Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Medieval fiction'

Flannery O'Connor based what she called her "anagogic vision" on the medieval way of seeing the world that allowed the reader of a text to discern "different levels of reality in one image or one situation." In my thesis I focus on the ways in which O'Connor revives this literary strategy and adapts it to address the modern cultural context. Accordingly, I examine in particular how her fiction engages Descartes' worship of consciousness and Nietzsche's supposition that "God is dead" by anagogically endowing her characters' bodies with two layers of signification. The first signified body is the spiritually-dead body, which belongs to the character who believes he is a god unto himself by virtue of his intellect. Since the character accepts his mind as his essence of being, his body appears in O'Connor's stories as the image of a soulless identity, a corpse. When the character recognizes the rightful place of the soul, the whole person emerges from the second signified body.

Dans les ouvrages contemporains traitant des arts visuels dans la tradition artistique 'chrétienne' ou 'occidentale' les analyses des œuvres d'art sont souvent effectuées à l'appui d'une approche interdisciplinaire intégrant les méthodes de recherche et les questionnements des sciences sociales ainsi que d'autres disciplines, comme la littérature. Sur se modèle, je tente d’élaborer une méthode de recherche complexe pour l’appliquer dans l’étude de l’iconographie arabe médiévale. Les sources principales de mon travail sont les manuscrits iconographiés de deux 'bestsellers' de la littérature arabe médiévale : les Maqâmât d'al-Harîrî et la traduction arabe de Kalîla wa Dimna de Bîdpây, copiés et peints, pour les premiers au XIIIe siècle, et, pour les seconds, au XIVe siècle, respectivement en Irak, en Syrie et en Egypte. Pour étudier les manuscrits, je propose une approche dont le leitmotiv est l'observation de la relation entre les textes et les images en les considérant comme un ensemble et comme éléments qui constituent des œuvres d'art complexes. Les manuscrits médiévaux contenant des images deviennent ainsi, en tant qu'objets matériels mais aussi comme des produits intellectuels et artistiques, des sources primaires de l’histoire intellectuelle arabe médiévale
In contemporary studies dealing with visual art within the « Western » or « Christian » world, the artworks’ analysis are often proposed on the basis of an interdisciplinary approach integrating methods of different scientific fields such as social sciences, and literature. Following this model, I try to develop a complex method in order to study medieval Arabic iconography. My work’s principal sources are the illustrated manuscripts of the two « bestsellers » of medieval Arabic literature: al-Harîrî’s Maqâmât and the Arabic translation of Bîdpây’s tales, the Kalîla wa Dimna, copied and painted during the second half of the 13th and the first half of the 14th centuries in Irak, Syria and Egypt. In the analysis of the manuscripts, I concentrate on the relationship between text and images while I consider them as elements of a complex artwork, as a whole. While doing so, medieval manuscripts containing images become primary sources of Arabic intellectual history as material objects but also as intellectual products

My dissertation applies narrative theory and ordinary language philosophy to two major works bookending medieval English literature: Beowulf and Le Morte Darthur. Capitalizing on the descriptive power of narrative theory's lexicon, I outline the aesthetics, rhetoric, and other effects on the reader when these medieval writers depict transgressive movements--theoretically termed metalepsis--across borders in the story world, and over boundaries separating that world from our own. I often find that spatial transgressions, as they are visualized in narrative terms, entail or simultaneously occur with a breakdown of the fourth wall separating fiction from its audience. Malory's Sir Lancelot crosses into a spiritual world in pursuit of the Holy Grail only to arrive at an awareness of his existence as narrated fiction. My dissertation argues that moments like this, first analyzed through narrative theory, challenge the reader to recognize the fictional character's force of life, and in so doing expand the imagination to reconsider those metaphysical distinctions that have long rendered the nonhuman inferior. Those distinctions are unnecessary and often senseless, I argue. The ethics of reading fiction that I propose seeks the acknowledgment of limits to knowledge, to what we can claim to know about literature, its characters, and, indeed, our fellow human beings. Given that they are constructed by our ordinary language use, fictional characters are the essence of the other. Fictions, then, and as Stanley Cavell would agree, serve as testing grounds for our capacities of acknowledgment. I argue that both the Beowulf poet and Malory fashioned fictional worlds that preserve a secular heroism from potentially hostile contexts. In the process, these medieval narratives show us that fictional characters move us as a matter of ordinary language--our ordinary interactions with narrative: they play a significant role in our lives that cannot be reduced to any particular theory. There is no need for recourse to ontological, or theological, frameworks to invest them with some unutterable or mysterious meaning. They matter as a matter of course.

This study approaches parody as a multifarious literary form that has assumed diverse forms and functions throughout history. The study handles this diversity by classifying parody according to its objects of imitation. Three major parodic kinds are specified: parody directed at texts and personal styles, parody directed at genre, and parody directed at discourse. In the light of this classification, this study argues that different literary-historical periods in Britain have witnessed the prevalence of different kinds of parody &
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a phenomenon that may be accounted for mainly through the dominant literary, cultural, social, and ideological characteristics of each period. Although all periods from the Middle Ages to the present are considered in this regard, the study attributes a special significance to the postmodern age, where parody has become not only an essential area of inquiry but also a highly popular and widely produced literary form. In line with this emphasis, the study contends further that postmodern parody is primarily discourse parody. It argues, in other words, that discourse is the most essential target of parody during the postmodern age &
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a phenomenon which can again be explained through the major concerns of postmodernism as a movement. In addition to situating parody and its kinds in a historical context, then, this study engages in a detailed analysis of parody in the postmodern age, preparing the ground at the same time for making an informed assessment of the direction parody in general and its kinds in particular may take in the near future.

This study of 1930s German fiction adds a new dimension to existing scholarship on the depiction of crowds in literature. Whereas previous surveys on the topic have predominantly focused on the crowd as a revolutionary phenomenon judged on the basis of class perspectives, or as a feature of mass society, this investigation deals specifically with reactions to the crowd in its incarnation as a manifestation of and symbol for political fascism. Drawing on a number of contemporaneous theoretical treatises on crowds and mass psychology, it seeks to demonstrate that war, extreme socio-political upheaval and the rise of Nazism produced intense multidisciplinary engagement with the subject among German-speaking intellectuals of the period, and examines the portrayal of crowds in works by selected literary authors in this context. Exploring the interplay between literature and concurrent theoretical works, the thesis asks how writers used specific possibilities of fiction to engage with the theme of the crowd at a time when the worth of art was often questioned by literary authors themselves. In doing so, it challenges the implication of earlier criticism that authors uncritically appropriated the findings of theoretical texts for fictional purposes. At the same time, it becomes clear that although some literary crowd portrayals support a distinction between the nature of theoretical and literary writing, certain crowd theories are as imaginative as they are positivistic. Extrapolating from textual comparisons, the thesis thus challenges the view held by some authors that knowledge produced by theoretical enquiry was somehow truer and more valuable than artistic responses to the politics of the age.

This thesis re-evaluates the work of the neglected Austrian novelist Franz Nabl. Nabl’s reputation has long been overshadowed by the prestige of Jung-Wien, denigrated by inaccurate association with the Heimatroman, and even unjustly tarnished by his appropriation during National Socialism. My work aims to correct these misconceptions, demonstrating that his best fiction merits rehabilitation not only in its own right, but also for the important questions it raises about conventional narratives of Austrian literary history. Structured chronologically, the five chapters of this thesis provide fresh analyses of Nabl’s texts, many of which have previously received only scant scholarly attention. These close readings are located in a range of relevant literary-historical and cultural contexts, illustrating that Nabl’s writing not only belongs in surprising literary company, but also that his works fit into important, yet often overlooked patterns in Austrian literary history which are often obscured by a tradition of criticism which values ‘modernism’ over ‘realism’, and privileges the aesthetically progressive over the apparently conservative. The first chapter investigates Nabl’s earliest fiction in the literary and cultural context of fin-de-siècle Vienna, revealing unexpected connections between Nabl and acknowledged modernists, such as Schnitzler and Kafka. The second and third chapters engage with Nabl’s novels, Ödhof and Das Grab des Lebendigen, establishing his status as a significant critical realist within a long tradition of Austrian works exploring unhappy family life. The fourth chapter focuses on the misleading view of Nabl as a regionalist, demonstrating that, while not all Heimat novels deserve critical condemnation, Nabl’s narratives of rural life invoke the conventions of the Heimatroman only to disappoint them. In the last chapter, I explore Nabl’s complicated relationship to National Socialism, showing that, although his involvements with the Nazis were ill-judged, Nabl was not committed to their politics and wrote only politically innocuous fiction during the regime.

Orientador: Yara Frateschi Vieira
Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas
Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-17T19:03:09Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Cesila_JulianaSylvestredaSilva_D.pdf: 1081694 bytes, checksum: 8a09a03f863f6d9a1a203a8507454c6a (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011
Resumo: A literatura arturiana tem início no século XII, mais precisamente com a Historia Regum Britanniae (1135-1138), em que o clérigo Geoffrey de Monmouth traça o perfil do principal personagem das lendas bretãs: o rei Artur. No entanto, a obra de Monmouth não foi aproveitada somente pelos autores que se valeram da Matéria de Bretanha para idealizar seus relatos de aventuras, caso dos romans de Chrétien de Troyes, por exemplo: ela também passou a ser utilizada como fonte histórica para relatos que foram ora lidos como livros de história ora classificados como ficção. A partir de textos arturianos dos séculos XII, XIII e XIV, este trabalho pretende determinar se é possível deduzir da sua análise uma clara distinção entre os conceitos de história e de ficção. Para tanto, examinou-se uma série de obras - das quais participam, em algum momento, Artur e seus cavaleiros -, a fim de realizar um levantamento e uma discussão das passagens em que os diversos autores refletem sobre os fatos passados e sua veracidade, levando-nos ao que poderíamos chamar uma melhor compreensão dos significados dos conceitos de ficção e de história na Idade Média.
Abstract: The beginnings of Arthurian literature can be found on the twelfth century, with the Historia Regum Britanniae (1135-1138), where the profile of the most important character of the British legends, King Arthur, was delineated by its author, the cleric Geoffrey of Monmouth. His text, however, was not used only for the purpose of creating adventures' narratives, such as, for example, Chrétien de Troyes' romans. The Historia Regum Britanniae was also a historical source for others texts which have thereafter been sometimes read as history, sometimes classified as fiction. Based on Arthurian texts written during the 12th, 13th, and 14th centuries, this thesis seeks to determine whether it is possible to draw from their analysis a clear distinction between the concepts of history and fiction. A corpus of Arthurian texts was chosen and examined, in order to identify and discuss those passages where their authors comment on the past and its veracity, leading us, we hope, to a better understanding of the meanings of the concepts of history and fiction in the Middle Ages.
Doutorado
Historia e Historiografia Literaria
Doutor em Teoria e História Literária

Arabic literature in Israel has evaded critical attention, or has been treated as an uncomplicated part of Palestinian national culture, on a quest for unification and an identity that was devastated in 1948. This dissertation complicates that narrative through close readings of short stories by five Arab citizens of Israel—Imil Habibi, Muhammad ‘Ali Taha, Muhammad Naffa‘, Hanna Ibrahim, and Zaki Darwish—between 1967 and 1983. Focusing on the relationship between geography and fiction, I suggest that literary constructions of “place” and “space” by these authors reveal a range of cultural negotiations that break down entrenched dyads: Palestinian yet Israeli; Palestinian on the one hand, Israeli on the other; spared exile, but suffering occupation. Instead, these writers evoke the hybrid and ambivalent experiences produced in the paradoxical spaces of Israeli-Palestinian life. I develop an analytical framework that incorporates geographic and literary theory. I use the work of humanists such as Gaston Bachelard, Yi-Fu Tuan, and Edward Casey to suggest that literature mediates geography in a way that communicates belonging, alienation, or personal and collective meaning. The framework is bolstered with the work of postcolonial theorists such as Homi Bhabha, along with historical and political sources, to capture the contextual resonance of the texts. After laying out these theoretical guidelines, I offer a historical account of Arabic literature in Israel and embark on four analytical chapters. Chapter Two explores Imil Habibi’s portrayals of anxiety around post-1967 Palestinian reunions. Chapter Three focuses on the themes of Muhammad ‘Ali Taha’s Palestinian collective identity in Israel. Chapter Four takes up the theme of “the land” in the works of Muhammad Naffa‘ and Hanna Ibrahim, in the context of 1970s land expropriations. Chapter Five explores a long story by Zaki Darwish and its depiction of the body’s phenomenological relation to the homeland. Rather than portraying counter-narratives that suggest a binary of “Israeli” and “Palestinian” always at odds, these authors portray the spaces and characters in between. They disclose the anxieties of finding a sense of place in the context of a dispersed Palestinian nation, geopolitical uncertainty, social marginalization within the state, and the subtle geographies of a historic homeland that both is—and is not—one’s own.

The Bound Chronicles is a fictional story that chronicles the journey of three Irish monks who travel to Britain in 892 AD, the time of the Anglo-Saxons. There, they encounter King Alfred, Vikings, poisonings, but, more harrowing, must face their inner selves and the consequences of their choices.

This thesis examines the depiction of the widow by men and women in novels and short stories written between 1842 and 1913. The representation of the widow is analysed in the context of dominant views about widowhood at the time, such as those expressed in the writings of politician and statesman, Theodor Gottlieb von Hippel (1741-1796). These ideas are set out in chapter I. The first chapter also examines the social reality of widowhood in nineteenth-century Germany. In the first chapter of the thesis Hippel argues that real widows are superfluous beings and men’s second-hand goods, but they were also perceived by theologians and moralists of the time as a threat due to their ungoverned lust. Many nineteenth-century widows internalised the idea espoused by Hippel and felt alienated and invisible. In German fiction, however, male writers in the works discussed repeat the latter theory that once deprived of their husbands widows are sexually voracious. In the works written by men, the figure of the widow is generally presented as a dangerous sexual predator. Female authors, however, highlight the invisibility of the widow and portray her as a figure alienated from society and her family. Henriette Hanke is the first author to be examined in chapter II. Her novel, Die Wittwen (1842), portrays five widows, who range from the self-sacrificing Lucie von Gardemer, to the liberated and financially independent Frau von Kleist. Hanke depicts widowhood as a process of education for her two key widows, Lucie von Gardemer and Franzisca Weihland. They must learn to love the right man, and at the end of the story they revert from widowhood to marriage. Fourteen years later, the first version of Gottfried Keller’s Der grüne Heinrich (1854/55) was published. Chapter III explores the way in which Keller portrays the threatening sexuality of his widow Judith and emphasises her power to destabilise the narrator. Chapters IV and V also focus on the widow as a predatory and dangerous figure, as exemplified in works by Paul Heyse, Eduard Grisebach, C. F. Meyer and Arthur Schnitzler. In chapter VI Hedwig Dohm presents a contrast to the dominant representations of widowhood in her story Werde, die du bist! (1896). Dohm challenges prevalent stereotypes of the widow, though with limited success. Gabriele Reuter, the final author to be discussed, reverts to male stereotypes of the widow in her stories. This chapter thus shows that women writers are not always more positive, or original, in their representation of the widow. The thesis as a whole demonstrates the overwhelmingly negative portrayal of the widow in nineteenth-century German fiction. She is a figure to be at best re-educated and at worst to be feared and guarded against. She is a cynical man-trap in Heyse’s and Grisebach’s stories, a murderess in Meyer’s story, and an incestuous mother in Schnitzler’s texts. Hanke and Dohm, themselves both widows, show from the inside what it is like to be a widow in such a society.

The creative content of my thesis has been developed from a personal experience that became the catalyst, and source material for the creative part of the novella All Shall Be Well: Julian and Bartholomew. The essay, and the preface to the creative side, situates the thesis as a work of reflection and memoir combining with creativity, and proposes that threads of beliefs and feelings, represented in the social, and the cultural life of the English fourteenth century, are also relevant to, and for those to be found in contemporary society. This applies particularly to the importance of compassion in society, and emphasises the reality of what it is to be human.The reflective essay contains my own personal experiences, and an alignment, with two characters, their discovery, and the impact that it has had on my own life and beliefs. Wrought in coincidence, it also connects with a childhood life in the county of Norfolk, England, where my two authentic characters are found to be living in close vicinity to one another, at almost the precise time. The anchoress Julian of Norwich lived in a cell attached to the church of St Julian in the city of Norwich, in the latter part of the fourteenth century, and some fifteen miles south east of Norwich lived Bartholomew Edrich, Lord of the Manor in the village of Thrigby.Edrich, my own patriarchal surname, was an ancient Anglo Saxon name, commensurate with the longevity of the Edrich family. As yeoman farmers they have lived in this area throughout the centuries and to the present day. Bartholomew is authenticated by my discovery of his silver seal in the Norwich Castle Museum in 1978. I came to Julian of Norwich, anchoress at the church of St. Julian, in a dance included in the Sacred Circle Dances group, of which I was a member. I was further inspired by her writing, and those who wrote of her, in books bought in subsequent visits to her reconstituted cell. The recovered writing of her book the Revelations of Divine Love, various wills of the period in which she lived, and a reference made, in The Book of Margery Kempe, to a visit made by Margery to Julian in her cell in 1415, establishes her authenticity.In the essay I have observed and written of medieval living conditions, noting the dramatic weather and health changes that caused much loss of life, and with great human suffering. This has been the background for the meeting of two historical personages, Julian and Bartholomew. An accompanying fictional story draws on their roles, as people caught in a violent situation, where there is the need for a listening ear, and prayerful response; for such was the role of an anchoress, or anchorite, of that period. It has recently been suggested that role to be similar to contemporary counselling, even that of psychotherapy.Implicit in this thesis is the conclusion that suffering engenders compassion, the feeling that one suffers with another, in understanding and love. This is, I feel, an important thread connecting the medieval, and, a contemporary society. For a population suffering immense changes today, as in the medieval period of the fourteenth century, implies that Julian’s message, of the motherhood of God, His love for his creation in His understanding and compassion for sin, and His message of hope, is proof of her popularity and of a recognised need of the contemporary human. I acknowledge a sense of pride that my family name existed then, and can be found in the same area today, and that they are a vital part, that recognises in the story unfolding, a continuity of the name, and of the family’s genetic qualities.

Les Eschés amoureux, poème allégorique de trente mille vers datant de 1370-1380, se présentent comme une réponse au Roman de la Rose, en rejouant notamment l’intrigue sur un échiquier. Conservé dans deux manuscrits inachevés, encore largement inédit, ce texte a rapidement été éclipsé par son commentaire en prose, Le Livre des eschez amoureux moralisés, rédigé par Évrart de Conty, médecin personnel de Charles V. La récente attribution des Eschés amoureux à ce même auteur hisse le poème initial au rang d’œuvre destinée à être (auto-)commentée ; cette auto-exégèse est déjà esquissée dans l’un des témoins du texte en vers, qui comprend un apparat de gloses marginales latines participant d’un projet auctorial. Les Eschés amoureux articulent ambition narrative et transmission de connaissances variées, en intégrant notamment en leur sein deux traductions d’auctoritates, les Remedia amoris d’Ovide et le De regimine principum de Gilles de Rome. Ils offrent une mise en fiction du savoir singulière, réservant souvent ce qui fonde l’autorité du discours à un commentaire à venir. Cette présente étude s’attache à examiner les stratégies de divulgation du savoir par le biais d’un récit à la fin du XIVe siècle, en analysant notamment les modèles investis par Les Eschés amoureux, l’assemblage d’éléments hétéroclites qui préside à l’élaboration de cette fiction et la fonction dévolue au commentaire
The Eschés amoureux, a thirty thousand verse allegorical poem written circa 1370-1380, comes as a response to the Romance of the Rose, notably playing the initial plot on a chessboard. The text can be read in two incomplete manuscripts and is still mostly unedited. It was quickly outshone by its prose commentary, Le Livre des eschez amoureux moralisés, written by Évrart de Conty, King Charles V’s personal physician. The fact that the Eschés amoureux was recently attributed to this very same author pushes the initial poem to the rank of a work that requires (self-)commentaries; the outline of this self exegesis is to be found in one of the verse manuscripts, which comes with latin marginal glosses of major and auctorial importance. The Eschés amoureux connects a narrative project to the transmission of knowledge, inserting within the poem two translations of auctoritates, the ovidian Remedia amoris and the De regimine principum by Giles of Rome. It provides a peculiar fictionalization of knowledge, often setting aside the authoritative part of the discourse and keeping it for a forthcoming commentary. The present dissertation intends to analyze the ways knowledge was conveyed through narrative at the end of the XIVth century; it considers the models involved for this specific text, the miscellaneous items brought together in one single fiction and the part played by the commentary

“The Bedroom and the Barnyard: Zoomorphic Lust Through Territory, Procedure, and Shelter in ‘The Miller’s Tale’” is an academic endeavor that takes Chaucer’s zoomorphic metaphors and similes and analyzes them in a sense that reveals the chaos of what is human and what is animal tendency. The academic work is expressed in the adjunct creative project, Haunchebones, a 10-minute drama that echoes the tale and its zoomorphic influences, while presenting the content in a stylized play influenced by Theatre of the Absurd and artwork from the medieval and early renaissance period.

L’étude interroge les représentations du souillé et de l’impur à travers les œuvres littéraires des XIIe et XIIIe siècles. Présent dans tous les genres narratifs profanes (chansons de geste, romans arthuriens, fabliaux, théâtre, Roman de Renart) le goût – ou le dégoût – médiéval pour le répugnant revêt de multiples facettes dont la prolixité et la diversité interpellent. De la boue aux excrétions du corps, de la lèpre aux tabous du sang, de la macule de la honte à celle du péché, l’expression de la souillure oscille entre sens propre et sens figuré pour énoncer et penser, en les ancrant dans la matérialité la plus concrète, des systèmes de valeur. Servant à établir des frontières, à définir des champs d’inclusion et d’exclusion, les manifestations de l’immonde révèlent, autant qu’elles contribuent à les forger et à les concilier, les ordres idéologiques imbriqués de la société médiévale. Par la place accordée à l’abjection, la littérature expérimente ainsi la manière de dire et de représenter le désordre – pour mieux le circonscrire. Les poétiques contrastées de la souillure élaborées par les différents genres montrent alors combien la mise en scène de l’impur rejoint une interrogation littéraire sur les pouvoirs du langage et la capacité des textes à exprimer le monde : idéologique, esthétique, la question de la souillure est aussi sémiotique. Tendues entre le concret et l’abstrait, le mot et la chose, le rire et l’horreur, les représentations du souillé et de l’impur dévoilent ainsi un univers où le rapport à la souillure, loin de la simple éviction, peut aussi aller dans le sens d’une réappropriation et d’une réhabilitation – voire, même, d’une rédemption
This study explores the representations of the soiled and the impure through literary works of the 12th and 13th centuries. Present in all profane narrative genres (chansons de geste, Arthurian novels, fabliaux, drama, Roman de Renart), the medieval taste – or distaste – for what is repulsive manifests itself in a startling multiplicity of ways. From mud to body fluids, from leprosy to blood-related taboos, from the stigma of shame to the stigma of sin, the designation of what is soiled oscillates between the literal and the figurative in order to articulate and process value systems by anchoring them in the most tangible materiality. The manifestations of what is vile and squalid are instrumental in drawing boundaries and defining fields of inclusion and exclusion; they also reveal, shape and reconcile the different ideological orders built into medieval society. By giving abjection pride of place, literature experiments with the expression and representation of disorder – the better to circumscribe it. This contrasted poetics of what is soiled took shape across the different genres, which shows the extent to which the staging of what is impure corresponds to a literary attempt to question the powers of language and the capacity of texts to express the world: an exploration of what is soiled has ideological, aesthetical, but also semiotic implications. Between the tangible and the abstract, the word and the thing, laughter and horror, these representations unveil a medieval universe where the relationship with what is soiled goes far beyond mere rejection and can also lead to a form of reappropriation, rehabilitation, and even redemption

This thesis concerns the function of fiction in the creation of an historical myth and the uses that that myth is put to in a number of periods and differing régimes. Its case study is the popular myth of August the Strong (1670-1733), Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, as a man of extraordinary sexual prowess and the ruler over a magnificent, but frivolous, court in Dresden. It examines the origins of this myth in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century, and its development up to the twenty-first century in German history writing, fiction, art, and media. The image August created for himself in the art, literature, and festivities of his court as an ideal ruler of extremely broad cultural and intellectual interests and high political ambitions and abilities linked him closely with eighteenth-century notions of galanterie. This narrowed the scope of his image later, especially as nineteenth-century historians selected fictional sources and interpreted them as historical sources to present August as an immoral political failure. Although nineteenth-century popular writers exhibited a more varied response to August’s historical role, the negative historiography continued to resonate in later history writing. Ironically, the myth of August the Strong represented an opportunity in the GDR in creating and fostering a sense of identity, first as a socialist state with historical and cultural links to the east, and then by examining Prusso-Saxon history as a uniquely (East) German issue. Finally, the thesis examines the practice of historical re-enactment as it is currently employed in a number of variations on German TV and in literature, and its impact on historical knowledge. The thesis concludes that, while narrative forms are necessary to history and fiction, and fiction is a necessary part of presenting history, inconsistent combinations of the two can undermine the projects of both.

El propósito de esta disertación doctoral es lo de investigar y comprender de mejor manera las influencias múltiples que, juntas al desarrollo y a la divulgación de la traducción literaria (puestas de relieve por Stuart Gillespie y David Hopkins), tuvieron un papel importante en el ascenso de las primeras novelas góticas al final del siglo dieciocho. Considerando que este trabajo está profundamente influenciado e inspirado por la crítica literaria reconocida a nivel internacional sobre la literatura gótica, esta investigación evita asumir perspectivas criticas típicas del siglo veinte y del periodo actual. Procediendo atrás en el tiempo, examina los autores, su ambiente cultural, sus conocimientos y sus puntos de vista que pertenecen al siglo dieciocho. El enfoque se concentra sobre las primeras manifestaciones del género gótico en las décadas inmediatamente sucesivas a la novedad introducida por Horace Walpole con su novela fantástica El Castillo de Otranto en 1764. El periodo fin de siècle limitado (1786-1796) de los primeros trabajos góticos que se explora en esta tesis es inversamente proporcional al ancho nivel de creatividad e invención de sus autores. Esta disertación tiene como objetivo lo de demonstrar que la omnipresencia y la reiteración de temas y argumentos clásicos, medievales y renacentistas fueron elegidos y adaptados a sus historias conscientemente por William Beckford (Vathek, 1786), Ann Radcliffe (El Romance de la Selva, 1791), y Matthew G. Lewis (El Monje, 1796), cuyas novelas representan un sincretismo único y original de ideas e influencias literarias, culturales e iconográficas que los tres autores absorbieron de sus contemporáneos así como de los escritores y poetas del pasado. Las tres novelas analizadas en esta tesis fueron escritas antes, durante y después de la revolución francesa que ha sido frecuentemente considerada como un punto de referencia y el origen de la literatura gótica. Una de las ideas detrás de esta disertación es la intención de demonstrar que las conexiones con la revolución en Francia son una convención crítica a quo, que generalmente no toma en consideración peculiaridades del gótico literario que existían antes de los acontecimientos revolucionarios. Otros aspectos importantes incluidos en esta investigación son la función de las arquitecturas, los paisajes y las iconografías de las novelas. La disertación está dividida en cinco partes. La primera introduce los argumentos and la razón de ser a la base de esta investigación junto a la motivación de organizar un estudio sobre el gótico que recibe mucha atención crítica. El cuerpo central es formado por tres capítulos. Cada uno contiene un análisis de una novela diferente y pone en evidencia su relación con autores como Lucrecio, Virgilio, Ovidio, Dante, Boccaccio, Shakespeare, y otros. El quinto capítulo incluye la conclusión y las hipótesis de investigaciones futuras que pueden desarrollarse de este estudio. Una particularidad de la bibliografía es que presenta una variedad de textos y traducciones que eran conocidos por los autores examinados en esta disertación. El idioma de los novelistas góticos reflejaba inevitablemente los estilos de los autores del pasado. Un anexo iconográfico al final de la disertación presenta una galería de pinturas e imágenes que muestran una analogía relevante con la belleza, el misterio y el terror del gótico.
The purpose of this doctoral dissertation is to investigate and better understand the multiple influences that, together with the development and spreading of literary translations (highlighted by Stuart Gillespie and David Hopkins), played an important role in the rise of the early Gothic novel at the end of the eighteenth century. While deeply inspired by and imbued with internationally recognised critical literature of the Gothic, this study avoids assuming the critical stances of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It proceeds backward in time, scrutinizing the authors, their cultural background, their knowledge, and their eighteenth-century perspectives. The focus is concentrated on the first manifestations of the Gothic genre in the decades that followed the novelty introduced by Horace Walpole with The Castle of Otranto in 1764. The restricted fin de siècle timespan (1786-1796) of the early Gothic works that is explored in this thesis is inversely proportional to the high level of creativity and inventiveness of their authors. This dissertation aims at demonstrating that the pervasiveness and reiteration of Classical, Medieval, and Renaissance themes were consciously chosen and adapted to their plots by William Beckford (Vathek, 1786), Ann Radcliffe (The Romance of the Forest, 1791), and Matthew G. Lewis (The Monk, 1796), whose novels were an interesting and unusual syncretism of literary, cultural, and iconographic ideas and resources that they absorbed both from their contemporaries and, most importantly, from authors of the past. The three novels analysed in this thesis were written before, during, and after the French Revolution, which has been taken by many as a point of reference for and as a cause of the Gothic. The aim of this study is also to demonstrate that the association with the French Revolution is a critical convention a quo, which does not take into consideration Gothic peculiarities that already existed before the dramatic events in France. Other important aspects included in this investigation are the function of architectures, landscapes and iconographies in the novels. The dissertation is divided into five parts. The first part introduces the major themes and the rationale behind this investigation together with the motivation for embarking on a study on the Gothic. The central body is represented by three chapters. Every chapter analyses one novel and underscores its connection with authors such as Lucretius, Virgil, Ovid, Dante, Boccaccio, Shakespeare, and many others. The fifth chapter contains the conclusion and the future hypotheses of investigation brought about by this research. The bibliography features a variety of source texts and translations that were known to the novelists examined in this dissertation. The three Gothic writers’ language inevitably reflected and echoed themes and styles inherited from authors of different epochs. An iconography annex introduces a series of paintings and images that showed relevant associations with Gothic beauty, mystery, and horror.

Stories of the Trojan War and its aftermath are the oldest – apart from those in the Bible – to be retold in medieval literature. Between 1165-1450, they catch the imagination of French-language writers, who create histories in and for that burgeoning vernacular. These writers make Troy a place of origins for peoples and places across Europe. One way in which writers locate origins at Troy is through the device of translation. Geoffrey of Monmouth, Benoît de Sainte-Maure and the writers of the prose Troie, the Histoire Ancienne and the Roman de Perceforest all claim to have translated old texts; for Benoît and the prose Troie writers, this text is a Latin copy of an eyewitness account of the Trojan War. The writers thus connect their locations with Troy retroactively, in both space and time. Within this set of highly successful stories, writers’ presentations of translation therefore have important consequences for understanding what is at stake in medieval French textual production. Taking Derrida’s Monolinguisme de l’Autre as my theoretical starting point, this thesis sheds new light on medieval writers’ concepts of translation, creation and origins by asking two questions: • To what extent is translation considered integral to creation and textual production in medieval French texts? • Why does the conceit of translation from a lost source seem to shape narratives even when this source is a fiction? All these writers produce texts in French, or translate from that language, but these texts were written in geographically distinct areas: the Roman de Troie comes from Northern France, the prose Troy traditions are copied mainly in Italy, John Gower wrote in London, Christine de Pizan was at court in Paris and the extant Perceforest manuscripts were produced in Burgundy. The Trojan material therefore inspires writers throughout this period all over Western Europe.

Que signifie repenser l’Histoire littéraire et l’Histoire du roman comme Histoire culturelle ? Le point de départ de notre questionnement sur les formes de représentation adoptées par l’Histoire littéraire porte sur la doxa critique selon laquelle il existe une relation génétique entre l’épopée et le roman, dont la source se trouve dans ce qu’il est convenu de voir comme le texte fondateur de la littérature, l’épopée d’Homère et celui de la théorie littéraire, la Poétique d’Aristote. Si l’épopée homérique est une œuvre de la tradition orale, quelle est sa relation avec le roman, issu, lui, de la scripturalité et de l’émergence de la prose ? Si les récits en prose narrative de fiction apparaissent dans des civilisations sans épopée, quelle est la condition nécessaire pour leur émergence ? Si, de plus, l’apparition d’une prose narrative de fiction est précédée de plusieurs siècles de celle d’une historiographie et que ce phénomène se répète aussi bien dans la Grèce classique qu’au Moyen Âge européen, ou encore en Chine, quelle est la condition nécessaire pour l’essor du roman ? Nous présentons ici l’ébauche d’une Histoire alternative des origines du roman dans la Weltliteratur, en relation avec l’émergence de la scripturalité et la prose et l’essor de l’historiographie À la croisée de plusieurs disciplines académiques, notamment entre les sciences humaines et sociales, notre recherche fait appel d’une part à la théorie et à l’Histoire de la littérature, d’autre part à l’Histoire de l’historiographie, ainsi qu’à la théorie et la philosophie de l’Histoire
Is it possible to rethink Literary History and in particular the History of the Novel as Cultural History which seeks to differentiate between an historical object and it’s representation? Considering the critical doxa, according to which, there exists a genetic link between epics and the novel, leads to one of Western thinking’s most stubborn myths. If epics, and particularly Homer’s, is seen as the novel’s ascendant , although it belongs to oral tradition, how does it explain the fact that as Ancient civilizations as Egypt or China or Israel developed sophisticated prose narratives without having epics? Moreover, if Western literary history refers to Aristotle’s Poetics as it’s foundational text, although by the time it was written, fictional prose didn’t exist yet, and was only to develop a few centuries later, shouldn’t we seek for the missing link between the oral tradition and the rise of the novel? As against this hegemonic and unhistorical representation that considers the novel genre as a Western invention, and as opposed to the historical circumstances that gave birth to the novel, we consider that the key to understanding this phenomenon lies in the emergence of literacy and prose. Indeed, in all civilizations that developed fictional prose writing, it was systematically preceded, not by epics, but by historiography. Our PHD dissertation presents an alternative History of the novel, whose angle is intercultural and interdisciplinary, aiming at recreating a new chronology of the emergence of the novel as a an inevitable historical genre in world’s literature

This thesis takes a finnly interdisciplinary approach to the subject of late medieyal fatherhood. It investigates the ideology of fatherhood, as well as the relationships between fathers and their sons and daughters, both legitimate and illegitimate, and also their stepchildren. In doing this it not only illuminates a previously unexplored aspect of family life, but also demonstrates the importance of fatherhood in male identity formation, and so expands the current understanding of medieval masculinities. As its source material this thesis uses Middle English romances and fifteenth-century gentry and mercantile letters. Rather than attempting a survey of late medieval fatherhood, this thesis concentrates on 'fictions' of fatherhood - the constructed worlds of letters and romances. Whilst letters and romances may reflect reality, and in the case of letters in particular may provide details of even the most mundane realities, they are strongly and self-consciously generic. The narrative of the romance is very important, but the story is also the means by which ideas are transmitted. Likewise the fonns of letters, whilst used to transmit practical details, are also a way of encapsulating ideological perspectives. This thesis is principally about ideas of fatherhood, and thus illuminates late medieval perceptions of fathers and their functions. The Introduction presents current scholarship and the source material. Chapter 1 argues that fatherhood was a defining aspect of establishing an adult male identity. Chapter 2 is concerned with fathers and sons, and engages closely with the specific vocabulary of fatherhood. Chapter 3 uses the fatherdaughter relationship to consider the nature of patriarchal authority. Chapter 4 looks at 'outsiders' - stepchildren and bastards - to consider how far stretched the bonds of fatherhood. The Conclusion raises areas for further research.

Les cycles arthuriens en prose du XIIIe siècle (principalement la trilogie dite de Robert de Boron et le Cycle Vulgate ou Lancelot-Graal) sont des ensembles au statut singulier. Définis à la fois par l’autonomie et l’interconnexion des romans qui les constituent, ils se distinguent des romans en vers individualisés qui les précèdent et des proses amples mais plus homogènes qui les suivent. À leurs caractéristiques formelles s’ajoute le projet de construire des univers de fiction cohérents, susceptibles d’instaurer un canon arthurien définitif. La brièveté de la période de production (1200-1240 environ) est contrecarrée par le succès durable que ces textes connaissent pendant tout le Moyen Âge ; la cyclicité est une forme romanesque expérimentale qui crée un rapport neuf à la matière de Bretagne et génère surtout des modes de lecture nouveaux. Caractérisés par des tendances aussi bien centrifuges que centripètes, les romans cycliques génèrent un réseau que le lecteur peut explorer à sa guise, de manière partielle ou complète, ordonnée ou désordonnée ; mettant en relation des romans aux visées parfois disparates mais assumant leur interconnexion, le cycle offre au lecteur un parcours sans cesse renouvelé, où les grands effets de cohérence l’emportent sur les contradictions de détail. C’est ce réseau inter-romanesque qui est l’objet privilégié de la présente étude : les romans cycliques, loin de développer leur sens en autarcie, vivent de la mise en lien de leurs récits et construisent ensemble, par le biais de la lecture organisatrice, des mondes narratifs multipolaires
The thirteenth-century Arthurian prose cycles (mainly Robert de Boron’s trilogy and the Vulgate or Lancelot-Grail Cycle) are groupings of a peculiar nature. Defined both by the autonomy and the interconnection of their constituent romances, they differ from the individualised verse romances which precede them as well as from the massive yet more homogenous prose narratives which follow. These formal characteristics go hand-in-hand with a coherent world-building project, which aims to formulate a definitive Arthurian canon. The brevity of the production period (ca. 1200-1240) is counterbalanced by the lasting success of these texts throughout the Middle Ages; cyclicity is an experimental form which creates a new take on the matter of Britain, and most of all, gives birth to new modes of reading. Defined by centrifugal as well as centripetal tendencies, cyclical romances generate a network which the reader may explore at will, either partially or completely, in an orderly or disorderly manner. By linking romances which may have different aims yet accept their basic connectivity, cycles allow their readers to navigate them in constantly renewed ways, while at the same time preserving their coherence in spite of localised contradictions. This cross-romance network is the subject of the present study: cyclical romances, far from existing in isolation, thrive in an interconnected narrative environment; in conjunction with the reader’s own structuring powers, they interact to build multifarious narrative worlds

Cette thèse se consacre aux personnages féminins du Roman de Perceforest. Le Perceforest est un récit qui se veut une genèse du lignage arthurien et qui fait même d’Alexandre le Grand l’ancêtre du roi Arthur. Pour se faire, l’auteur du Perceforest recourt à de nombreux motifs et procédés d’écriture, mais, l’originalité du texte se trouve surtout dans la manière dont les personnages féminins sont envisagés. À cet effet, notre propos s’intéressera aux éléments qui constituent l’essence du personnage féminin dans le Perceforest. Quatre mouvements structurent notre étude durant laquelle nous prendrons appui sur les théories du personnage mais aussi sur des études portant sur la voix, la narration ou enfin sur les études de genre. Nous verrons que, loin d’être de simples prétextes narratifs ou des outils au service de l’accomplissement des chevaliers, les personnages féminins du Perceforest assurent non seulement la cohésion interne du récit mais permettent aussi de relire et de redynamiser d’autres textes et d’autres genres littéraires. Tout en conservant comme horizon principal l’avènement du lignage arhturien, le Perceforest relit les genres littéraires à travers le genre
This thesis is dedicated to the study of female characters in the Roman de Perceforest. The Perceforest is a romance that pretends to be the genesis of the arthurian lineage where even Alexander the Great is King Arthur’s ancestor. To fulfill this purpose, the author of the Perceforest uses a lot of techniques and narrative patterns but the originality of this text lies above all in the way female characters are presented. To this end, our analysis will focus on elements that constitute the essence of the female character in the Perceforest. Our study will be divided into four parts in which we will draw on theories of character but also on studies about the concept of voice, narrative theory or gender studies. We will see that far from being simple narrative tools dedidacted to the sole purpose of chivalric prowess, female characters in the Perceforest not only ensure the internal cohesion of the story but also allow to read again and reinvigorate other texts and other genres. While keeping the advent of the Arthurian lineage as the main goal, the Perceforest rereads literary genres through gender

This study provides a precise definition of the term 'Kafkaesque' by enriching literary criticism with scientific theory and practice, including an experiment on readers' responses to Kafka. Dictionary definitions justify taking the term back to its textual origins in Kafka's works, and the works can fruitfully be analysed by investigating how readers engage with them through cognitive processes of imagination. Modern scientific developments posit that vision, imagination, and consciousness should be conceived of not in terms of static pictorialism – reducible to the notion of 'pictures in the head' – but in terms of enaction, i.e. as an ongoing interaction with the external world around us. Most traditional nineteenth-century Realist texts are based on pictorialist assumptions, while Kafka's texts evoke perception non-pictorially and are therefore more cognitively realistic. In his personal writings, Kafka wrestles with problems entailed by pictorialist conceptions of vision, imagination, and the function of language, and comes to enactivist solutions: evocation of perception that does not result in painting static tableaux with words. In his fictional works, Kafka correspondingly evolves a cognitively realistic way of writing to evoke fictional worlds that directly engage the cognitive processes of their readers; Der Proceß is a prime example of the 'Kafkaesque' text and reading experience, defined by being compelling yet simultaneously unsettling. Modulations in narrative perspective and evocation of emotion as enactive also contribute to the experience of the 'Kafkaesque' as compelling; yet Kafka's texts simultaneously unsettle by preventing straightforward emotional identification with the protagonists, and destabilising deep-rooted concepts of selfhood as singular and unified. The theoretical discussion of the 'Kafkaesque' experience as compelling yet unsettling is complemented and refined by an experiment testing readers' responses to a short story by Kafka. The term 'Kafkaesque realism' denotes Kafka's compelling yet unsettling non-pictorial evocation of perception of the fictional world. Kafkaesque realism falls into the broader category of 'cognitive realism', which provides a framework for analysing fictional texts more generally.

‘Worthy’ is about a young man – Cai – who must recover from the ravages of his past while he is being trained in sorcery. It is a fantasy novella set in the world of Terirth, which takes inspiration from 18th century western European culture and society and from Australian geography. Cai, enslaved illegally in a brothel, is discovered and rescued by aristocrat and sorcerer Luca, who senses Cai’s latent magic abilities from a distance. Taken to the Court of Terirth, Cai recovers from fever and opiate addiction but continues to suffer profound memory loss as a result of trauma. Luca begins training Cai in sorcery, but after Cai is attacked and his magic kills the assailant, the Queen tells Luca Cai must leave Court. Luca and Cai travel to the site of Luca’s childhood home, where Cai both develops as a sorcerer and begins to recover his memory. When his mother arrives, having searched for him since his abduction, his full recollection of the trauma he endured returns with her. Her unusual, only semi-human nature finally explains why Cai possesses such strong magic. Meanwhile, behind the polished surface of the Court, political machinations are at work, masterminded by the Queen of Terirth herself. Perceiving Luca and his associates as a threat, she sets out to dispose of them, and it is then Cai’s turn to support his mentor. In doing so, he confronts and destroys his greatest abuser, finally gaining some degree of closure. The end of the novella sees Cai preparing to travel with his mother and Luca to attempt a rescue of Luca’s closest friend from the palace dungeons. The exegesis, ‘Responding to ‘Quasi-medieval’ Tendencies in High Fantasy’, explores the development and popularisation of the quasi-medieval setting common in high fantasy since the 1960s. It attempts to both explain and interrogate the continuing pervasiveness of such a setting. It also positions ‘Worthy’ in relation to quasi-medieval fantasy, acknowledging its ties to this material as well as discussing the features which take it in a somewhat different direction.
Thesis (M.A.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Humanities, 2012

The story of king Pelayo is one of the first legends of the Iberian Peninsula after the Moorish invasion of 711. It is clearly a necessary response to this invasion, and also an attempt to legitimize the newly established monarchy of the Kingdom of Asturias. In its effort to restore the "glories" of the now extinct Gothic kingdom, these monarchs needed a miracle and a foundational hero as the backbone of their national historiography. Furthermore, from its early conception until the present day, the legend of Pelayo has never been cast into shadows, and even though it has seldom been a popular story, it has always served as vehicle to the prevailing ideology of its time. In other words, the story of Pelayo was never an innocent one. It has always been subordinated to a very specific ideology and to society's attempts to legitimize itself. This dissertation examines the ties between the historiographic fictions of Spain and the concept of nation-building. My research attempts to analyze the story as it is, a literary fiction that can be traced back to other, older stories and, in short, to prove that this story has been the backbone of Spain's national identity—at least one of them—ever since its first recorded manifestation in the 9th century. The main thesis of this dissertation is not so much the analysis of the origin of this legend—as this is easily found in the Albeldense and Alphonsine chronicles—but, rather, its debt to other "fictions" and its development throughout the Spanish Middle Ages. The different rewritings of the legend during these centuries are an exceptional witness as to what was the prevailing ideology of each different time period, so that, accordingly, every reworking of the legend must be checked against the religious, political and sociological culture that produced it. What is being analysed here is not merely the development of a literary hero, but rather the foundational fiction in which a country's ideological grounds are based.