Dissertations / Theses: 'Nature of historical fiction'

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Chen, Jou-An. "An exploration of nature and human development in young adult historical fantasy." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2018. https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/282878.

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Traditional historical writing focuses on the cause and effect of human action, assuming that it is the historian's responsibility to recount the ebbs and flows of human progress. In the process of laying hold of the past as a narrative of human action, historical writing has developed the tendency to marginalise nature and undermine its power to influence the historical narrative. My investigation explores the fantastic in historical fantasy as a means of resisting historical writing's anthropocentrism. Historical fantasy uses fantastical elements to create counterfactual and alternative historical realities that have the potential to resist and undermine history's anthropocentric norm. My thesis examines four contemporary young adult historical fantasy trilogies that reimagine key turning points in history such as industrialisation, the American frontier, European imperialism, and World War I. They share the theme of retrieving and subverting anthropocentric discourses in the history of human development and thereby creating space for nature's presence and agency. My study finds that the fantastic is an effective means of subverting historical writing's anthropocentrism. But it also uncovers ambiguities and contradictions in historical fantasy's ecological revisionism, pointing to the idea that despite the fantastic's capacity for subversion, historical representations of nature cannot be separated from considerations of human identity and survival.

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

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

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Kent, Alicia Adele. "Migrant modernities : historical and generic movement in fiction by African Americans and Native Americans in the early twentieth century (Charles Waddell Chesnutt, Zora Neale Hurston, Mourning Dove, D'Arcy McNickle)." Ann Arbor, Mich. : ProQuest Information and Learning, 2005. http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?res_dat=xri:ssbe&url_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_dat=xri:ssbe:ft:keyresource:Kra_Diss_02.

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Pettersson, Petter. "What about historical fiction? : Ways to use historical fiction in an ESL-classroom setting." Thesis, Högskolan i Halmstad, Akademin för lärande, humaniora och samhälle, 2017. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hh:diva-35275.

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Tait, Meg. "Taking sides : Stefan Heym's historical fiction." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 1999. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.624152.

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Kellar, Pinard Katrina. "Settler Feminism in Contemporary Canadian Historical Fiction." Thesis, Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/39608.

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Canada has seen a veritable explosion in the production and popularity of historical fiction in recent decades. Works by women that present a feminist revision of national narratives have played a key part in this phenomenon. This thesis discusses three contemporary Canadian historical novels: Gil Adamson’s The Outlander (2007), Ami McKay’s The Birth House (2006), and Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace (1996). By examining these novels through a settler colonial lens and with a specific interest in the critique of settler feminism, this thesis offers readings that can reveal how feminism operates within the confines of the settler fantasy. These readings suggest that women’s historical fiction offers an opportunity to consider different aspects of feminism in the settler setting and to consider different aspects of critiques of patriarchy in settler contexts. This thesis suggests that these novels present a settler women’s history that cannot be properly understood through the simplistic logic of male/female or colonizer/colonized oppositions, and that the ways the novels depict women’s interactions with patriarchal settler structures and institutions can contribute to critical understandings of a colonial history with which Canada continues to reckon.

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Hadley, Louisa A. "Rewriting historical narratives in neo-Victorian fiction." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/24661.

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This thesis explores the contemporary form of neo-Victorian fiction in relation to both contemporary and Victorian literature. I argue that neo-Victorian fiction needs to be considered in relation to but as distinct from postmodern literary practices. Although neo-Victorian texts are often considered postmodern, I argue that they should be differentiated from the categories of postmodernism. Whilst interrogating history, often considered a postmodern characteristic, neo-Victorian fiction retains a commitment to the historical specificity of the Victorian era. The interrogation of history undertaken in these texts is intimately connected to Victorian forms of historical narratives. Chapter 1 examines theoretical frameworks of postmodernism, revealing the limitations of such models for neo-Victorian fiction .The subsequent chapters explore the treatment of different historical narratives in these texts. Chapter 2 discusses The French Lieutenant’s Woman and ‘Morpho Eugenia’ and examines the role of meta-narratives in both Victorian and contemporary society, particularly Darwinism and Marxism. This chapter also addresses the grand narrative of literary history in its consideration of the double relationship between Victorian and neo-Victorian literature, illustrated through a detailed examination of endings in both Victorian and neo-Victorian fiction. Chapter 3 explores the issues surrounding genealogical narratives in The Quincunx as well as its engagement with the late Victorian genre of detective fiction. Chapter 4 considers The Biographer’s Tale and The Dark Clue in relation to Victorian forms of biography and developments in photography. This discussion leads on to an examination of the problematic relationship between historical and fictional figures within these texts and the implications it has for their status as historical novels. The final two chapters explore approaches to resurrecting the past within neo-Victorian fiction. Chapter 5 addresses the continued presence of the past, through both spiritualism and literature, in Possession and ‘The Conjugial Angel’. The final chapter discusses the process of ventriloquism, focusing on the incorporation of Victorian and pseudo-Victorian texts in Possession and ‘The Conjugial Angel’. This is extended to address the intertextual relationship of Victorian and neo-Victorian fiction.

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Harris, Katharine. "The neo-historical aesthetic : mediations of historical narrative in post-postmodern fiction." Thesis, University of Sussex, 2018. http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/76623/.

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Lake, Christina Jane. "Improving on nature : eugenics in utopian fiction." Thesis, University of Exeter, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/10871/27236.

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There has long been a connection between the concept of utopia as a perfect society and the desire for perfect humans to live in this society. A form of selective breeding takes place in many fictional utopias from Plato’s Republic onwards, but it is only with the naming and promotion of eugenics by Francis Galton in the late nineteenth century that eugenics becomes a consistent and important component of utopian fiction. In my introduction I argue that behind the desire for eugenic fitness within utopias resides a sense that human nature needs improving. Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859) prompted fears of degeneration, and eugenics was seen as a means of restoring purpose and control. Chapter Two examines the impact of Darwin’s ideas on the late nineteenth-century utopia through contrasting the evolutionary fears of Samuel Butler’s Erewhon (1872) with Edward Bellamy’s more positive view of the potential of evolution in Looking Backward (1888). Chapter Three uses examples from three late-nineteenth-century feminist utopias to highlight the aspirations within these societies to use science to transform women’s social position and transcend the biological determinism of their reproductive role. Chapter Four focuses on the social theory and utopian fiction of Charlotte Perkins Gilman to illustrate how eugenics becomes part of her vision of progress for women and the human race as a whole. Chapter Five turns to dystopian fiction from H.G. Wells, Aldous Huxley, Yevgeny Zamyatin, Charlotte Haldane and Katherine Burdekin to examine how eugenic ideas retained an element of idealism even in the context of the dystopias of the first half of the twentieth century. Chapter Six looks at the fate of eugenics in utopian fiction after the Second World War and argues that the resurgence of utopianism in the form of the ecological utopia continue to rely on eugenics, population control and manipulation of human behaviour to succeed. My conclusion argues that eugenics is a utopian idea with enduring appeal despite the disastrous effects of its practical implementation, and that utopian and dystopian fiction offer an important lens through which to understand the hopes and fears represented by the different versions of eugenics and the current debates over genetic enhancements and transhumanism.

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Leavitt, John Hudson. "Killers: Fiction Pieces." PDXScholar, 2016. http://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/3021.

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This fiction collection attempts to convey the essence of Oregon's landscape, nature, and people. Many of these pieces reflect violent behavior, which is sometimes directed from one character to another, and sometimes directed toward nature. Sometimes this violence is mild, sometimes it is horrific. But the reasons for the violence and any connection it has to the landscape, nature, and people of Oregon is left to the reader to decide. The focus of this collection is not to teach lessons--it is to entertain.

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Bavasah, Tessa. "Parodic imagination and resistant form in historical fiction: A study of Ann Harries' manly pursuits." Thesis, University of the Western Cape, 2007. http://etd.uwc.ac.za/index.php?module=etd&action=viewtitle&id=gen8Srv25Nme4_5657_1242111847.

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In this dissertation, the author examines the historical novel Manly pursuits (1999), by Ann Harries. The novel deals with the late nineteenth century in Oxford, England, and inparticular the year 1899 in Cape Town. The focus of the novel is on Cecil John Rhodes and his entourage, and their obsession with empire, which culminates in the South African war in 1900. Featured characters include Chamberlain, Jameson, Kipling, Oscar Wilde, Charles Dodgson, John Ruskin and Olive Schreiner. Harries novel is interpreted as showing resistance to the Victorian society which is the framework which is seen to developed the class and gender-based valued and imperialist thinking of Rhodes and his following. as such the novel is showing resstance to imperialist thinking, the Anglo-Boer war, apartheid and all the resulting legacies for South Africa.

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

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

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Davies, Richard Blaine Davies Richard Blaine. "Historical fiction makes American history come to life!" [Boise, Idaho : Boise State University, 2002. http://education.boisestate.edu/bdavies.

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Thesis (M.A.)--Boise State University, 2002.
Web site. Master's project includes an explanatory text and CD-ROM entitled: Historical fiction : a web site supporting secondary U.S. history courses of study-Idaho Department of Education. Includes bibliographical references.

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Redfern, Rachel Yvette. "Layering the March: E. L. Doctorow's Historical Fiction." BYU ScholarsArchive, 2010. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/2229.

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E.L. Doctorow implements ideas of intertextuality and metafiction in his 2007 novel, The March, which is most notably apparent through its resemblance to the 1939 film, Gone with the Wind. Using Michel de Certeau's theory of spatial stories and Linda Hutcheon's of historiographic metafiction, this thesis discusses the layering of Doctorow's The March from the film seen in the character of Pearl from the novel and Scarlett from the film and Selznick's version of the burning of Atlanta and Doctorow's burning of Columbia.

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Youngs, Suzette. "Literary, visual, and historical understandings intermediate readers respond to historical fiction picture books /." abstract and full text PDF (UNR users only), 2009. http://0-gateway.proquest.com.innopac.library.unr.edu/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&res_dat=xri:pqdiss&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:3355609.

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McMullin, Geoffrey Peter. "Nature and natural phenomena in Thomas Mann's fiction." Thesis, University College London (University of London), 1997. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.266500.

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Drake, George A. "Historical space in the eighteenth-century novel /." Thesis, Connect to this title online; UW restricted, 1997. http://hdl.handle.net/1773/9425.

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Blasdel, Janelle June. "The Nature of Things." OpenSIUC, 2011. https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/theses/575.

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AN ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS OF JANELLE JUNE BLASDEL, for the Master of Fine Arts degree in ENGLISH, presented on April 5, 2011, at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. TITLE: THE NATURE OF THINGS MAJOR PROFESSOR: Professor Beth Lordan The Nature of Things is a collection of short stories divided into two parts. While both parts are thematically linked and include similar recurring themes, such as childhood, motherhood, maturation, and the menace that follows characters from one phase of life and into the next, each part experiments with different formal and tonal writing elements. Part I exercises a closer narrative voice that is more character-driven and maintains a strong sense of realism. Part II, in contrast, employs a much more distant third person narrative voice and elements of the surreal.

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Martin, Patricia L. "Minority protagonists in the young adult historical fiction novel." [Denver, Colo.] : Regis University, 2007. http://165.236.235.140/lib/PMartin2007.pdf.

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Tiedemann, Heidi. "After the fact, contemporary feminist fiction and historical trauma." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 2001. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk3/ftp04/NQ63656.pdf.

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Raghunath, Riyukta. "Alternative realities : counterfactual historical fiction and possible worlds theory." Thesis, Sheffield Hallam University, 2017. http://shura.shu.ac.uk/19154/.

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The primary aim of my thesis is to offer a cognitive-narratological methodology with which to analyse counterfactual historical fiction. Counterfactual historical fiction is a genre that creates fictional worlds whose histories run contrary to the history of the actual world. I argue that Possible Worlds Theory is a suitable methodology with which to analyse this type of fiction because it is an ontologically centred theory that can be used to divide the worlds of a text into its various ontological domains and also explain their relation to the actual world. Ryan (1991) offers the most appropriate Possible Worlds framework with which to analyse any fiction. However, in its current form the theory does not sufficiently address the role of readers in its analysis of fiction. Given the close relationship between the actual world and the counterfactual world created by counterfactual historical fiction, I argue that a model to analyse such texts must go beyond categorising the worlds of texts by also theorising what readers do when they read this type of fiction. For this purpose, in my thesis I refine Ryan's Possible Worlds framework so that it can be used to more effectively analyse counterfactual historical fiction. In particular, I introduce an ontological domain which I am calling RK-worlds or reader knowledge worlds to label the domain that readers use to apprehend the counterfactual world presented by the text. I also offer two cognitive concepts – ontolological superimposition and reciprocal feedback – that support a Possible Worlds analysis of counterfactual historical fiction and model how readers process such fiction. In addition, I redefine counterpart theory, transworld identity, and essential properties to appropriately theorise the way readers make the epistemological link between a character and their corresponding actual world individual. The result is a fully fleshed out Possible Worlds model that addresses the reader's role by focusing on how they cognitively interact with the worlds built by counterfactual historical fiction. Finally, to demonstrate my model's dexterity, I apply it to three texts – Robert Harris' Fatherland (1992), Sarban's The Sound of his Horn (1952), and Stephen Fry's Making History (1996). I conclude that the Possible Worlds model that I have developed is rigorous and can be replicated to analyse all fiction in general and counterfactual historical fiction in particular.

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Dodwell-Groves, Laura. "The seventh bulb : a middle grade historical fiction novel." Thesis, University of British Columbia, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/2429/31562.

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In this work of historical fiction, a twelve-year-old girl called Emmetje journeys from the streets of Constantinople to the decks of a smuggling boat and on to the back streets and canals of 17t h century Amsterdam. In her pocket she carries the bulb of a unique blue tulip, and in her hand is a strange treasure map that uncovers the heart of a nation's strange obsession. Emmetje's mother had drawn tulips. Hovering beside the elegant petals she drew butterflies, and on their wings she drew her map. Compelled by curiosity and an adventurous spirit, Emme sets out to discover where her mother's map might lead. Her journey is shared by her three-legged tabby cat and a cabin boy called Sander. Emmetje's journey inevitably becomes one of self-discovery where fathers, mothers and horticulture all play their part. The blue tulip bulb is the silent hero, but the not so silent metaphor for Emmetje's identity. Precious, protected, rich with potential and waiting to bloom.
Arts, Faculty of
Library, Archival and Information Studies (SLAIS), School of
Graduate

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Cabrera, Marta Jimena. "Writing civilisation the historical novel in the Colombian national project /." Access electronically, 2004. http://www.library.uow.edu.au/adt-NWU/public/adt-NWU20050307.143257/index.html.

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Byno, Ashley. "The Nature of Things." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2000. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc2655/.

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The Nature of Things is a collection of stories and a preface that examine character motivation. The author is concerned with unexpected reactions and surprising outcomes. The stories are independent of each other and involve a wide range of characters.

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Vicas, Astrid. "The nature of fictional discourse." Thesis, McGill University, 1992. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=39800.

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This dissertation presents an account of fictional discourse which is teleological. According to it, questions about what is said in fiction and how it ought to be said are answerable in terms of the goals and methods belonging specifically to fiction-making as a practice. Viewed in such a way, it is argued that the incompleteness of fictional discourse and its apparent tolerance of inconsistency are distinctive of it. Moreover, it is argued that there is a sense in which one can produce true statements in fiction without thereby committing one self to the thesis that words made use of in fiction are endowed with reference. Throughout the dissertation, the view espoused in it is contrasted with rival positions on the issues of what fiction is about, and whether it can be true. It is argued that a teleological account of fictional discourse can present a coherent alternative to these.

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Green, Dawn. "Imagining the past [electronic resource] : contemporary Italian women's historical fiction /." Full text available, 2001. http://images.lib.monash.edu.au/ts/theses/greend.pdf.

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Wang, Mei-Chuen. "Narrative, genre and national myth in postmodern Canadian historical fiction." Thesis, Cardiff University, 2010. http://orca.cf.ac.uk/54365/.

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This thesis investigates the expansion and continuing proliferation of Canadian historical fiction during the past three decades, and makes a case for reading a number of these novels as postmodern historical fiction. Characterized by the postmodern tendency to problematize history and cross genre boundaries, the novels discussed here are nevertheless rooted in their Canadian context. To establish a theoretical framework, the thesis reviews the reconfiguration of history in contemporary critical theories and its impact on the writing of history and historical fiction, and investigates the debate over Canada's postcoloniality. In the textual analysis, I address the questions raised by the interaction between postmodern problematization of history and local concerns in the selected novels. What narrative strategies are employed to launch an epistemological and ontological questioning of history? Are alternative reconceptualizations of history offered after the problematization? How do these texts achieve genre transgression through narrative devices and what is the purpose of this? What meta-narratives of national history are challenged? What national myths are subverted and dismantled? Are some other myths accidentally reasserted in this deconstructive process? What effects does this historical revisionism or scepticism have on the understanding of Canadian national identity? The focus of the discussion is on the relationships between formal experimentation and thematic concerns and the ways these texts interweave general critiques of history and its representation with specific investigations into the Canadian context. Finally, I propose explanations for the flourishing of contemporary Canadian historical fiction by taking into account both the combined theoretical framework and the complexities and subtleties of the texts under scrutiny. The thesis concludes that the authors of these novels have complicated the postmodern questioning of history at a variety of levels and made that questioning accommodate the novelists' concern with Canadian specificities.

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Kavanagh, Matthew. "Second nature: American fiction in the age of capitalist realism." Thesis, McGill University, 2007. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=18440.

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Second Nature: American fiction in the age of capitalist realism During the 1990s the global triumph of capitalism has made it, paradoxically, all the more difficult to see. Not only is capitalism increasingly derealized (e.g. cyber-capital), its very ubiquity renders it unremarkable, to the point that it appears a neutral part of objective reality. This dissertation examines how American writers have responded to the 'spectrality' that results from the mediation of everyday experience through the market. I discuss formal strategies in the work of Bret Ellis, Chuck Palahniuk, Don DeLillo, William Gibson and others to represent the unrepresentable: what Slavoj ?i?ek calls the impersonal and anonymous function of the global market mechanism. Chapter one provides a formalist reading of Ellis's American Psycho, a novel whose claustrophobic narrative represents the world of late capitalism at the level of its concept ("This is not an exit"). Lacking any sense of a horizon, Patrick Bateman experiences the world as radically closed. Because he is incapable of recognizing an elsewhere, he cannot imagine an otherwise; demonstrating no awareness of antagonism, Patrick acts it out in increasingly brutal and frenetic outbursts of violence. Where American Psycho presents Patrick's sadistic violence as a symptom, my second chapter suggests that Fight Club's consensual beatings treat violence as a fetish. Palahniuk's novel aims to domesticate antagonism by staging it as a piece of masochist theatre. Its limits, however, are painfully apparent. Fight Club's strategy of fetishistic disavowal has pathological effects, namely, the narrator's split personality. Chapter three discusses DeLillo's critique of cyber-capital: a vision of the market as a perpetual motion machine, one capable of circulating solely on its own momentum without reference to anything beyond itself. Inevitably, though, antagonism reasserts itself in the form of a collateral crisis—the subject of Cosmopo
Deuxième nature : la fiction américaine à l'époque du réalisme capitaliste Au cours des années 1990, le triomphe mondial du capitalisme a paradoxalement rendu les choses plus difficiles à voir. Le capitalisme est non seulement de plus en plus déréalisé (p. ex. : cybercapital), son ubiquité même le rend imperceptible, à un point tel qu'il semble être un élément neutre de la réalité objective. La présente dissertation aborde comment les auteurs américains ont réagi à la « spectralité » qui fait en sorte que l'expérience quotidienne est de plus en médiatisée au sein du marché. J'examine les stratégies formelles des œuvres de Bret Ellis, Chuck, Palahniuk, Don DeLillo, William Gibson et autres auteurs afin de représenter ce qui ne peut être représenté : ce que Slavoj ?i?ek appelle la fonction impersonnelle et anonyme des rouages du marché mondial. Le premier chapitre se veut une interprétation formelle de l'œuvre American Psycho d'Ellis, un roman dont la narration claustrophobe représente le monde du capitalisme tardif au niveau de son concept (« This is not an exit »). Souffrant d'un manque de perspective, Patrick Bateman vit une expérience du monde très fermée. Puisqu'il est incapable de reconnaître ailleurs, il ne peut s'imaginer autrement; faisant preuve d'un manque de connaissance de l'antagonisme, Patrick présente des excès de brutalité frénétique de plus en plus violents. Bien qu'American Psycho présente la violence sadique de Patrick comme étant un symptôme, mon deuxième chapitre laisse entendre que les raclées consensuelles de Fight Club traitent la violence en tant que fétiche. Le roman de Palahniuk vise à domestiquer l'antagonisme en en faisant une pièce de théâtre masochiste. Toutefois, ses limites sont affreusement évidentes. La stratégie de Fight Club de manque de foi pathologique a une incidence, entre autres sur le dédoublement de personnalité du narrateur. Le troisième chapitre aborde

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Naidu, Sam. "Crimes against nature : ecocritical discourse in South African crime fiction." UNISA Press Journals - NISC, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/53754.

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Heeding Patrick Murphy's call to critics, in his book, Ecocritical explorations in literary and cultural studies: fences, boundaries and field, to study “nature-oriented mystery novels … in order to understand the degree to which environmental consciousness and nature awareness has permeated popular and commercial fiction” (2009: 143), this article examines how highly successful author, Deon Meyer, has employed crime fiction to popularize ecological issues and debates in South Africa. In this article, Meyer's first “nature-oriented” novel, the crime thriller, Blood safari (2009), is analysed. The main question asked is whether South African crime fiction deploys ecocritical discourse for mercenary reasons or whether its engagement with environmental issues constitutes a bona fide sub-category of ecocritical literature. The same rationale – understanding how “environmental consciousness and nature awareness” manifest in one of the most popular and commercially viable genres of fiction in South Africa today – informs the broader study from which this article is drawn. Some of the findings of this study, which includes a reading of Meyer's second “nature-oriented” novel, Trackers (2011), Jane Taylor's Of wild dogs, Margaret von Klemperer's Just a dead man, and Ingrid Winterbach's literary detective novel, The book of happenstance, are referred to briefly. To conclude, the contribution of “nature-oriented” crime fiction to a “localised ecocriticism” is assessed

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Hermanson, Scott Douglas. "The Simulation of Nature: Contemporary Fiction in an Environmental Context." University of Cincinnati / OhioLINK, 2001. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin991838727.

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Mitchell, Anne. "Approaches to history in text and image in England, c. 1830-70." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1993. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.239429.

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Stephenson, William John. "Form, parody and history in 'The French lieutenant's woman' and 'A maggot' by John Fowles, and 'To the ends of the Earth: a sea trilogy' by William Golding." Thesis, University of Leeds, 1996. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.249288.

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Keith-Slack, Peter B. "Baptized in Blood." ScholarWorks@UNO, 2011. http://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/1390.

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Merlin, Bailey. "Sentinel." Digital Commons @ Butler University, 2017. https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/grtheses/496.

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Devastated by the mysterious death of her guardians, Elizabeth Davenport finds herself thrust into a new world that proves to be scintillating and dangerous. Can she trust those who claim to be her friends? Or will her trust lead her into trouble? When a mysterious letter presents itself and proves that her guardians might have been more than they ever let on, Elizabeth must gather her courage and pursue the truth, whatever the cost.

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Westerman, Molly Cooper Pamela. "Narrating historians crises of historical authority in twentieth-century British fiction /." Chapel Hill, N.C. : University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2008. http://dc.lib.unc.edu/u?/etd,1792.

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2008.
Title from electronic title page (viewed Sep. 16, 2008). "... in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of English and Comparative Literature." Discipline: English; Department/School: English.

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Randall, James P. "Posthumous temporality and encrypted historical time in fiction and life writing." Thesis, Goldsmiths College (University of London), 2018. http://research.gold.ac.uk/23276/.

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This thesis considers ways of reading posthumousness in narrative in various theoretical and literary constellations by focusing on temporality and historical time. Defining posthumousness in terms of a narrative perspective adopted after the death of a character or the narrator, I consider how writers reanimate historical characters, adopt imagined posthumous perspectives and reconstruct historical memory. I combine approaches to temporality by Paul Ricoeur and Mark Currie, incorporating elements of psychoanalytic and poststructuralist theory including Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok’s writing on crypts, Ned Lukacher’s analysis of primal scenes and prosopopoeia, and Jacques Derrida’s writing on the archive. Each chapter considers how historical time is imagined within narratives concerned with posthumousness. Chapter 1 considers how historical time is given a place within the posthumous narrative of Iain Sinclair and Rachel Lichtenstein’s Rodinsky’s Room. Chapters 2 and 3 develop ideas of historical time and the posthumous in relation to Wilhelm Jensen’s Gradiva and Orhan Pamuk’s The Black Book. Chapter 4 compares Fernando Pessoa’s The Book of Disquiet and José Saramago’s The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis. Chapter 5 analyzes posthumousness in Bruno Schulz’s stories, and how these are reimagined by Jonathan Safran Foer (Tree of Codes), David Grossman (See Under: Love) and Cynthia Ozick (The Messiah of Stockholm). I focus on these novels’ engagement with posthumousness, including how primal elements of memory and historical time are given new presences. I consider how this approach to fiction and historical time gives the past a new life in narrative, giving time for what Schulz describes in his story ‘The Age of Genius’: ‘events that have no place of their own in time; events that have occurred too late, after the whole of time has been distributed, divided and allotted; events that have been left ... hanging in the air, homeless and errant.’

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Niemeyer, Lisa. "Writing German historical fiction in an age of change, 1848-1871." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2011. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.609458.

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Meyers, Erika Ann. "Characters of class : poverty and historical alienation in Dermot Bolger's fiction." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/26042.

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This thesis provides a Marxist analysis of the effect of class on historical alienation in Dermot Bolger’s fiction. Therefore, this study examines the influence of Irish history on Bolger’s choice of content, form and technique in order to argue that historical interpretation and literary technique are mediated through class stratifications. Chapter One investigates how The Journey Home challenges received ideas of what constitutes ‘reality’ which has, consequently, led to elements of critical dismissal used to maintain antiquated gaps, silences and notions of ‘reality’. In Chapter Two I look at A Second Life in order to examine how historical ruptures cannot just be seen in the nonlinear structure of Bolger’s novels, but can also be used to expose the silences and gaps that comprise the previously censored personal histories of Bolger’s characters. In Chapter Three I identify structural confines such as definitions, family roles and nationalism as instigating factors that lead to the alienation of those who do not conform to prescribed frameworks and are therefore oppressed by them. I further investigate how oppression also provides the pressure to rupture the linear trajectory of such approved frameworks and produce the nonlinear structure that can be recognised in The Family on Paradise Pier.

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Margaret, Scanlon. "Popular histories : a study of historical non-fiction books for children." Thesis, University College London (University of London), 2008. http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/10020570/.

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Hildreth-Blue, Cynthia. "Enlivening California's sixth grade history/social sciences curriculum with historical fiction." CSUSB ScholarWorks, 1990. https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/etd-project/562.

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Smith, David E. "The historical nature of Luke's virgin birth account an apologetic /." Lynchburg, Va. : Liberty University, 2009. http://digitalcommons.liberty.edu.

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Manning, S. L. "The nature of provicialism : Some nineteenth-century Scottish and American fiction." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 1985. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.372632.

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Hermanson, Scott. "The simulation of nature contemporary American fiction in an environmental context /." Cincinnati, Ohio : University of Cincinnati, 2001. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc%5Fnum=ucin991838727.

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Douvier, Gromer Bernadette. "Nature et élaboration de la fiction dans l'oeuvre de Raymond Roussel." Villeneuve-d'Ascq : Presses universitaires du septentrion, 2002. http://books.google.com/books?id=0_VcAAAAMAAJ.

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Douvier-Gromer, Bernadette. "Nature et élaboration de la fiction dans l'oeuvre de Raymond Roussel." Paris 10, 1998. http://www.theses.fr/1998PA100123.

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CE TRAVAIL S'INTERESSE AU PROBLEME DE LA CREATION LITTERAIRE CHEZ UN ECRIVAIN QUE L'ON PEUT SITUER A LA CHARNIERE DU XIXE ET DU XXE S. C'EST EN EFFET DANS LE XIXE S. QUE RAYMOND ROUSSEL PUISE LA MATIERE DE SA FICTION, LAQUELLE SEMBLE PRIVILEGIER AVANT TOUT "L'ART DE CONTER", TANT PAR L'EMPLOI ET LE DETOURNEMENT DES GENRES LES PLUS TRADITIONNELS (CONTE, LEGENDE, ANECDOTE), QUE PAR UNE EXPLOITATIONORIGINALE DES DONNEES DE LA VULGARISATION DES SCIENCES AU SIECLE QUI PRECEDE CELUI OU IL ECRIT. CEPENDANT, BIEN QUE N'AYANT SUBI AUCUNE INFLUENCE DE SES CONTEMPORAINS LES PLUS AVANCES, ROUSSEL PARTAGE AVEC CERTAINS D'ENTRE EUX (DES PEINTRES) LES GRANDES INTUITIONS ARTISTIQUES DU XXE S. PAR DES "METHODES" (EMPRUNT, COMBINATOIRE, COLLAGE) EMPLOYEES EGALEMENT PAR MAX ERNST ET MAGRITTE. CELLES-CI LUISERVENT AUSSI A D'AUTRES FINS : TEMOIGNER DE L'EXPERIEcNCE LITTERAIRE, PAR UNE PRATIQUE DE LA REFLEXIVITE ET DE LA REFERENCE A DES NOMS ET A DES OEUVRES TANT REELS QUE FICTIFS.

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Arnold, Abigail. "Memento Mori and Other Stories." ScholarWorks@UNO, 2017. http://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/2293.

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Lake, Wendy M. "Aspects of Ireland in children's fiction : an historical outline and analysis of children's fiction set in Ireland (1850-1986)." Thesis, University of Ulster, 1989. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.253857.

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May, Chad T. "Trauma and the historical imagination in British and American fiction, 1814-1986 /." view abstract or download file of text, 2005. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/uoregon/fullcit?p3181110.

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2005.
Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 186-199). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

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Wakeling, Louise Kathering School of English UNSW. "Theorising creative processes in the writing of the neo-historical fiction watermarks." Awarded by:University of New South Wales. School of English, 1998. http://handle.unsw.edu.au/1959.4/17228.

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In this dissertation, aspects of the creative process involved in `writing the past' are theorised from the site of practice, from the viewpoint of the empirical author. Certain poststructuralist and postmodernist discourses, however, have problematised and de-stabilised the concepts of `history' and the `past', and called into question the unitary and authoritative nature of `truth', `knowledge' and `reality'. These contestings of the ontological status of `history' have alerted us to the importance of previously marginalised perspectives on historical `reality', especially those relating to gender, race and religion. This situation presents considerable challenges to the writer of historical fiction and the historian alike, rendering it difficult, if not impossible, to reconstruct the `past' without irony. In the light of a general `crisis of representation', fiction purporting to deal with an increasingly elusive `past' can no longer proceed in the relatively uncomplicated manner of the traditional historical novel, with its emphasis on sustaining the referential illusion of the empirical `past', as though the `truth' of `past events' could be revealed `as it really was'. Some of the options for re-writing history figurally are considered, and my novel Watermarks situated within them as a blend of traditional historical fiction, neo-historical or revisionary fiction, and the more extreme or satirical forms of historiographic metafiction which radically revise, challenge or subvert established ways of `writing the past'. The focus of the latter two forms is not so much on history as objective facts and artifacts, as on the pluralistic, and sometimes relativistic, concept of history as perspective(s). The dissertation explores the genesis of Watermarks, the theoretical and practical implications of writing a neo-historical fiction, the difficulties of `writing the past', and the fictional strategies employed to address them. The metafictional strategies of framed narratives or inset tales, multiple (and sometimes unreliable) narrators, and transformative repetitions of prior texts (intertextuality) are examined in the light of Bakhtin's concept of the "dialogic of the imagination", and are shown to be an important means by which past worlds may be established and at the same time subverted in the discourse of the novel. Each of these strategies re-affirms a view of `history' and the `past' as a matter of mediated and provisional `truths'. The role of intertextuality in particular is examined at length, firstly in terms of its theoretical implications for the traditional view of the author as originator of the text, and secondly in practical terms as an important means of producing a multivocal, interrogative text, a vital source of the diverse `languages' which characterise the discourse of the novel.

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Tyson, A. F. "Dehistoricised Histories: The Cultural Significance of Recent Popular New Zealand Historical Fiction." Thesis, University of Canterbury. Department of English, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/10092/1568.

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The recent popularity of mass-market New Zealand historical fiction coincides with the increasing vocality of particular cultural discourses that resist the influence of revisionist histories on dominant understandings of national identity. This thesis examines how the depiction of colonial history in four such novels legitimates and sustains hegemonic understandings of New Zealand as culturally European. The novels analysed are The Denniston Rose (2003) by Jenny Pattrick, Tamar (2002) by Deborah Challinor, The Cost of Courage (2003) by Carol Thomas, and The Love Apple (2005) by Coral Atkinson. The cultural context in which these books have been produced is situated within a history of nationalist discourses and Raymond Williams’s theorisation of hegemonic cultural processes is employed to explain how contemporary national culture continues to rely on colonial principles that sustain settler cultural dominance. Close analysis of the temporal and geographical settings of the novels reveals how the portrayal of history in these novels evades colonial conquest and the Māori cultural presence. A comparison of the historical and contemporary cultural significance of the spatial settings employed in these novels – the wilderness, pastoral, and colonial urban spaces – highlights how these settings tacitly communicate that New Zealand is culturally European. Nevertheless, the problematic cultural legacies of colonialism still haunt these novels. The way in which the narratives resolve these issues reveals that hegemonic New Zealand identity is reliant on a dehistoricised view of settlement and therefore perpetually vulnerable to the intrusion of Māori memory.

Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Nature of historical fiction'

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