Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Novel, Fiction, Creative Prose'
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Shieh, Wen-Shan. "Literature in masks : Katherine Mansfield, Eileen Chang and the possibilities of creative writing." Thesis, University of Sussex, 2013. http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/45906/.
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The thesis proposes that the figurative and extensive use of the ‘mask'—persona, masquerade, disguise, impersonation—provides a crucial literary device for the development and liberation of the expressive potential of Katherine Mansfield and Eileen Chang (1920-1995). Chapter 1, ‘Introduction', elucidates the relationship between mask and language with respect to the writings of Mansfield and Chang by revising John Keats's idea of ‘the chameleon poet', Robert Browning's conception of dramatic monologue, Oscar Wilde's insights into truth and masks, and Ezra Pound's adoptions of ‘personae' in his poetry. The affinities between Mansfield and Chang will be explored by looking at their critical writing as well as criticism on them, revealing their shared awareness of the masks of a person in daily life as well as in fiction and drama. Chapter 2, ‘Katherine Mansfield's Art of Changing Masks', explores how Mansfield's characters switch between three types of masks—speech and the non-verbal, gender, animality—to respond to changes in their situations. Particularly important for this exploration are Joan Rivi re's ‘Womanliness as Masquerade', Michael Goldman's theory of masks in acting, and Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's concept of ‘becoming-animal'. Chapter 3, ‘Prosopopoeia: Katherine Mansfield's “special prose” ', considers Mansfield's attempt ‘to bring the dead to life again' in what she calls ‘special prose' as a ‘prosopopoeia', or in Cynthia Chase' phrase, ‘giving a face to a name'. In this chapter I will also trace how Mansfield's work was first translated into Chinese in 1923 by the Chinese poet, Zhimo Xu (1897-1931), which made her one of the most widely-read foreign writers in the Chinese-speaking world. More importantly, I suggest that Xu's use of quotations from Keats and other nineteenth-century poets in portraying Mansfield in his memoir calls our attention to her decisive and still insufficiently examined relationship to poetry. Chapter 4, ‘ “Hiding behind a foreign language”: Eileen Chang's Self-Translation and Masquerade', examines Chang's penchant for translating her fiction and essays from Chinese into English or vice versa. Taking a cue from Pound's view of translations as ‘elaborate masks' and Deleuze's idea of the writer being a ‘foreigner' in their own language, I examine some of the ways in which that the mask of a foreigner / foreign language enables Chang, a bilingual fiction writer and essayist, to gain the emotional and spatial distance from which to reflect on Chinese culture and her personal life. Being inspired by Mansfield and Chang's courage to get away from the notion of writing as self-expression and Dionysus' gift of crossing boundaries through the assistance of the mask, the creative component of the thesis, Chapter 5, consists of 4 short stories. I conclude the thesis with a poem entitled ‘Gifts (for Katherine Mansfield)' and a quick fiction called ‘The Functions of Theory', considering theory and literary terms as a variety of make-up that I apply to the face of my thesis. While critical chapters contain embedded fiction, the creative component demonstrates and tests how the interior space behind the mask allows me to liberate my creative energy. In these stories, I attempt to cross the boundaries between male and female, Chinese and non-Chinese, human and animal, creative and critical writing.
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Fennick, Ruth McLennan Fortune Ron. "The creative processes of prose-fiction writers what they suggest for teaching composition /." Normal, Ill. Illinois State University, 1991. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/ilstu/fullcit?p9203044.
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Thesis (D.A.)--Illinois State University,Title from title page screen, viewed December 19, 2005. Dissertation Committee: Ronald Fortune (chair), Janice Neuleib, Ray Lewis White, Elizabeth McMahan, Russell Rutter. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 441-479) and abstract. Also available in print.
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Anderson, Joseph. "Visitations: A Novel." FIU Digital Commons, 2014. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/1267.
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VISITATIONS, a novel, explores themes of haunting and desire in New York City, in two time periods. The modern-day action focuses on Alan Philips whose wife, Beth, has recently died. His efforts to resume a normal life are sabotaged by what he comes to believe is her ghost. In the parallel story, in 1924, Oliver Nathan Blackburn, a pulp writer, in the midst of a breakdown writes a story that may play a role in Beth’s death.
VISITATIONS presents Alan and Oliver’s perspectives in third person narration, so that the reader is both close to and may question the subjectivity of their perceptions. The book employs a black-comic tone for the contemporary period and a more formal one for Oliver’s sections.
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Colagrande, John Jr. "Headz, a novel." FIU Digital Commons, 2007. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/2401.
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This novel reveals the counterculture as seen through the eyes of a group of coming-of-age, vulnerable, reckless, and often pretentious youths. In New York, Thelonious Horowitz is an up-and-coming musician who is uninspired and decides to trek to Chicago for the biggest musical festival of the summer. A diverse cast of characters, living in New York, Miami, and San Francisco, round out the novel, of which Thelonious is the connective tissue, ultimately bringing everyone together at the festival where paths converge for an event none will soon forget, and a concert a few will get to see.
The novel explores the spirit of youth through classical themes like love, wanderlust, freedom, betrayal, and family, all placed within a contemporary context, and in opposition to technology, fame, consumerism, the New Age, and to many, responsibility. This post-modern tragicomedy captures a moment in time in the spirit of Kerouac’s On the Road and Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.
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Chia, Leigh Stephen. "The novel as panopticon : exploring surveillance." Thesis, University of Northampton, 2012. http://nectar.northampton.ac.uk/8852/.
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Elens, James N. II. "Facility 47 - A Novel." FIU Digital Commons, 2012. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/598.
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FACILITY 47 is a psychological horror novel set in Germany just after the end of World War II. The novel is written in a naturalistic style that seeks to ground paranormal genre elements in a believable world. The story follows a group of Americans, led by Michael Powell, as they seek out and become trapped within an abandoned Nazi research facility in the Harz Mountains that contains a very dangerous secret; an unknown force capable of controlling people’s actions and forcing them to destroy themselves. FACILITY 47 focuses on a character driven by greed, moral outrage at dubious American postwar policy, and a desire to create a world for himself where he is in control. In the end of the novel, Michael learns that the obsessive quest for control can have catastrophic consequences, but this discovery is made too late to save himself or his friends from the mysterious power inside the facility.
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Pledge-Amaral, Carolyn D. "Desert Palms." FIU Digital Commons, 2016. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/2977.
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DESERT PALMS is a contemporary women’s novel set in an Arizona RV park. When Miamians Margie Campos and her husband, Carlos, unexpectantly inherit Desert Palms, a rundown retirement community, Margie reluctantly agrees to stay in Arizona to overhaul the park. With the discovery of a secret letter that threatens to unravel the family, an unscrupulous broker determined to buy the park on the cheap, and a husband bent on hitting it big, Margie digs in and starts to find purpose amidst a desert microcosm.
Told from Margie’s perspective in a closely attached third person, DESERT PALMS is a realistic and humorous narrative that falls somewhere between the style of Liane Moriarty in, “The Husband’s Secret” and Anne Tyler in her novel, “Back When We Were Grownups.” DESERT PALMS offers an offbeat cast of central characters who help Margie gain a deeper understanding of herself and what makes life worth living.
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Suarez, Gabriela P. "The Last Cold Winter." FIU Digital Commons, 2017. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/3273.
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The Last Cold Winter is a historical novel that takes place in Romania at the end of the 1989 Communist Revolution. George Bird, a naturalized American citizen, returns with his thirty-year-old son, Adrian, to the country they had defected from twenty-eight-years earlier. George Bird is dying of lung cancer, and he wishes to see his parents and his country one last time. The trip quickly turns into a nightmare when he is kidnapped the first day back. Adrian, who doesn’t speak Romanian, must now meet the kidnapper’s demand for a list he knows nothing about in order to save his father. With the help of a hotel clerk, Simona, they travel to Transylvania to uncover his father’s troubled past. In the end, the journey helps Adrian understand the circumstances that had influenced his father’s decision to defect, and his need to atone for them now.
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Josaphat, Fabienne Sylvia. "Haiti, 1965 - A Novel." FIU Digital Commons, 2014. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/1171.
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HAITI, 1965 is a historical novel set in Haiti where a struggling taxi driver, Raymond L’Eveillé, struggles to provide for his family under the rule of the infamous dictator François Duvalier Sr.
Raymond’s brother Nicolas, a professor and attorney, lives a more luxurious lifestyle, and both brothers are at odds over finances. When Nicolas decides to write a book about the crimes committed by the government, the inevitable happens. The brutal Tonton Macoutes militia raid his home and find notes that are as evidence enough to send him to Haiti's most notorious gulag of the era, Fort Dimanche, It will be up to Raymond to save his brother. He will have to use his resources and street smarts to get himself arrested, infiltrate the dungeons of Fort Dimanche to find Nicolas, and plan a near-impossible escape.
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Birch, Mona. "Once a Catholic : a novel in stories and poems." FIU Digital Commons, 2004. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/1682.
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"Once A Catholic" is a novel about the indelible effects of growing up Catholic.
The novel is told in a series of stories and poems. The first story, "Credo," offers an overview of the rich culture of Catholicism that binds the Daley family together. "Before The Fall" recalls the safety and warmth of that Catholic faith.
Subsequent stories focus on individual family members and events, and the Catholicity that lies at their core. "Holy Orders" tells the story the firstborn male child whose destination is the priesthood. "Finding Ecstasy" is a daughter's story of rebellion through sexual exploration. "Sweet Reconciliation" is the story of a search within oneself for forgiveness, the cornerstone of Catholic upbringing.
"Acts of the Apostle" demonstrates the hopelessness of a faith under attack. The final story, "Holy Relics," demonstrates the never-ending desire for redemption and the important act of returning sacredness to its rightful place.
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Otte, Abby M. "Short Stories & Selections From a Novel." VCU Scholars Compass, 2015. http://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd/3846.
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This thesis is composed of four short stories and selections from a novel. The stories are interested in investigating the web of relationships that make up our daily lives. In one, a girl watches as the only home she has ever known is encroached upon by a step-family, virtual strangers. In another, a girl is forced to face the consequences of a choosing love before friendship. And in the final two stories, a middle-aged gay man is reluctant to loose the only true love he has ever known, at times relying on his young daughter for support. The novel is concerned with sisterly love, with the notion that all of our actions have consequences, and that the people we care about most are almost always the people we hurt. It also investigates death, and how when we lose someone we love our memory of them shifts, changes, and that because of this they in essence remain alive.
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Colbert, Elizabeth Dianne. "Speaking the unspoken the ontology of writing a novel /." Australasian Digital Theses Program, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/1959.3/64875.
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Creative practitioners, undertaking practice-led research, theorise their practice within an academic domain. Within a three-tiered, performative research paradigm, this project researched writerly identity during the writing of a novel and exegesis. Firstly, based on the writer’s experience with creative and academic writing, the differences were explored through two first-person narratives in a frametale novel, The Fragility Papers, a process documented by critical and reflective journaling. Secondly, the insights gained during the writing of the novel were theorised within the domain of creative writers. Thirdly, the understandings embedded in the novel were considered in the light of these insights and those gained during writing of the exegesis and further theorised within the areas of voice, the writing process and ontological change. Novel writing, it was found, drew not only on the imagination, research, in-flow stream of consciousness writing and serendipitous occurrences but also on personal embodied inscriptions, linguistic play, logic and reason in the development of narrative coherence, forward planning, previously unidentified editing values based in the sonority of language, and a knowledge of the expectations associated with the literary genre. Acknowledging this breadth of experience led to changes in the writer’s creative-writing process, a questioning of the theorised sole influence of language based texts as proposed in intertextual theory, and the proposal to italicise ‘text’ within intertextual to accommodate this breadth. The theorising of insights and emerging, experiential knowledge during the writing of the exegesis was realised in a series of evolving drafts in which interiorised knowledge was increasingly drawn upon in stream of consciousness writing. Further, in both genres, the dialogic engagement of the writer in conscious and unconscious activity at different stages of the writing process was found, suggesting that unconscious activity has a larger than envisaged role to play in academic writing.
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Wood, Danielle. "The Alphabet of Light and Dark : A Novel and Accompanying Essay." Thesis, Edith Cowan University, Research Online, Perth, Western Australia, 2003. https://ro.ecu.edu.au/theses/303.
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This thesis comprises n novel titled The Alphabet of Light and Dark and an accompanying essay titled ''The Skeleton of a Mermaid: Writing The Alphabet of Light and Dark'. The novel tells the story of Essie Lewis, an oceanographer in Western Australia, who returns to her home in Tasmania at the time of her grandfather's death. She inherits a sea chest full of strange treasures- among them a paper nautilus shell, a wedding band, a coil of fair hair, a coconut, and a thruppence piece coated in nacre.
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Layer, Eric. "Boiltown." ScholarWorks@UNO, 2017. https://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/2420.
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Morin, Tara. "Excerpt From Novel: The Ballad of Rozzeltorre." NSUWorks, 2012. http://nsuworks.nova.edu/writing_etd/25.
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Groves, Sarah R. "River City (A Novel)." VCU Scholars Compass, 2018. https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd/5408.
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This contemporary young adult fantasy novel aims to challenge genre conventions around gender, race, and sexuality by having the protagonists (an assortment of young queer people) fighting not against a physically present villain, but against the driving force of “story”, which aims to reduce them to archetypal roles in order to act out familiar scenes. The Story attempts to force each of the four protagonists into roles (hero, monster, princess, witch) for which they are in some way fundamentally unsuited, and which would ultimately destroy them if they succeeded in conforming. This novel aims to call into question the motivations of archetypes in stories, and asks readers to examine how those archetypes resemble stereotypes. In this way, it also asks writers and other artists to consider their complicity in hegemonic thought through the perpetuation of stereotypes and norms in their writing and art as easy stand-ins for more complicated truth.
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Meyer, Paul Emil. "Musical forms in prose fiction : an essay, and the novel 'Some interludes with Charles Mingus'." Thesis, Bath Spa University, 2008. http://researchspace.bathspa.ac.uk/1475/.
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This thesis gives readers an opportunity to explore the special relationship that exists between music and literature. Specifically, it confronts this question: 'How can fiction writers employ musical ideas in the construction of their stories and novels?' In so doing this thesis lays out what artists, critics and philosophers have had to say about the relationship between music and literature, and, after setting up the historical context and defining some terms, it shows how musical concepts have been employed in the construction ofnovels by Thomas Mann, Fyodor Dostoevsl'Y and Michael OndaaUe. Importantly, the thesis identifies some musical ideas in these works that the critical community has not yet identified, and offers a more useful definition ofsome musicoliterary terms (such as leitmotif) than have been employed in the past. Towards the end of this work readers will be introduced to the soon-to-be-published novel Some Interludes YVith Charles Mingus, by Paul Meyer, and they will learn how the author ofthis novel has used musical ideas to shape his writing as well.
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Collins, Juleen. "Mandala Springs." FIU Digital Commons, 2018. https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/3654.
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ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS MANDALA SPRINGS by Juleen Collins Florida International University, 2018 Miami, Florida Professor Debra Dean, Major Professor MANDALA SPRINGS is the small town setting for a story that explores the nature of secrets, lies, revelations, and the damage each can cause. The narrative follows Bodhi MacLachlan, a young woman who struggles with Borderline Personality Disorder, back to the psychiatric hospital where she has resided in-patient multiple times. The long-term association with her psychiatrist becomes complicated when she reveals details of her affair with a secretive man. Meanwhile, she becomes obsessed with uncovering the mysteries of the relationship between a new patient, Scott, and his much younger sister, Ollie, to whom he is guardian. As Bodhi proceeds, she unintentionally but irreparably damages her relationships with each of these characters. Ultimately, she must come to terms with the consequences of her actions. To reflect the complicated, upside down world of psychiatric illness, the story is written in the hybrid form of a playscript-novel.
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Murphy, Rashida. "The Historian’s Daughter (A novel); Monsters and Memory (An essay)." Thesis, Edith Cowan University, Research Online, Perth, Western Australia, 2015. https://ro.ecu.edu.au/theses/1708.
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This thesis comprises two parts, a novel and an essay. ‘The Historian’s Daughter’ is a work of fiction based on family memories and historical research that speaks to the trauma of abandonment and displacement in an immigrant family living in Australia. The accompanying essay is titled ‘Monsters and Memory’ and is an autoethnographical text which combines theoretical, experiential and embodied research to argue that the inclusion of women’s stories, particularly those of trauma and abuse, must be foregrounded in any exploration of cultural and diasporic memory. Drawing primarily on the work of Said (1978, 1993, 1999, 2001), Bhabha (1990, 1994), Caruth (1995), Kuhn (1999), Metta (2010), Barrett (2010), Reed-Danahay (1997), Ellis (2004), Kapur (2001) and Mohanty (2004), this thesis contributes to current debates in Australia about bicultural identity, refugees and migrants. The novel is located in three countries, India, Iran and Australia, and this allows me to explore the concept of ‘home’ in a rapidly changing world when ‘home’ is no longer a place of refuge and safety. Returning home, therefore, can be fraught with political danger, as in the case of post-revolutionary Iran and post-Rajiv Gandhi assassination India.
This is a novel about what happens to a family when a loving mother abruptly walks out on them. Using a first-person narrative, the novel encompasses the narrator’s abandonment as a child in India, her subsequent relocation to Australia, her relationship with her menacing father and her attempt to locate and rescue her sister from the Islamic Republic of Iran. Using a fractured chronology, the narrative has four sections that loop back and forth as the story unfolds.
My interest in the complexities of voluntary migration or forced exile from so-called Third- World countries to a First-World country such as Australia prompted my immersion in the stories that women told of their experiences of living in a ‘safe’ country. I was consumed by a desire to ‘hear’ women’s voices, in particular, the voices of Indian and Iranian women speaking accented English. I was interested in their responses to particular written texts and whether those stories accurately represented their bicultural ‘belongings.’ Therefore, I initiated a Reading Group and invited them, over an eighteen-month period, to read four published texts written by Indian and Iranian women. The objective was to record the readers’ responses to the literature they read, with an understanding that they would also read ‘The Historian’s Daughter’ as it evolved. As cultural observer, participant and researcher in the study, I was able to discern “multiple layers of consciousness” and to challenge my own beliefs as a first generation immigrant woman in Australia (Ellis & Bochner, 2000; Ellis, 2004; Anderson, 2006).
Reconciling the divide between remaining faithful to memory in all its complexity and slipperiness as well as being mindful of the familial issues involved in recreating events from the past is one of the challenges this thesis grapples with. The dilemma of representing family uncritically is balanced by a desire to reclaim the ‘power of the text to change the world’ and make it a better place (Ellis, 2004). This thesis investigates the power of storytelling as a framework for thinking about the world. I am aware that my personal experiences of race, identity and sexual violence have impacted on both parts of this thesis. It is these experiences, supported by theoretical research, that I offer in the context of providing insights into broader cultural issues within specific immigrant communities in Australia.
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Wiltrout, Sophia M. "Tundra (Novel Excerpt)." VCU Scholars Compass, 2019. https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd/5934.
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Tundra is a murder mystery/coming-of-age novel about a fifteen-year-old boy named Ethan and his high school biology teacher, Pam, who come together over a mysterious text-based video game and unwittingly use it to resolve an unsolved murder from 1994. The novel is largely interested in bodies—their perplexities, pleasures, and limitations—as well as what it means to “come of age” as a queer person in a time and place where queer folks are denied so many markers of adulthood—marriage, families, oftentimes job and housing security. This is also a book about the myriad of ways in which technology enables us to pursue modes of connection and intimacy outside of the limitations of both our bodies and repressive social strictures. This thesis contains the first seven chapters of the novel, constituting Part One.
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Graffeo, Warren J. "N'Awlins Po Boy." ScholarWorks@UNO, 2011. http://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/1407.
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N’Awlins Po Boy draws heavily on the author’s memories and recollections of growing up in the New Orleans of the 1940s and 1950s, but it is a work of fiction. Although the settings and scenes are rendered as accurately as memory allows, the circumstances, situations and people are entirely fictional. During the immediate post-WWII decade, the city went through a rapid series of changes, some calm and nearly unnoticed, others turbulent and upsetting to the natural order that had prevailed for more than two centuries. This is an account of those changes as they might have been seen through the eyes of a pre-teen boy.
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Sinclair, Nicole Marie. "A novel: Bloodlines and exegesis: In the blood: mothering and othering." Thesis, Edith Cowan University, Research Online, Perth, Western Australia, 2017. https://ro.ecu.edu.au/theses/1961.
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This thesis includes a literary fiction novel, Bloodlines, and an exegesis titled In the Blood: Mothering and Othering.
Bloodlines is a layered novel with shifting settings, times and voices. It centres around thirtyone- year-old Beth who is struggling with the guilt of calling off her wedding and the belief this decision caused her fiancé to have a devastating accident. She flees to an island in Papua New Guinea (PNG), staying with her dad’s cousin who runs a mission school, and is quickly immersed in island life in all its wonder, beauty and brutality. Friendships with local women, unexpected romance and a malaria scare conspire to make Beth confront the memories that imprison her, and she finally makes peace with her past. But the island simmers with sorcery, religious fervour and belligerent ex-pats, and when violence spills into her own backyard, Beth reaches a defining moment and chooses where she really belongs: with her family.
Interwoven with Beth’s narrative is the story of her parents’ love for each other decades earlier. Clem and Rose’s passionate, tender union is, however, beset with tragedy: Rose dies suddenly and a grieving Clem must raise Beth, their young daughter, alone. Years later, when Beth travels to PNG, Clem reminisces about her childhood and longs for her return.
Bloodlines is about family and love, cultural difference and belonging, and although it is not autobiographical it is inspired by lived experience. The exegesis, In the Blood: Mothering and Othering, is an exercise in reflexivity, demonstrating how creativity is influenced by memory, connection to place, and personal experience. It examines two challenging experiences which informed the setting, characters and plot of Bloodlines. Chapter One explores how becoming a first time mother shaped both content and writing practice, drawing parallels with other contemporary Australian author-mothers including Cate Kennedy and Nikki Gemmell. It also frames the work as an act of catharsis. Chapter Two tackles the complexities of whiteness. It examines the PNG thread of the novel in terms of post-colonial discourse with particular reference to ‘white saviour complex’ and the volunteer tourist as a modern day missionary. The unavoidable echoes of colonialism given Australia’s historical relationship with PNG are highlighted. The second part of this chapter details specific strategies implemented to ease the writer’s anxiety about depicting racial difference, and connections are made to other Australian authors who have written about PNG, most notably Randolph Stow, Trevor Shearston and Drusilla Modjeska.
Both the novel and exegesis are a manifestation of significant, somewhat difficult life experiences. If we accept that it is in our vulnerability and our interactions with other people (whether they be a tiny child or the archetypal black Other) that we know ourselves more fully, then this journey of self-discovery is deepened when we transform our experiences through writing – whether it be creative or theoretical.
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Herbert, Elanna, and n/a. "Hannah�s Place: a neo historical fiction (Exegesis component of a creative doctoral thesis in Communication)." University of Canberra. Communication Media & Culture Studies, 2005. http://erl.canberra.edu.au./public/adt-AUC20070122.150626.
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The creative component of my doctoral thesis articulates narratives of female
experience in Colonial Australia. The work re-contextualises and re-narrativises
accounts of events which occurred in particular women�s lives, and which were
reported in nineteenth century newspapers. The female characters within my novel are
illiterate and from the lower classes. Unlike middle-class women who wrote letters
and kept journals, women such as these did not and could not leave us their stories.
The newspaper accounts in which their stories initially appeared reflected patriarchal
(and) class ideologies, and represented the women as the �other�. However, it is by
these same textual artefacts that we come to know of their existence.
The multi-layered novel I have written juxtaposes archival pre-texts (or intertexts)
against fictional re-narrativisations of the same events. One reason for the use of this
style is in order to challenge the past positioning of silenced women. My female
characters� first textual iterations, those documents which now form our archival
records, were written from a position of hegemonic patriarchy. Their first textual
iteration were the record of female existence recorded by others. The original voices
of the fictionalised female characters of my novel are heard as an absence and the
intertext, as well as the fiction, now stands as a trace of what once existed as women�s
lived, performative experience.
My contention is that by making use of concepts such as historiographic metafiction,
transworld identities, and sideshadowing; along with narrative structures such as
juxtaposition, collage and the use of intertext and footnotes, a richer, multidimensional
and non-linear view of female colonial experience can be achieved. And
it will be one which departs from that hegemonically imposed by patriarchy. It is the
reader who becomes the meaning maker of �truth� within historical narration.
My novel sits within the theoretical framework of postmodern literature as a variant
on a new form of the genre that has been termed �historical fiction�. However, it
departs from traditional historical fiction in that it foregrounds not only an imagined
fictional past world created when the novel is read, but also the actual archival
documents, the pieces of text from the past which in other instances and perhaps put
together to form a larger whole, might be used to make traditional history. These
pieces of text were the initial finds from the historical research undertaken for my
novel. These fragments of text are used within the work as intertextual elements
which frame, narratively interrupt, add to or act as footnotes and in turn, are
themselves framed by my female characters� self narrated stories. These introduced
textual elements, here foregrounded, are those things most often hidden from view
within the mimetic and hermeneutic worlds of traditional historical fiction. It is also
with these intertextual elements that the fictional women engage in dialogue. At the
same time, my transworld characters� existence as fiction are reinforced by their
existence as �objects� (of narration) within the archival texts. Both the archival texts
and the fiction are now seen as having the potential to be unreliable.
My thesis suggests that in seeking to gain a clearer understanding of these events and
the narrative of these particular marginalised colonial women�s lives, a new way of
engaging with history and writing historical fiction is called for. I have undertaken this
through creative fiction which makes use of concepts such as transworld identity, as
defined by Umberto Eco and also by Brian McHale, historiographic metafiction, as
defined by Linda Hutcheon and the concept of sideshadowing which, as suggested by
Gary Saul Morson and Michael Andr� Bernstein, opens a space for multiple historical
narratives.
The novel plays with the idea of both historical facts and historical fiction. By giving
textual equality to the two the border between what can be considered as historical
fact and historical fiction becomes blurred. This is one way in which a type of textual
agency can be brought to those silenced groups from Australia�s past. By juxtaposing
parts of the initial textual account of these events alongside, or footnoted below, the
fiction which originated from them, I create a female narrative of �new writing�
through which parts of the old texts, voiced from a male perspective, can still be read.
The resulting, multi-layered narrative becomes a collage of text, voice and meaning
thus enacting Mikhail Bakhtin�s idea of heteroglossia.
A reading of my novel insists upon questioning the truthfulness or degree of reliability
of past textual facts as accurate historic records of real women�s life events.
It is this which is at the core of my novel�an historiographic metafictional
challenging by the fictional voices of female transworld identities of what had been
written as an historical, legitimate account of the past. This self-reflexive style of
historical fiction makes for a better construct of a multi-dimensional, non-linear view
of female colonial experience.
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Olsen, Andrew J. "Easy Hearts: A Novel." FIU Digital Commons, 2015. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/2322.
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Easy Hearts is a novel set in contemporary Texas. Justin Borchard, just paroled after three and-a-half years in prison, returns to his hometown in East Texas where his wife, Melinda, has been tending bar at the Shortleaf Inn. After Melinda confesses to a brief affair with a local oil executive named Waylon Goodwin, an affair she has ended, and facing limited prospects in their hometown, Melinda and Justin make the hard choice to accept a proposition from Waylon: they will leave home for Hearts County, a desolate swatch of hardpan in the Permian Basin of West Texas, where Waylon has arranged steady work for Justin in the oil fields. When Melinda vanishes from their trailer home, Justin must re-cross Texas, avoiding the law and dangerous railway men, so he can confront his troubled past, his increasingly mysterious wife, and the secrets sown around them.
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Williams, Karen L. "The beach house : a novel and, Exorcising Sarah's ghosts : (re)creating the self : an accompanying essay." Thesis, Edith Cowan University, Research Online, Perth, Western Australia, 2006. https://ro.ecu.edu.au/theses/327.
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Johns, Schneller Sylvia M. D. "The Sins of the Mothers." ScholarWorks@UNO, 2015. http://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/2107.
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In The Sins of the Mothers, the main character, Bridgette, suffers a mental breakdown after the death of her three-month-old baby, Celeste, from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). She develops severe obsessive-compulsive disorder with the delusion that the child is trapped in Limbo because she was never baptized. The delusion haunts Bridgette, and she suffers brief dissociative episodes with visual hallucinations. Bridgette hears of a church in Provence where, according to a seventeenth century legend, children who died without baptism returned briefly to life under the intersession of Saint Pantaleon were baptized and gained heaven. She decides to exhume Celeste’s body and bring the corpse to Provence for the ceremony. She plans to find a priest to baptize the baby and bury Celeste in the churchyard. After unsuccessful attempts by her dysfunctional family to thwart her plans, Bridgette smuggles the ancestral christening dress and an attached piece of the baby’s hair to Provence where she fails to bury the dress in the now deconsecrated church. In the remainder of the novel, the reader learns of her attempts to reconcile with the results of her actions and heal from her mental illness.
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Moffett, Patricia. "Saphira, the snake priestess : a novel, and; Minoan is not Greek : an essay." Thesis, Edith Cowan University, Research Online, Perth, Western Australia, 2011. https://ro.ecu.edu.au/theses/457.
Full textAbstract:
The creative project of the novel, Saphira, the Snake Priestess, embodied two goals. The first was to write a novel to appeal to what I have termed the sub Young Adult reader, the reader of around fourteen years of age. The second was to introduce this age group to the remarkable Minoan civilisation of around 1600BC. The novel aims to stimulate interest in the subjects of Ancient History and Mythology that inform studies in English and Literature in the later years of secondary school. The essay, Minoan is not Greek, explains some of the reasons for the distinction between the Minoan and the later Mycenaean and Greek civilisations. As explained in the essay, the creative project is an historical novel, not a work of history. The first section of the essay discusses some of the novels that have appeal for the student of around fourteen years of age. The second section of the essay explores the way in which a novel may be written about a civilisation, from which there is no deciphered writing, based on archaeology, artefacts and mythology. In the last section of the essay on the relevant mythology, there is a brief indication of the psychological basis for the archetypal motifs that have persisted in the western tradition. Both novel and essay show the reader that Minoan achievements were distinct from later developments on the Greek mainland and represent the first efflorescence of western civilisation.
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Betts, Amanda. "Rogue: A Novel - and - Wonderlust: the value of wonder for readers, writers, and The Vault: A critical essay." Thesis, Edith Cowan University, Research Online, Perth, Western Australia, 2018. https://ro.ecu.edu.au/theses/2122.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis consists of an original novel, Rogue, and an exegesis titled Wonderlust: the value of wonder for readers, writers, and The Vault.
Rogue is the second novel of the series titled The Vault, which is a speculative fiction duology for young adults (thirteen and above) with the possibility for crossover into adult readership. Rogue picks up the story of fifteen-year-old Hayley who, after choosing to leave her previous home of an underwater seed vault, finds herself washed onto the cliffs of Maria Island, off the coast of Tasmania. As Hayley ventures further into the terrestrial ‘real world’ of 2120, she must call on her wits, intelligence, and creativity to survive. Rogue is a story of new beginnings, discovery, belonging, relationships, choice, and responsibility.
Wonderlust: the value of wonder for readers, writers, and The Vault, is an examination of wonder which investigates the role of wonder in literature and how it can be evoked without relying on overused tropes of science fiction. The exegesis first explores the experience of wonder and its importance to us individually and collectively, along with its relationship to philosophy, psychology, nature, and science. Secondly, it investigates wonder in literature, particularly in speculative fiction: its composition, appeal, reception and potential, on and beyond the page. It specifically examines how narrative elements have been successfully manipulated to facilitate wonder in creating an original two-book series of speculative fiction for young adults titled The Vault. Thirdly, it discusses the role of wonder for the writer, both as initial impulse for creativity and as an experience during the writing process. In this, reference is made to the writing of Rogue: a novel inspired and shaped by wonder.
Ultimately, the thesis argues the value of wonder in fiction — particularly contemporary young adult fiction — and positions Rogue in this context as a work which reminds readers of the astonishments of this puzzling world, and their important place within it.
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Curtin, Amanda. "Ellipsis: a novel and exegesis." Thesis, Edith Cowan University, Research Online, Perth, Western Australia, 2006. https://ro.ecu.edu.au/theses/337.
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This thesis comprises a novel entitled 'Ellipsis' and an exegesis entitled 'Ellipsis: Ambiguous genre, ambiguous gender'. The novel blends archival records and fiction into two woven narratives, one contemporary, one historical. In the contemporary narrative, set in 2004-2005, Willa Samson, flayed by guilt and grieving the loss of her daughter, is a hermit, unable to work, communicating with the world mainly through the Internet. But her desire to research a fragment of local history that has haunted her for years gently forces her back into the world. Willa is convinced that in the story of a nineteenth-century murder she can see an unlikely parallel with her daughter: that, like Imogen, the victim was intersexed. The historical narrative is a speculative telling of the life of the murder victim, known as Little Jock.
Imogen's story, which unfolds through Willa's memories, dramatises the devastating though well-intentioned protocol established by twentieth-century medicine for dealing with intersex births: 'normalising' surgery to fashion the newborn into the sex deemed to be appropriate, followed by hormone treatment, rigid social conditioning and an aura of secrecy to silence any confusion or hint of difference. Imogen grows up suspecting that she is different, but no one will tell her the truth.
Little Jock must also keep bodily truth hidden, for in the nineteenth century intersexuals-then termed 'hermaphrodites'-were often exploited as freaks. After leaving Northern Ireland during the Potato Famine, the child who becomes Little Jock finds, in the tenement slums of Glasgow, a place to disappear. A series of petty crimes results in his transportation to Western Australia-one of the nearly ten thousand convicts plucked from English prisons and sent to the Swan River Colony. The authorities believed all of them were male.
Willa's research leads her to Scotland and Northern Ireland, and finally to Western Australia's South West, helped along the way by genealogists-people who cherish the bonds of family and history. And in the search for Little Jock, she draws closer to understanding what has happened to Imogen.
The exegesis, after outlining the provenance of the novel's research, is structured as two essays linked by the themes of ambiguity and classification. The first, on ambiguous genre, sets out to investigate the framing (that is, in the form of an explanatory note) of hybrid sub genres of fiction, novels that draw directly or indirectly on people, events and issues that are part of the historical record. In considering what authors should say about 'what is real and what is not,' the essay canvasses ethics and reader expectations, the right to speak and the freedom to create, and the ways books are marketed, classified and read. The second essay, on ambiguous gender, draws on historical aspects of the classification of intersexed people, along with gender theory, to consider 'Ellipsis' in terms of the social forces acting on the ambiguous bodies of Little Jock in the nineteenth century and Imogen in the twentieth century, and how these characters survive in bodies that pose a challenge to deeply held cultural norms.
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Toye, Geoffrey. "Mind, motive and authorship : reflections on the nature of creativity and the character-driven narrative with particular reference to the author's works : the novel, 'Diminished Responsibility', & the anthology of short stories, 'The Reluctant Nude'." Thesis, University of Wales Trinity Saint David, 2010. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.683092.
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Parv, Valerie. "Healing writes : restoring the authorial self through creative practice : and Birthright, a speculative fiction novel." Thesis, Queensland University of Technology, 2007. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/16646/1/Valerie_Parv_-_Birthright.pdf.
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Writing the speculative fiction novel, Birthright, and this accompanying exegesis, led me to challenge the validity of the disclaimer usually found in the front matter of most novels that the story is purely imaginary, bears no relationship to reality, with the characters not being inspired by anyone known or unknown to the author. For the first time in my career, I began to consider how writers including myself might frequently revisit themes and ideas which resonate with our lived experiences. I call this restorying, an unconscious process whereby aspects of one's life history are rewritten through one's creative work to achieve a more satisfactory result. Through personal contact, studying authors' accounts of their creative practices, and surveying current literature on narrative therapy, a case is made that, far from being generated purely from imagination, writers' creative choices are driven by an unconscious need to restory ourselves.
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Parv, Valerie. "Healing writes : restoring the authorial self through creative practice : and Birthright, a speculative fiction novel." Queensland University of Technology, 2007. http://eprints.qut.edu.au/16646/.
Full textAbstract:
Writing the speculative fiction novel, Birthright, and this accompanying exegesis, led me to challenge the validity of the disclaimer usually found in the front matter of most novels that the story is purely imaginary, bears no relationship to reality, with the characters not being inspired by anyone known or unknown to the author. For the first time in my career, I began to consider how writers including myself might frequently revisit themes and ideas which resonate with our lived experiences. I call this restorying, an unconscious process whereby aspects of one's life history are rewritten through one's creative work to achieve a more satisfactory result. Through personal contact, studying authors' accounts of their creative practices, and surveying current literature on narrative therapy, a case is made that, far from being generated purely from imagination, writers' creative choices are driven by an unconscious need to restory ourselves.
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Stewart, Teagan. "Balancing Act: A Novel." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2018. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cmc_theses/1917.
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This thesis is the start of a novel that explores the psychological complexities of maneuvering local politics, tense family dynamics, and romantic love through the lens of a man who proves to be unapologetically selfish, cunning, and surprisingly relatable. Set in the desert of Albuquerque, New Mexico, this piece forces the reader to engage with characters who are propelled by their own biases, experiences, and goals instead of a moral compass. The campaign trail raises questions of loyalty, prejudice, empathy, and determination in a city where nearly everyone is intertwined. Below is the official synopsis:
James Rochford is technically the underdog in the 2012 New Mexico State Senate Election. He is the youngest to run for senate, has no prior experience in office, and has comparatively fewer resources in terms of money and name recognition. But James' charisma and cunning seem to give him an edge that no one else has.
As the race heats up, James is caught up in a whirlwind romance and subsequent breakup which complicate his public image. Whispers of corruption and impending scandal jeopardize his chances. As James' family, romance, and election unravel, his sanity seems to depart with it, in a desperate attempt to win it all and maintain the grandiose life he clings to.
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Earls, Alison. "Genuine cherry red : a fiction novel." Thesis, Queensland University of Technology, 2003.
Find full textAbstract:
"Genuine Cherry Red" is a fiction novel.
It is the story of three people who live in a house beside a hill in the flattest place on earth - an almost fable-like setting. In different ways, each is locked inside the order and control they have constructed through the years. Surrounded by nature and its reliable cycle, they are resisting change and denying the unpredictable randomness of life. Marta is a young woman who is both intelligent and naïve, caught inside a private maze of thinking and rethinking. She lives with her mother's cousin Ena who gave up nursing to take Marta in when her mother succumbed to depression, and Ena' s husband Len, a successful and prolific writer of cowboy fiction. Since a cancer diagnosis, Len - who had been living with multiple
sclerosis - has been virtually catatonic ... until Grey Bob suddenly arrives. The central character of Len's fictional stories permeates their lives and things begin to change.
The natural environment, the people of the nearby town, the order of the house all transform and Marta, Ena and Len struggle to cope. But they have no choice. When the inevitable shifts occur, spontaneous events have impact and disease progresses, each member of the family eventually finds a way to deal with the fact that reality can be
haphazard and out of their control. So, through the presence of a fictional character, three people are forced to confront the erratic nature of human life.
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Bachert, Sara-Lois. "Points of Interest: Essays on People, Places and Perceptions." TopSCHOLAR®, 1989. http://digitalcommons.wku.edu/theses/1873.
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I wrote my first story in third grade. “Francine and the Head-Chopper Man” borrowed its plot from “Beauty and the Beast,” but my teacher didn’t seem to mind. In fact, she arranged for me to read the story to the fifth-grade class down the hall. After that first public reading, I was hooked. I knew at age seven I was going to be a writer.
When I discovered journalism in the ninth grade, I knew just what type of writing I was going to do. In junior high and high school, I was editor of the newspapers, and in college I worked on the newspaper and was editor of the yearbook. After graduation I was a reporter, copy editor and features editor at two daily newspapers in Kentucky.
I began teaching journalism part-time at Western Kentucky University in 1983, and two years later, when I heard about the English department’s new writing concentration, I decided to study for my master’s. In Frank Steele’s Advanced Writing Workshop, I was confronted by a question I hadn’t asked in years: What did I want to write?
Having written newspaper articles for years, I wanted to try something different – the essay, based on fact and usually written in the first person, although not necessarily. I believe this type of writing is valuable because it records and attempts to understand events, people and perceptions.
As the number of essays grew, I began to realize a potential problem: If the subjects are dissimilar, any collection of essays runs the risk of seeming disorganized. If the subjects are similar, it runs the risk of sounding the same from essay to essay.
I hope this collection of essays avoids both faults. The subjects are dissimilar – ranging from family to education – but revolve around the common themes of relationships and time. Each essay examines relationships between parents and children, sisters and brothers, friends, teachers and students, or others. In addition, they all deal with time, either chronicling the passage of time or preserving the moment.
Most of the essays are written in the first person, and many deal with family issues. Those two details may sound as if the collection is germane to only one person, the writer. But it is not. Most readers will recognize themselves or people they know in the characters, and many will recall a way of life, an attitude, or a conversation they thought they had forgotten. Even those who don’t recognize or remember the characters may find the essays valuable if they learn a little about ordinary people and ordinary problems.
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Ibarra, Mary-Claire. "Fragile Saints." FIU Digital Commons, 2016. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/2508.
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FRAGILE SAINTS is a magical realist novel set in contemporary Peru. Elsa is struggling with her recent divorce and childhood memories of her family’s silk-producing farm haunt her, so when Elsa’s dying grandmother requests to see her, she visits Peru. There, Elsa learns she has inherited a country house, near the old family hacienda, which is haunted by a dark secret. Elsa is intrigued with the house, its caretakers, and her new lover Gustavo, yet she encounters disturbing ghostly visitors.
The novel is written primarily from Elsa’s point of view, as she discovers her purpose, but an omniscient narrator is employed as well, taking the reader into the family’s past. Like Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude” and Isabel Allende’s “The House of the Spirits,” FRAGILE SAINTS uses magical realism to create a family saga where ancestral mishaps and the natural world influence the present day characters, making them vulnerable and yet also indomitable.
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Shinholser, John H. "The Wolves of Gehenna." ScholarWorks@UNO, 2014. http://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/1832.
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A novel by JS Harlow. Mattock Corwin, a young man living in the vampire ruled kingdom of Gehenna, discovers that he is a mage and must escape the land of his birth before the rulers of his land destroy him as a potential threat to their power.
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Robinson, Nigel John. "The Apothecary's Tales : a game of language in a language of games." Thesis, University of Bedfordshire, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/10547/296770.
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The thesis shows how the novel The Apothecary's Tales manipulates narrative frames to create a 'simulachron', an unreliable virtual world, which problematises the reader's conceptions of the past. The novel transgresses the generic rules of 'historical fiction' to create a quality of 'historicity' located in the affect of alterity. This is argued to be a somatic response to peril deferred. The novel seeks to evoke alterity by defamiliarising linguistic norms. It does this principally through the use of 'diachronic polysemia' (lexical 'false friends') and intertexts to syncopate the reader continually between the disparate sensibilities of the 1ih and 21 st centuries. These sensibilities are simulated in the novel by the imbedment of sociolects and 'hypomemes', the tacit thoughtways supposed peculiar to a given milieu. To self-authenticate its fictions, the novel employs the 'parafictive' devices of a testamentary found artifact, an unreliable narrator and editor, plausible sociologuemes (social conventions) and ideologuemes (ideologies that inform behaviour), along with a density of period minutiae putatively grounded in the record. Any truth effects achieved are then ludically subverted by a process of critique in which structural units of the novel systematically parody the other. The novel is patterned in the structure of a nested diptych, of expositions contra posed in a mutual commentary, which extends from the defining templates of plot and episode to the micro levels of morphemes in polysemic wordplay. The tropes of nested framing and repetition of form and syntagm are defined in the thesis, respectively, as encubi/atio and 'emblematic resonance'. It is argued that these tropes, encoded in a fictive discourse that defies closure, provide a simulation of hermetic form that -when mapped upon the aleatory life world -can be productive of aesthetic affect. The agonistic elements of plot and incident in the novel are figured within the tapas of theatre, foregrounded by the duplicitous self-fashioning of the characters, and by the continual metaleptic shifts or 'frame syncopation' of narrative viewpoint, both intra and extra-diegetic. Frame syncopation is used advisedly to dilemmatise significations at both the structural and syntagmatic levels. The thesis contends that such contrived collisions of narrative interpretation may be the dynamic of affectivity in all aesthetic discourse.
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Rontree, Mary Elizabeth. "Satire and parody in the fiction of Thomas Love Peacock and the early writings of William Makepeace Thackeray, 1815-1850." Thesis, University of Gloucestershire, 2004. http://eprints.glos.ac.uk/3130/.
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This thesis examines the works of Peacock and the early periodical contributions of Thackeray in the light of recent twentieth-century critical interpretations of satire. In particular, attention to Peacock's use of elements of the Menippean sub-genre in his satirical fiction offers a reassessment of his place in the literary tradition. While Thackeray's early writings demonstrate some characteristics of Menippean satire, a review of his work from the broader perspective of Bakhtin's exposition of carnival influences in serio-comic literature provides a new understanding of the origins and uses of his narratorial devices. A comparison of the work of the two authors, within the time constraint of the first half of the nineteenth century, illustrates how nineteenth-century publishing innovations shaped literary perception of satire. Although the high status of the genre in the predominant culture of the previous century was challenged by the growth of the reading public, satire found new energy and modes of expression in the popular magazines of the period. In addition, writers facing the increasing heterogeneity of new reading audiences, were forced to reconsider their personal ideals of authorship and literature, while renegotiating their position in the literary marketplace. Organized in six chapters, the discussion opens with an account of traditional interpretations of satire, and goes on to examine recent analyses of the genre. The second chapter focuses on the relevance of these new interpretations to the work of Peacock and Thackeray and the extent to which the use of Menippean forms of satire enabled each to challenge the established opinions of their period. Changes in concepts of reading and writing and innovations in modes of publication form the substance of the third chapter and this is followed by an analysis of the work of both writers, using Bakhtin's interpretation of the Menippean sub-genre in the broader context of serio-comic discourse and the carnival tradition, Chapter five is a comparative study of the attitudes of both writers towards contemporary literature and the final section places their work in the political context of the period. Both Peacock and Thackeray made extensive use of elements of Menippean satire in their fiction. The content of their work, however, and their modes of writing were highly individual, to some extent shaped by the different markets they supplied. Collectively, their writings illustrate two aspects of the cultural watershed of the early nineteenth century, Peacock reflecting traditional notions of authorship and Thackeray representing a new industry, regulated by the commercial considerations of supply and demand. As satirists,each succeeded in adapting the genre to satisfy both his own authorial integrity and the expectations of his readers.
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Greenfield, Stacey Amanda Lorraine. "Formal techniques and self/other relations in the novels of Dirk Bogarde." Thesis, University of Gloucestershire, 2006. http://eprints.glos.ac.uk/3149/.
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The thesis foregrounds the distinctive contribution Dirk Bogarde made to contemporary writing in a second career that developed in parallel to his screen commitments. It dispels the notion that Bogarde followed a familiar path as an actor who wrote books. Instead it establishes his reputation as an innovative writer whose formal technique was substantially influenced by the textual systems of cinema and the cross-fertilisation from acting to writing. In examining the formative factors that steered Bogarde towards authorship, the thesis addresses the role of performance as a generative factor in the evolution of the novels, establishing a discursive link with Bakhtinian dialogism, and specifically, transgredience as a formal imperative. Secondly, it affords a critical insight into why the major concerns with staging and performativity preoccupy his writing career. The thesis claims that Bogarde was an empirically dialogical writer whose use of camera-eye narration fostered the proliferation of competing discourses across the fiction. This formal dynamic is centred on the relationship between stages and dialogism, which incorporates the work of Erving Goffinan as a complementary critique to Bakhtinian theory with its emphasis on self-presentation. The concern with socially-constructed behaviour leads the thesis to address the associated issues of stereotyping and 'otherness', which in terms of body politics is articulated by the mono logic drive to confine the sexual 'other' to a fixed representation. Bogarde's ability to draw on cinematic and performance techniques identifies an area of expertise unavailable to most other writers. This is an unusual repository of skills to bring to writing which is why the thesis makes the claim for his singular achievement as a contemporary author. There are fruitful points of intersection to be explored in this respect with the work of Christopher Isherwood, whom Bogarde read and admired, as a basis for further research. It is hoped that the thesis will play its part in opening up new possibilities for Bogarde's writing to be re-visited by future critics.
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Mack, Stephanie. "Gentille Alouette, Short Fiction, and Selections: A Draft: Chapters of a Novel in Progress." VCU Scholars Compass, 2014. http://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd/604.
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The plot of my novel in progress, Gentille Alouette, follows a sixteen-year-old female poltergeist named Alouette Tansy as she navigates her complicated relationship with her mother, Rhododendron “Rho” Tansy. Alouette is a violent entity, born out of her mother’s long simmering and manifested angry after Rho witnesses a catastrophic event as a child. Separated from her mother and raised by her grandmother, Elzina “Nona” Tansy, Alouette must come to grips with her otherworldly physicality and strange abilities all while trying to comprehend her own existence and sense of humanity. The short story, Rusalka Rusalka, follows a young girl named Remmie who is suspended from her high school after assaulting another student. She finds herself on work detail in the Great Dismal Swamp aiding Rusalka, the mysterious wife of a renowned marine biologist. Rusalka’s instability and affinity for exotic fish prove much more treacherous that Remmie could have ever imagined.
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Haji, Mohd daud Kathrina. "Creative : Jongsarat Critical : Christianity and the Canon : reading the Chinese American Canon through the sacred." Thesis, University of Manchester, 2011. https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/theses/creative-jongsaratcritical-christianity-and-the-canon-reading-the-chinese-american-canon-through-the-sacred(975edb1f-faae-422e-8bb2-904759bb8de8).html.
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Creative: Jongsarat is a full-length fictional novel set in Brunei. It follows the lives of two cousins as they struggle with the same decision over the course of one summer. Rijal, the black sheep of the family, must try to come to terms with his fears and his troubled past when he finds out his girlfriend is pregnant. Hana, the family's golden girl and hope for the future, fights to keep her own sins a secret as she faces losing her boyfriend to his growing love for God. Set against the backdrop of a country in which reputation and religion are inextricably intertwined, and in which traditional values are struggling to stay alive, Rijal and Hana must find a way to understand the future that they are fighting for. Jongsarat is fundamentally an exploration of the challenges traditional social and religious structures are facing as they struggle to shape modern-day Brunei. It is a study of how, when traditional culture is uninformed by the heart of religion, it leads to disenfranchisement and the hollowness of ritual. It is a story about the ways in which everyday families have to cope with the hopes and expectations each generation places on the next in an ever-changing world. Critical: By exploring the reasons why study of the religious trope has been so neglected in Chinese American literary study, this thesis seeks to understand the critical paradigms which have dominated and shaped Chinese American literary discourses. This thesis will do this by looking seriously at the history of the formation of Chinese American literature and critical study, and the ways in which it has been influenced by American social and political movements such as the feminist and civil rights movements. Having established the state of Chinese American literature and literary discourse, the thesis will then go on to examine the ways in which these external influences have caused grave misreadings which have severely limited the scope and understanding of critical discourse. This thesis will then correct these misreadings by using Amy Tan's works as a case study for performing a critical reading of the religious trope in order to open critical discourse up to new and alternative readings that will ensure the continuation of fresh, relevant and vibrant dialogue within Chinese American critical study.
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MacDonald, Elizabeth. "A Longer Spoon: A Novel." Honors in the Major Thesis, University of Central Florida, 2014. http://digital.library.ucf.edu/cdm/ref/collection/ETH/id/1612.
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The intent of this thesis is to create a novel-length narrative based around a premise conceived in a workshop setting. The novel, while containing elements of fantasy, will be character-driven and feature psychological character development as its primary goal. Lawrence Caligny, a young cook newly instated at a castle, is coerced by his mother, an infamous witch
named Mallory, to concoct a sleeping potion for the country’s crown prince, beckoning comparison to the "Sleeping Beauty" fairy tale. As Lawrence prepares for his opportunity, he
unwittingly befriends the prince and his sister and stumbles across an assassination plot. Being thoroughly inept at witchcraft himself, Lawrence fails to put the prince to sleep when he gets the chance, knocking out the entirety of the castle inhabitants and staff instead. The story concludes with the revival of those in the castle and Lawrence being fired from his (ignominious) position in the kitchens, but otherwise pardoned in acknowledgement of his help in stopping the assassination.B.A.
Bachelors
English
Arts and Humanities
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Capelo, Maria Jose de Brito. "Away, a novel, and a critical essay on narrative space with reference of Paul Auster's fiction." Thesis, University of Plymouth, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/10026.1/1191.
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My novel, Away, is mainly the story of a woman travelling alone, leaving all friends and relatives behind. She seeks out remote, beautiful and difficult places where, firstly, she has travelled to before and, then, different locations that she hasn’t known in the past. We discover that, through trauma, she has lost her sense of identity – she is in the midst of a psychological crisis that becomes clear only after the journey has been underway for some time, when circumstances force her to accept help from others. With the protagonist my aim was to portray a permanent and continuous possibility of ending, stretching endlessly. This idea is irretrievable from the notion of space, as conceived here. In Part I, I explore how not only this main character, but also, Fred embody space. Here, I examine the conception of space, taking in various perspectives raging from philosophy, geography, culture and literature studies, where we find an interdisciplinary approach to space. My contention, drawing on mainly Lefebvre’s and Massey’s investigations, is that space is produced and is simultaneously a product embodied by the characters. In addition, I analyse how a particular territory – the desert – enacts the nature of space, as defined before, in selected works by T. E. Lawrence, Wilfred Thesiger and Paul Bowles. Also, I argue that this conception of space is explored in some narratives of Paul Auster - CG, MC and CLT - in part II. Further, I examine other features of space. I contend that Auster’s writing explores space as a realm upon which Auster’s characters engage in a process of construction and disintegration both of space and their identity. Therefore, here, space is considered as a sphere constituted by a process of an ever-opened, changing and ongoing interrelation with the characters and the text. Finally, although space is presented in this essay as the major tool for investigation through composition and critical analysis, other tools, intrinsically, and I argue inseparable in fact, I proceed to an investigation, in part III, of notions of time, identity, writing and narrator in my creative work. Beside these, I investigate particularly the relationships between characters. The thesis concludes by demonstrating that writing as space evolves in more subtle, more transient and labyrinthian ways through the reference to other writers whose writing has significantly influenced my creative work.
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Davie, Rosalind. "The other side of silence : the life and work of Mary Webb." Thesis, University of Gloucestershire, 2018. http://eprints.glos.ac.uk/5711/.
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Erika Duncan has commented that ‘because of the intangible sentimental quality of Mary Webb’s special genius, there has been a general reluctance to acknowledge her as a major writer.’ This thesis argues against such dismissive approaches to Webb and makes a case for a re-evaluation of Webb as an unusual writer of pantheist spirituality and nature mysticism and one who can now be appreciated for the ecopoetics of her work. Within this framework the study charts the stylistic qualities of her writing and its mutative shifts through a chronological examination of her work which also includes a biographical account of her life and the major influences which shaped her ideas and writing. Aspects of inter-textuality with other writers will be considered throughout and will underscore the value of Webb’s work whilst emphasising the unique and beautiful quality of her voice. The first chapter, ‘Early Responses’, considers her formative experiences and her earliest essays and poems. ‘Mythological Motifs’ then reviews the mythopoeic nature of Webb’s first two novels and her use of myth in furthering her themes. The ensuing chapter, ‘Preceptive Perception’, evaluates both the didacticism in authorial style and the pertinence of Webb’s vision which are features of her third book. Chapter Four discusses her final two completed volumes as ‘A Dyad’ for they represent, respectively, her weakest and her finest writing. The final chapter, ‘A Medieval Message’, focuses on Webb’s last, incomplete, work, analysing its experimental qualities and its potential to reveal Webb’s last efforts to leave a parting missive for her readers before her death. Central critical concepts are that: in the development of Webb’s religious views from conventional Christianity to pantheism she anticipated modern feminist spirituality; and, in her insistence upon the supreme value of nature and its continual risk from human exploitation in connection with the oppression of women and their need for spiritual freedom, Webb is an unrecognised ecofeminist who was reflecting early twentieth-century issues. In addition, I attempt to discover reasons for Webb’s neglect and positively propose a place for her in literary studies. A Conclusion will summarise the main arguments and indicate possible further avenues of research.
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Dorsten, Sara E. "Priest of Wisdom: A Historical Novel Studying Ancient Greek Culture through Creative Writing." Ohio Dominican University Honors Theses / OhioLINK, 2015. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=oduhonors1430788202.
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Breen, Karen. "Sleep sister a thesis submitted to Auckland University of Technology in fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Creative Writing (MCW), 2009 /." Click here to access exegesis online, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/10292/798.
Full textAbstract:
This submission is in two parts. The first, an exegesis, sets my creative work in a literary, stylistic and social context. The second and main part of this submission is the first draft of a novel, Sleep, Sister, which I have written over the course of the last year. The exegesis explores issues such as the history of the road novel, alienation and loneliness within society, and in particular within families. It also discusses the novel as a coming of age story, with its main characters being members of Generation X, those born between 1960 -1980. This was the first generation of New Zealand children for whom divorced parents and blended families were common experiences. The exegesis also describes how the themes of the story have informed the style, narrative and characterisation of the book. It concludes with the main question of the novel; whether the two main characters – sisters – can overcome their damaging past. The novel is set in New Zealand, predominantly in the year 1987, although there are flashbacks to the girls’ 1970s childhood. It is written mainly in the present tense and with shifting points of view.
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Wake, Vivian F. "A novel, Curse of the time witch : and, An essay, The time-slip novel." Thesis, Edith Cowan University, Research Online, Perth, Western Australia, 2011. https://ro.ecu.edu.au/theses/463.
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E. Nesbit’s The Story of the Amulet inspired me to write a time-slip novel for young adults. During my research for this explicatory essay, I discovered that later writers not only expanded upon Nesbit’s simple formula to create atmospheric novels with fully developed characters, but also experimented with space as well as with time, thus allowing their protagonists also to travel within parallel worlds. This essay traces the source of Nesbit’s inspiration as well as discussing the problems associated with the actual writing of a time-slip novel, together with its gradual acceptance as a sub genre within fantasy literature. In particular, Nesbit’s influence on later writers is also discussed. Nesbit’s formula incorporated characters travelling into the past to perform a quest or to solve a problem before returning to the present. One group of writers, after the wide-spread destruction of World War Two, used Nesbit’s formula as a basic structure to portray, usually through the eyes of one main protagonist, an England they once knew that was on the point of vanishing. Another group of writers, having spent their early years in the Blitz in an England under constant threat of invasion, often delved further into the past to express their concern over the ever-fighting forces of good and evil. These writers, like Nesbit, returned to using more than one protagonist, but unlike Nesbit, their protagonists are usually visited by characters from out of the past, rather than the reverse. It is from within this group of writers that the concept of parallel worlds emerged. My own novel, Curse of the Time Witch, set in Elizabethan England at the time of the Spanish Armada in 1588, follows Nesbit’s formula to some extent, except that the events are seen through the eyes of a protagonist living in the past who is visited by the other protagonist from the twenty-first century. My novel is also somewhat unusual because my protagonist, as well as speaking in the first person, also uses the present tense to describe the events as they take place.
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DiFrancesco, Alessandro. "The Living and the Dead." Cleveland State University / OhioLINK, 2020. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=csu1591353224820624.
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McEleney, Freebury Rachel M. "Beneath the money tree and nature is a haunted house: A novel and exegesis." Thesis, Edith Cowan University, Research Online, Perth, Western Australia, 2022. https://ro.ecu.edu.au/theses/2579.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis comprises of an arts-based creative work Beneath the Money Tree and an exegesis, Nature is a Haunted House.
Beneath the Money Tree is an Australian Gothic style novel that explores the downward spiral of Jack, who is haunted by his dead wife Maya. The couple and their three children live on a large property in Walpole, Western Australia. During a violent argument Jack murders Maya and buries her under a marijuana plant on the family property. The novel responds to the works of colonial authors such as Barbara Baynton and Mary Fortune and seeks to subvert the Australian Gothic tradition of silencing women. Like Fortune’s ghosts, Maya also lies uneasy in her grave. Her spirit seeks revenge on those who harmed her during life, and she murders them one by one. Guilt, combined with Maya’s haunting take their toll on Jack’s mental health and he slowly succumbs to her torment.
The exegesis, Nature is a Haunted House, explores the evolution of Australian Gothic literature from colonial times through to contemporary works and examines three novels written in the last ten years. Charlotte Wood’s The Natural Way of Things (2015), Emily O’Grady’s The Yellow House (2018) and Felicity McLean’s The Van Apfel Girls are Gone (2019) deal with secrets that haunt the protagonists and the effect they have on the present.