws respectively on Hindu mythology (chapter one), the Mughal empire and its use of eunuchs, which the authors of fiction use to extend their representations of hijras (chapter two), British colonialism in India and its ideological frameworks which held gender deviance to be a marker of under-civilisation (chapter three) and the postcolonial period, in which hijras continue to fight for their rights whilst attempting to survive in an increasingly marginal social position (chapter four). Examining the literary material through the lens of these four frameworks shows, historically, the movement of the hijras in the public imaginary away from being symbols of the sacred to symbols of sexuality and charts the concurrent shift in their level of social acceptance. In terms of their literary representations, it is seen that authors draw upon material informed by each of the four frameworks, but never in simple terms. Rather, they work imaginatively but often restrictively to produce an injurious or detrimental image of the hijras, and they apply multiple historical frameworks to the same narratives and individual characters, with the result of marking them as timeless figures of eternal otherness. The image of hijras as sacred beings in Hindu mythology is recast as them being terrifying figures who are liable to curse binary-gendered citizens if their extortionate demands are not met (chapter one). The political prominence of Mughal eunuchs and their position as guardians of sexual boundaries and purity become treasonous political manipulation through the enactment of secret plots, often involving sexual violence, to impact on political events (chapters two and three). The criminalisation of hijras as a means of pushing them out of public visibility becomes naturalised anti-sociality and a shadowy existence at the social margins (chapter three). Finally, in a public environment which has both seen a major increase in campaigns for hijra rights and acceptance, but which has met with fierce opposition, the hijras are overburdened with associations which render them as hyperbolic and ultimately unsustainable figures (chapter four). Ultimately, these constructions facilitate sensationalised storylines set in the criminal underworld. Whilst the thrilling nature of these stories has the potential to capture a readership, this comes at the expense of the hijra characters, who are rendered as inherent criminals, sexual aggressors and wilfully anti-social. Campaigns to protect hijras as a third-gender category, guarantee their legal rights and end their criminalisation for the first time since 1860 have been publicly prominent since 2001; these campaigns are now coming before parliament and formal decisions are expected imminently. Examining understandings of hijras outside of their communities is thus politically timely and necessary for disrupting the cycle of overburdening them as society's gendered scapegoats, contributing to a project of more nuanced understandings necessary for their social integration.
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Schoess, Ann-Sophie. "Re-writing Ariadne : following the thread of literary and artistic representations of Ariadne's abandonment." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2018. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:dfe15854-b0d8-4971-9127-c60e2417ad62.
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This thesis takes Ariadne's abandonment as a case study in order to examine the literary processes of reception that underlie the transmission of classical myth in different eras and cultural contexts - from Classical Antiquity through the Italian Renaissance. Rather than focusing on the ways in which visual representations of Ariadne relate to literary treatments, it draws attention to the literary reliance on a cultural framework, shared by writer and reader, that enables dynamic storytelling. It argues that literary variation of the myth is central to its successful transmission, not least because it allows for appropriations and adaptations that can be made to fit new social and religious parameters, such as Christian conventions in the Middle Ages. In focusing on the important role played by the visual arts in the classical tradition, this research further challenges the still prevalent misconception that the visual arts are secondary to literature, and refutes the common assumption that the relationship between image and text is unidirectional. It highlights the visual impulses leading to paradigm shifts in the literary treatment of the abandonment narrative, and examines the ways in which writers engage with the visual tradition in order to re-shape the ancient narrative. Throughout, attention is drawn to the visual and cultural framework shared by ancient writers and readers, and to the lack of engagement with this framework in traditional classical scholarship. Through its focus on the literary narratives' visuality and mutability, this thesis offers a new paradigm for studying classical myth and its reception.
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Fullman, Joshua. "Writing the Apocalypse: Literary Representations of Eschatology at the End of the Middle Ages." OpenSIUC, 2013. https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/dissertations/676.
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This dissertation explores the utopian and dystopian tones of apocalypticism in medieval secular literature and how literary authors treated the end of time. Beginning with two different representational models of medieval apocalyptic, notably those of St Augustine of Hippo and of Joachim of Fiore, this study examines to what extent selected literary texts adhered to or deviated from those models. Those texts include Marie de France's Espurgatoire seint Patriz, William Langland's Piers Plowman, Geoffrey Chaucer's The Pardoner's Tale, and Thomas Malory's Le Morte D'arthur. This dissertation reveals that several texts subscribed to an expectation of cosmic and personal annihilation, in the Augustinian representation, or of global transformation in the Joachist version. Nearly all of the texts agree in their bleak outlook regarding the end of time, suggesting a climate of fear predominated in the Middle Ages. While the projected Christian eschatological timeline should have fostered hope for the saved, what it produced was often terrors of eternity and emptiness.
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Smith, Jared. "Beyond the inferno : literary representations of New York City before and after 9/11." Master's thesis, University of Cape Town, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/14270.
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Includes bibliographical references (leaves 75-82).From its founding, New York City has served as the gateway to the New World and, as such, has been the impetus behind the American Dream. As the city grew in size and importance, though, so the levels of antagonism rose among its inhabitants, for, like any large-scale urban environment, it was filled with what Georg Simmel labels 'overwhelming social forces' (1950:410). These forces became even more relevant within the context of what Fredric Jameson calls the 'postmodern hyperspace' (1984:83) of urban society which emerged during the latter half of the twentieth century. Thus, by focusing on the real-world example of New York, this dissertation examines how the dialectical negotiation between a postmodern city's form and its function has a profound impact on the identities of that city's inhabitants, producing alienating and antagonistic experiences of city life which, in turn, places increasing pressure on both the conception and perception of an individual's status within the boundaries of that cityscape. The terrorist attacks that occurred on 11 September 2001 functioned as yet another overwhelming force that greatly affected New York's inhabitants. The dedicated media coverage of the event effectively burned the image of a 'wounded' New York into people minds. This emotional imprinting occurred not only because of the horrifying destruction wrought upon the city, leading to the loss of the spectacle that was the World Trade Centre, but also because of the change that this destruction brought about in the mindset of everyone who watched those buildings fall, leading to the establishment of a 'before' and 'after' dialectic. Two literary texts that highlight this dialectic were chosen to provide the basis of this dissertation's analysis. These are Salman Rushdie's Fury (2001) and Don DeLillo's Falling Man (2007). Written and set in 2000, Fury provides an insightful and provocative account of life in New York at the turn of the twenty-first century and, through a retrospective reading of this novel, one can identify its prescience in depicting a New York in which the escalating antagonism, both within and without the city, seems to herald impending disaster. Indeed, that disaster was the 9/11 attacks, which Falling Man takes as its subject, providing individualised, albeit 3 fictional, accounts of the trauma that was experienced by those who were in the towers and their families, as well as those who witnessed it. By offering an analysis of Rushdie and DeLillo's narrative strategies in these novels, specifically in light of Michel Foucault's theory of the heterotopia, Italo Calvino's conception of the 'infernal city' in his Invisible Cities (1974), and the work of key 9/11 theorists this dissertation will plot the trajectory of the 'before' and 'after' dialectic in order to ascertain how effectively these novels function as (re)presentations of the real-world city of New York.
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Leroy, Sophie Louise Jeanne. "Encountering the Sahara : French literary geographies and visual representations of the nineteenth-century desert." Thesis, University of Bristol, 2016. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.702178.
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Following Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in 1798, the deserts of North Africa - and the Sahara in particular -' became a major landscape of the nineteenth-century French geographical imagination. Central to imperial conquest and colonial expansion, the Sahara inspired military missions, travel expeditions, and encyclopaedic surveys, as well as literature and paintings. Drawing on literary and visual theory, human geography, cultural history, and philosophy, my thesis explores representations of the Saharan desert in a selection of nineteenth-century French texts and images. My corpus ranges from the Description de l'Egypte (1809-29) to Eugene Daumas' military journal, Le Sahara algerien (1845), and from Maxime Du Camp's travel writing and photographs to Eugene Fromentin's Algerian narratives (ca. 1857-59) and Isabelle Eberhardt's autobiographical writings (ca. 1899-1904). In bringing together this hybrid corpus, I examine different cultural formations and discursive conceptions of landscape: landscape as an empirical field of research and landscape as a projection of cultural ideas and ideologies. I explore several interrelated questions. How might attention to the poetics of French colonial literature open up fresh readings of the cultural constructions of North African landscapes in the nineteenth century? What happens to the notion of 'imagined geographies' when material experiences of embodied proximity with other landscapes and peoples are carefully analyzed? And, how might these reflections provide new and alternative ways of understanding and interpreting 'encounters' with North African landscapes outside of traditional critical narratives of domination and colonialism? This attention to landscape complicates straightforward interpretations of the Sahara as a 'backdrop' or 'setting' for colonial exploration. Instead, the environmental specificity of the desert is . shown to trouble and subvert the ambitions of totalizing European projects, exposing the limitations of Orientalism and its binary structures (East and West, Self and Other, proximity and distance), which occlude, more than they explain, the complexity of France's multiple encounters with the Sahara.
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Robertson, Megan Allison. "Environments of memory : bio-geography in contemporary literary representations of Canada and the Great War." Thesis, University of British Columbia, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/2429/2739.
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Canadian remembrance of the Great War (1914-1918) in the early twenty-first century is
often associated with grand gestures at national monuments like the opening of the new
Canadian War Museum in 2005 and the restoration of the Vimy Ridge Memorial in 2007.
However, these sites of memory, what Pierre Nora terms lieux de mémoire, are not part of the
everyday environments of memory, the milieux de mémoire, of most Canadians. In my
investigation of three contemporary works of Canadian literature: The Danger Tree by David
Macfarlane, Broken Ground by Jack Hodgins, and Unity (1918) by Kevin Kerr, locally-based
storytellers describe the continued influence of the Great War on their individual Canadian
communities. The fictionalized narrating personas in these three works create what I refer to as
bio-geographies: first-person accounts of the narrator’s particular social and memory
environments. While the bio-geographers in these three texts lack first-hand experience of the
Great War, their writing reflects the continued repercussions of the conflict in the weeks, years,
and decades after the 1918 armistice.
The Great War differentially affected thousands of communities in Canada and
Newfoundland. Constructing a coherent national narrative that accounts for the multiple lived
experiences of individuals in communities across North America is virtually impossible.
Turning to local representations of the Great War (in the case of the three bio-geographic texts:
depictions of communities in Newfoundland, British Columbia, and Saskatchewan) provides a
sense of the nation as a diverse landscape of memory with multiple vantage points. Negotiating
the complex terrain of self, place, and memory, the bio-geographers in the three works I examine
create representations of the past that reveal how sites of memory, lieux de mémoire, come to be
firmly embedded in the ongoing lived experiences of comunity members, the milieux de mémoire.
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Schillinger, Stephen. "Common representations : Jack Straw and literary history as cultural history on the early modern stage /." Thesis, Connect to this title online; UW restricted, 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/1773/9363.
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Marsh, Catherine L. "Fictions of 1947 : representations of Indian decolonization in French-language literary, journalistic and political texts." Thesis, University of Liverpool, 2004. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.416101.
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Gracias, Marian Josephine. "History and the (un)making of identifications in literary representations of Anglo-Indians and Goan Catholics." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 2001. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk3/ftp04/NQ61098.pdf.
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Cai, Jiaying. "Commodification and crime : a comparison of literary representations of New York and Shanghai since the 1980s." Thesis, University of Nottingham, 2012. http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/14486/.
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This dissertation provides a close textual analysis of a selective number of New York and Shanghai novels published since the 1980s. It focuses on the formal and thematic features of these novels through comparative analyses of the themes of commodification and crime. Part I draws on the work of Jay McInerney, Bret Easton Ellis, Candace Bushnell, Wei Hui and Wang Anyi. It examines how commodification has become not just a feature of global fiction but how writers are drawn to a narrative of excess in their representations of it. Wei Hui's "body writing" shares the same materialistic emphasis as New York "Brat Pack" writing but in their criticism of material excess, their approaches are different. The markets in which these writers and their novels circulate also show how commodification can take control of their reception and lead to different interpretations and misinterpretations. Part II of the dissertation draws on the work of Qiu Xiaolong and Linda Fairstein. Through a close analysis of the representation of time and space, this part argues that both authors' deployment of time and space serves as a strategy to reveal the different social contexts that form the latent causes of individual crimes. By introducing a comparative analysis, this dissertation demonstrates that the shared themes of commodification and crime need to be contextualized within the two cities in order to understand the varied manifestations of the ongoing process of urbanization and its consequences for the literatures and cultures of New York and Shanghai.
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Murray, Anthony Joseph. "London Irish Fictions Diaspora and Identity in Literary Representations of the Post-War Irish in London." Thesis, Staffordshire University, 2009. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.522127.
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Ahmed, Hawzhen Rashadaddin. "'Internal Orients' : literary representations of colonial modernity and the Kurdish 'other' in Turkey, Iran and Iraq." Thesis, University of Leicester, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/2381/36254.
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This thesis investigates selected Anglophone literary works about the Kurds. The works are four novels, Oya Baydar’s The Lost Word (2011), Sophie Hardach’s The Registrar’s Manual for Detecting Forced Marriages (2011), Laleh Khadivi’s The Age of Orphans (2009) and The Walking (2013), one novella The Sayings (2003) by W. C. Scheurer, and eight poems in Choman Hardi’s poetry collection Life for Us (2004). It places postcolonial theory in dialogue with literary critical depictions of Kemalist, Persian and Ba’thist nationalisms in modern Turkey, Iran and Iraq. This study, in these texts, explores colonial discourse and praxis by Turkish, Iranian and Iraqi nation-states against the Kurds throughout twentieth century and in early twenty-first century. By means of investigating these works, the thesis argues that these states’ “adaptative modernities”, constituted by Western modernity in the Middle Eastern context, minutely embody Western colonialism. Correspondingly, the Kurds, and their homeland, represent “an Orient within” especially for Turkey and Iran, which construct Turkish and Persian “Western” subjecthood as a process of nation-state formation. In their portrayals of nationalist racialisations, the chosen writers explore how Turkish, Persian and Arabic history, culture and language are mobilised by means of this process. The Kurds are thus rendered colonial subjects within these states’ borders. This thesis interrogates the polarising ideology of nationhood which underpins these nation-states’ modernity and explores how the Kurds are inferiorised. The study examines the ways Kurdish literary characters are oppressed and murdered by means of state sovereignty’s inhumane laws and the ways they are rendered homeless inside and outside these countries. Finally, it explores literary depictions of nationalist patriarchy, which exploits women in general and Kurdish women in particular in the process of nation-making and nationalist struggles.
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Salie, Shazia. "The representations of Sojourner Truth in The Narrative of Sojourner Truth." University of the Western Cape, 2020. http://hdl.handle.net/11394/7311.
Full textAbstract:
Magister Artium - MAI read representations of Sojourner Truth in her Spiritual Narrative, The Narrative of Sojourner Truth with a focus on the portrayal of her unconventional character, through a close analysis of language, structure, photographs and narrative voice. Truth’s editor Olive Gilbert’s raises questions about whether the daguerreotype offers a more accurate form of representation than text. I explore the similarities and differences between visual and written portraits in representations of Truth as a unique figure. I question critical readings of Sojourner Truth’s dress in photographs as conservative, reading instead for a combination of conservative and subversive elements. I suggest that her interest in aesthetic forms such as dress and décor is symbolic of her yearning for home, her heritage, her agency, and unique taste. Her many references to her family indicate that she was more than just an empowered figure, but also one who still grieved. I read Truth’s description of domestic space as representing ambivalently, both her sense of loss, and her attempts to acquire agency. I consider how Truth attempts to recreate a sense of family and belonging through fragments of memory. In my reading of how she questions and extends conventional notions of family and community, I explore how she adapts and includes song, and quotations from the Bible in her sermons, by drawing on elements of African folktale and music. Most critics focus on Truth’s strong voice as an activist, there is little attention to the significance of spiritual solitude for her reimagining of community. I suggest that Truth offers alternative ideas of community as fluid rather than as fixed in one place. I explore how her ideas challenge the notion of nation as exclusive. I consider the genre of The Narrative by analyzing Olive Gilbert’s role as editor and writer. I propose that her role in The Narrative is a more complex one than suggested by critics, as it challenges conventional concepts of autobiography creating a conversation between two voices and lives.