Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Psychological fiction'

Architecture exists as shelter, separating space into the inside and the outside. This separation is a crucial point in our experience of architecture. This separation is the first moment of physical interaction with the construct in our penetration of the construct. However, architecture is not only a physical language. It is nonphysical, in that architecture is defined as the art and science of building, etc. This separation, internally, both produces the architecture as well as the ideas that are produced from the architecture. Architecture is held in-between, the movement or passage from one to the other is perceived as an external transition and an internal passage into the realm of arts and sciences. The mediation in passage from one to the other may be perceived through the dialectic. This allows architecture to contain both external and internal mediation of extremes.
Department of Architecture

August Diamond is left lost after the sudden death of her father. The stories in Dance Lessons explore the themes of loss and grief, retreat and return, and finding your true self. The collection is a novel in stories, each story exposing another layer of August's past, her family, and their complicated relationships.

A collection of short stories, All Begins to Bloom follows a range of young protagonists living in the greater Los Angeles area. In a time when even the most underground lifestyles are commodified, when Independent media is just another genre, when every mode of living has seemingly been exhausted, these characters struggle to forge an identity in the face of adulthood. From a group of surfers reeling from a careless death ("The Pier") to a young artistic couple brought together by the will to overcome an eating disorder ("All Begins to Bloom"), these stories explore the hollow promises among various subcultures. Instead of finding solace in the possibilities of the future, the narrators often gaze into the past, searching for a lost lesson inside the machinery of an old camera, or a neighbor's memory of the riots of 1992 ("Daydreamers"). Within the confining age of relentless digitization, the fight for human connection is waged. Two brothers, in a string of emails, attempt to make sense of their father's surprising infidelities, exposing the smothered confusions of childhood ("Things Emails Should Not Contain"). In the throes of withdrawal, a young pill-popper is forced to comfort his mother's best friend, a recent widow ("Pharm Boy"). These stories attempt to find an answer to apathy, the unwillingness to care, and to break apart all the defenses one uses to shelter oneself. Whether failing or succeeding, the striving to connect with one another proves to be invigorating.

Set in rural Kansas, this story follows the lives of Jonathan Tate, his sister Lily Anne Tate, and their father, up until his death, Hershall Tate. They are an isolated family, seemingly living outside of time. John opens the novel with a walk into town to set the contrast between him and the rest of the world. Time is the theme and essence, because every scene and the tone of the scenes are weighted by the imminence of Hershall's death. He is dying slowly and so their lives move slowly. Lily can't help but be ornery, while John, assuming all the chores and anxiety of the future without his father, is reserved and reluctant. Hershall is set in his ways and not in a hurry to get the house in order before his death. There is the old-fashioned nature of Hershall, the isolated nature of the whole family, and the rest of the modern world to contend with. These beginning pages are setting up the next stage of the novel where Lily and John begin their journey after their father's death.

For the past decade or so, a shaky aura of respectability has surrounded the genre of science fiction. Recognition as a branch of literature was late coming to what was, and to some extent still is, a confused form of fiction. Critics are still unable to agree on a definition of science fiction; they are no longer even sure what the letters 'SF' should stand for; they argue about its role, relevance and historical origins, and debate its relationship with 'mainstream' literature. What they do seem to agree on, however, is that science fiction is a form of popular literature that offers an alternative approach to the common concerns of the dominant mode of narrative - realist fiction. Having been relegated to the periphery of 'literature' for so long, the realm of science fiction has been largely unmediated by academic criticism and there is still a tendency for some literary critics to dismiss science fiction as childish, escapist and generally unimportant. Kirpal Singh (1983) explains: Various factors have conspired - and I use the term deliberately - to create problems for sf. As is usual in most areas of human intercourse whenever an apparently new and vigorous subject offers itself for exploration, human beings are wont to put up resistance. The literary fraternity ... have time and again given scant attention to sf. Some critics see sf as an inferior form of literary expression and so do not think it worth their time and energy; sf in their minds is associated with Superman, Bug-Eyed Monsters, and Spaceships. They find all this irritating, or at best amusing. There is a tendency - very often expressed in no uncertain terms - to regard sf as juvenile ... not quite the thing for adults and certainly not suitable for the literary critic. (p.106) Not only science fiction, however, has suffered at the hands of literary critics as has been indicated by Stephen Knight in his book, Form and Ideology in Crime Fiction (1980): Literary criticism has shied away from commercial success as a ground for taking a book seriously. Literary critical skills have not been used to study the interests and needs of mass society: they have been turned inwards in a fully ideological way to gratify and ratify the taste - and needs to - of the highly educated minority who validate their position by displaying a grasp of complicated cultural artifacts. (p.2) Marc Angenot has described 'paraliterature' as occupying "the space outside the literary enclosure, as a forbidden, taboo, and perhaps degraded product; against which the 'self' of literature is forged". (in Parrinder, 1980, p.46) Despite the discriminatory 'high' versus 'low' literary dichotomy, it is becoming less necessary to justify the study of popular literary forms. Recent years have seen a stretching of boundaries resulting in a proliferation of essays that address various forms of popular literature, science fiction included, by people from a wide variety of disciplinary perspectives. Most of these studies have approached popular literature as bodies of fictional works with similar themes. They typically focus on such textual elements as plot formula, narrative, characterisation, style and symbolism. Derek Longhurst ( 1989) identifies "a range of largely formalist strategies designed to demonstrate that unlike 'literature', popular fiction was standardized and formulaic, a debased coinage of little 'moral' value, distorting the truths of 'lived experience', time-bound rather than addressing the transhistorical and universal territory of the 'human condition"'. (p.1) Such strategies ignore the actual readers of popular literature and as a result the cultural roles of such texts are not well understood. "A good literary critic should be able to say why a mass-seller works, and how it works. The dismissive certainties of most comments on popular culture do not satisfy these requirements." (Knight, p.2) Popular culture audiences have received quite condescending treatment as many studies have assumed them to be a passive and receptive body upon which ideological content is inflicted. In 1981, Janice Radway, writing about Gothic romances, expressed concern at the lack of theories connecting popular literature and culture: " ... studies characterized by considerable variety in subject matter and method are united by their common assumption that popular literature tends only to reconfirm cultural convention". (p.140) Radway's insistence on shifting attention from isolated texts 'to the complex social event of reading' culminated in her development of an innovative methodology for analysing popular literature and its application to romantic fiction (1984). Having concluded that 'ethnographies of reading' were what was required, Radway set out to discover what it is about romantic fiction that captivates millions of female readers. In Reading the Romance (1984), Radway describes how, instead of focusing on the romantic text alone, she concentrated on the readers' perspective. In distinguishing between the event of reading and the actual text, Radway draws heavily on the work of Stanley Fish (1980) who challenges the notion of text as a fixed object. Although Fish's views imply an impotency of the actual text that deserves to be questioned, his identification of the informed reader as part of an interpretive community that agrees upon interpretive conventions is extremely important. Richard Johnson (1986) advocates the connection of readings with 'lived culture' and the necessity to study the readers' milieu (p.285). While acknowledging the importance of textual analysis, Johnson questions its competence to handle an 'inter-discursive reality of reading'. Longhurst describes this emergence of involvement of the reader as an emphasis on reading 'textuality' rather than the reading of self-contained texts (p.5). It is Radway's model for popular literature analysis that lays the groundwork for this present study, which focuses on the nature of the relationship between science fiction readers and the science fiction text. The objective of this research is to gain a greater understanding of what motivates people to read a particular type of text and to strive toward an explanation for the genre's popularity. Some of the questions to be explored are: what do the readers find particularly interesting and enjoyable about these texts?; what are their criteria for distinguishing between 'good' and 'bad' texts?; and to what extent does the collective enthusiasm exhibited by some readers of science fiction affect the content of science fiction texts? For Radway's Smithton readers, the event of reading was considered more important than any particular novel encountered in the process. Similarly, this study will reveal that reading texts as a member of the science fiction community is more important to the readers than are the individual texts themselves. 'Fandom' is central to science fiction. In a genre long neglected by outside commentators, science fiction fandom has established its own standards of quality (Lundwall, 1971, p.227). Commenting on the social universe of fandom, author Roger Zelazny (1975) writes: ... science fiction is unique in possessing a fandom and convention system which make for personal contacts between authors and readers, a situation which may be of peculiar significance. When an author is in a position to meet and speak with large numbers of his readers he cannot help, at least for a little while, feeling somewhat as oldtime story-tellers must have felt in facing the questions and the comments of a live audience. The psychologbe given some consideration as an influence on the field. (p.11) This subculture of fandom peculiar to science fiction attracts hordes of devotees world-wide. They set up clubs, edit magazines, share a shorthand language of fandom, attend science fiction conventions and take their place in a vast network of correspondence. Ursula Le Guin identifies "a ready audience - ready to discuss and to defend and to attack and to argue with each other and with the artist, to the irritation of and the entertainment and the benefit of them all" (1975). Bob Tucker describes the science fiction phenomenon as "a network of infinite self-analysis and mutual support which is quite unparalleled even in Alcoholics Anonymous" (1975). Such descriptions highlight the existence of an active, socially important subculture. The very nature and extent of communication within the science fiction community, particularly the relatively enormous amount of feedback science fiction writers receive from readers, makes it appear simplistic to explain the proliferation of the different variations of the science fiction literary form as a preoccupation of writers alone. "In the democratic, if incestuous, processes of this subculture, SF readers are more vocal than those of other popular forms, and as a consequence, exercise some influence over writers and publishers." (Mellor, 1984) According to Linda Fleming (1978), in an article titled "The American SF Subculture", A SF subculture originated, developed, and exists today because of the enthusiasm SF arouses in some people, the subsequent commercial exploitation of that enthusiasm, and because both professionals and readers have found belonging to a group a socially rewarding experience for brief or long periods of their lives. (p.290) Fleming prompts the investigation of this network which mediates the reading experience for so many readers and has done so for many years. Sheical process involved in this should poses questions about fandom and the nature of people's involvement in science fiction that have yet to be answered adequately by research. This study will illuminate several of these, accepting Fleming's assertion that modern science fiction cannot be fully understood without understanding the subculture in which so much of it evolved. In order to account for the existence of modern science fiction and its many themes, a review of the field of science fiction will include a brief history of the genre and its followers. The Australian science fiction scene will be examined so that the primary research can be considered in context. Central to this study are the members of the Melbourne Science Fiction Club who, as survey respondents, have expressed what it is to be part of Australian science fiction fandom as no external critic can. The Melbourne Science Fiction Club was chosen to take part in the survey for several reasons: Melbourne is recognised as the centre of Australian science fiction fandom; the Club has a history longer than most others in Australia (it was formed in 1953); the Club meets every week and produces a bimonthly publication; it is a 'general' club, that is, not concerned solely with one particular strand of science fiction, like Star Trek movies; and, most importantly, the members were willing participants. Obviously, members of the Melbourne Science Fiction Club do not constitute a random representative sample of readers of the science fiction genre. They did, however, present an excellent opportunity to test questionnaire design and sample a slice of science fiction's active readership. The survey of readers is supplemented with content analysis of their Club 'fanzine', Ethel the Aardvark, and science fiction texts are discussed as the products of interpretation. Of the great variety of science fiction narrative types, disaster novels are identified as possessing a formula that has proved particularly durable. Discussion of several disaster texts that illustrate the modern evolution of this formula reveals many of science fiction's icons and oppositions that promote regularities in textual readings. While the questionnaire follows a similar format to that designed by Radway, it has proved more appropriate to tap science fiction fandom's correspondence and fanzine network than to hold in-depth discussions with Club members as Radway was able to arrange with the Smithton readers. Science fiction fandom's preference and, indeed, exuberance, for written communication has compensated for some of the problems inherent in being distanced from survey respondents. The reason for choosing to follow Radway's method, aside from its wide acclaim as a useful model for future literary research, is an interest in applying her approach to another genre of popular literature. Radway offers a way of connecting the analysis of texts and structural insights with study of the readers in the texts' wider socio-cultural context. The nature of repetitive reading of various types of science fiction texts becomes particularly interesting when it is considered that fans may be equally, if not more, submerged in science fiction fandom than they are in science fiction.

This thesis deals with the loss experienced by all participants in adoption, especially during the period 1950 to 1980 and with particular, but not exclusive, reference to the birth mother and her child. The work is in two parts, the first being a contemporary novel, 'Heartlines', written in the form of a fictional memoir from the point of view of a woman in her early forties who suddenly is confronted with the daughter she relinquished twenty years previously, and whose existence she has kept secret from her husband. The novel deals with the difficult relationship that develops between mother ann daughter and the adjustments the main character must make in her realisation that the young woman who has come back into her life is not the person she had imagined her to be during the years since she was forced to give her up for adoption. Part Two is an essay that puts into context the cultural background of the period studied, the stigmatisation of women who bore ex-nuptial children and how the society in which they lived left them few options other than to abandon their infants to strangers. It deals with the consequences for young women following a lapse of judgement that would have repercussions for the rest of their lives. Many of the women who relinquished babies during the period are believed to have suffered post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of their experience, and remained in an ongoing state of pathological grief.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2006.
Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Study of themes in the novels of Edward Abbey, Lan Cao, Toni Morrison, and Leslie Marmon Silko. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 233-238). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

Inside Story explores the essence of story and attempts to connect the audience to the significance of story in their own lives. The documentary examines story and determines the elements necessary for its formation. The film investigates the psychological aspects of story, inspects the physiological processing of story that connects story to the way we think and perceive, and finally, emphasizes the functions and values of story.

This thesis explores the diverse and intricate ways the psychological horror game genre can characterise a narrative by blurring the boundaries of reality and imagination in favour of storytelling. By utilising the Freudian uncanny, four video game fictions are dissected and analysed to perceive whether horror needs a narrative to be engaging and pleasurable. A discussion will also be made if video game fictions should be considered in the literary field or its own, and how it compares to written fiction in terms of interactivity, engagement, and immersion.

Gestalt psychologists Kurt Koffka and Wolfgang Köhler argue that human perception relies on a form, or gestalt, into which perceptions are assimilated. Gestalt theory has been applied to the visual arts by Rudolf Arnheim and to literature by Wolfgang Iser. My original contribution to knowledge is to use gestalt theory to perform literary criticism, an approach that highlights the importance of perception in William Gibson's novels and the impact of this emphasis on posthumanism and science fiction studies. Science fiction addresses the problem of difference and the relationship between self and other. Gestalt literary criticism takes perception as the interface between the self and the other, the human and the inhuman. Gibson's work is of particular interest as his early novels are representative of 1980s cyberpunk while his later novels push the boundaries of science fiction through their contemporary settings. By engaging with Gibson the thesis makes its contribution to contemporary science fiction criticism explicit. In Gibson's Sprawl trilogy autopoiesis defines life and consciousness, elevating the importance of perception (Chapter I). The Bridge trilogy uses the metaphor of chaos theory to examine dialectic tensions, such as the tension between space and cyberspace (Chapter II). Faulty pattern recognition is a key theme in Gibson's post-9/11 work as gestalt perception allows and limits knowledge (Chapter III). Chapter IV explains how the gestalt in psychoanalysis creates a fragmented subject in Spook Country (2007). Finally, the gestalt appears as a parallax view, a view that oscillates between the world we experience and the world as represented in the text (Chapter V). I conclude that gestalt literary criticism offers an exciting new reading of Gibson's work that recognises its engagement with visual culture and cyberpunk as a whole.

This thesis is concerned with the reading girl and the potential pleasures and transgressions she experiences through popular fiction. Throughout modernity, the western bourgeois girl has been directed towards texts that both validate proper, and caution against improper, forms of femininity. This practice continues within the institutions of family and education as well as through the public library system and commercial booksellers. Although the contemporary girl is subjected to feminism, culture continues to insist on her domestic role. The notion of identification is central to societal fears about the material that finds its way into the hands of reading girls. Because the reading girl can align herself imaginatively with characters, commentators worry that she might absorb passivity from passive characters, wanton habits from wanton characters, or murderous habits from murderous characters. Reading theory tends to reinforce these fears through a particularly disparaging assessment of popular fictions. The girl‘s identifications with characters in popular fiction continue to worry her familial, educational, psychological and moral guardians.Using a methodology based on the psychoanalytic theories of Jacques Lacan, I consider the girl reader as a subject split between her unconscious and the identity she cobbles together through identifications with embodied and representational others. Because of this foundational split, she can never fully articulate reading pleasures and their effects can never be calculated with consequence. Reading participates in the girl‘s struggle to achieve the precarious feminine position, and provides her with pleasures along the way. To demonstrate some of the pleasures available to the girl, I undertake readings of texts associated with adolescence and femininity. I examine young adult fiction that is directed at the adolescent reader to expose the pleasures that lie beneath the injunction to adopt a heteronormative adult identity. From books addressing the girl, I move to melodramatic and sensational adult fictions located in the domestic. In these fictions, the girl is stifled and distorted because she is captive to her family and cannot escape to establish the direction of her desire and seek the recognition of the social Other. Finally, I look at texts marked by violence. Taking one fictional text from the horror genre, and one non-fictional true crime text, I explore the unspeakable pleasures of reading about blood and death.In these readings, I investigate both conservative and transgressive pleasures. These pleasures co-exist in all of the fictions explored in this thesis. All reading tends towards the cautionary, and the book cannot corrupt the normally constituted reading girl. Through identifying with characters, she can build up a repertoire of feminine masks and develop an awareness of the precarious position of womanliness. In the end, I argue, the adolescent reading girl cannot be determined or totalised despite the best efforts of the book and its commentators.

This dissertation is a collection of four long short stories about contemporary Americans written in the mode of psychological realism. “Bare Knuckles” depicts the struggles of a young man trying to “make it” in the world of illegal boxing. “ZOSO” focuses on the breakdown of an upper-middleclass family forced to move from the rustbelt to the “New South.” In “Dusted,” a man ill-equipped to navigate through the adult world turns to substance abuse and violence as a “way out.” “Sugar Skulls” explores the fascination with death in the punk rock world.

This thesis is concerned with engaging a critic who has been neglected by his peers in the field of Joyce studies for more than forty years. This critic, Joseph Campbell, is an American scholar more popularly known for his studies in myth. However, he began his intellectual career contributing to a subject that emerged in the early years of the critical reception of Finnegans Wake: that the dream depicted in Joyce???s final masterpiece is dependent on a Dreamer. The neglect Campbell???s work has endured is largely due, this thesis argues, to an inaccurate treatment of his reading of this dream figure. This inaccuracy largely stems from a critic, Clive Hart, who engages with the debate of the Dreamer as an introductory means to demonstrating the ???structural??? theories involved in the Wake. As a minor feature of Hart???s analysis, Campbell???s theory of the Dreamer is identified with another method, one belonging to a fellow American Joycean, Edmund Wilson, a method incongruent with Campbell theories of dream consciousness. Subsequently, Campbell remains an undeveloped scholar within Joyce criticism. To counter Hart???s inaccurate depiction of Campbell, this thesis argues that there is provision in early scholarship to re-evaluate Campbell???s theory of the Dreamer in more developed terms. In this respect, the thesis is divided up into three sections. The first section is a literary review of this early scholarship, demonstrating certain influential strains of thought equivalent to Campbell???s ???metaphoric??? concept of the Dreamer, one that contrasts with the rigid, ???literal??? ideas his work is predominantly identified. The second section examines Campbell???s account in detail and the specific criticism it drew from Hart. Finally, the third section argues that Campbell???s interpretation of the Dreamer is best engaged through an archetypal account of the Dreamer, one that regards the symbols encountered in the Wake through the ???guiding??? features of a mythological concept of the psyche sensitive to the reflexive tendencies of the dream portrayed, Campbell???s ???cosmogonic cycle???.

A fictional novel utilizing third person limited narration from the perspective of the primary character, Ilya Kollide, who narrates the story as though it were happening in his head as it occurred, with frequent embellishments. He has come to live near an old mansion on the Trans-Siberian Railroad, named Neimasaurus, to find an antiquated, dusty world of faded aristocracy. Temporarily orphaned at the age sixteen by the recent death of his parents, he has traveled four thousand miles to live with his last living relative, an uncle named Demetri, whom he has never met. The year is 1990, only this is not a world where the rule of the Tsar was supplanted by the Soviet Union. Instead, it is a logical exploration of what Russia might resemble, had communism never taken root. While the fantastical may or may not occur, depending upon how the reader chooses to interpret the point of view of the narrator, the setting in and of itself is not meant to be fantastical. Ilya discovers that all the servants who work there are deaf, as is his uncle and his own now deceased parents, whom he carries around in an urn after mixing their ashes together. While working at the great estate of the Neimasaurus family, Ilya discovers a surprising numbers of stories and people who both parallel his own experiences and serve as allegorical warnings toward his future mistakes in life. He becomes obsessed with the idea that he is to blame for his parents' death and sets out on a quest to bring redemption to the wounded inhabitants of the estate, only to discover that not everyone wants to be helped. In fact, they want him dead. They see him as an allegory, just as he sees them. To the young man Shoji Yamano, Ilya represents everything he was, and can no longer be. As such a reflection, he resolves to shatter Ilya like a mirror. The novel charts Ilya's personal growth from a neurotic wreck, incapable of normal interaction with people, to a young man capable of not just self-sacrifice, but an understanding of what it actually means to literally sacrifice himself for the well-being of someone he barely knows. He learns to value time spent with others rather than dwelling within a narcissistic and lonely fantasy world.?
M.F.A.
Masters
English
Arts and Humanities
Creative Writing

As the written accompaniment for The Luxury of Tears, a twelve-minute documentary video exploring the emotional impact of sexual assault on male survivors and their partners, this document examines the visual texts of both the fiction and nonfiction genres. Specifically, I contend that fiction film manufactures male survivorship with regard to rape events in such manner which contributes to the thematization of social silence. Such silence perpetuates the feminization of rape as a social problem, and dissolves the development of male survivor resources. A discussion of production processes, challenges, and resolutions is included.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 246-258) Presents readings of six novels which depict something of the nature of war trauma. Collectively, the novels suggest that the attempt to narrativise war trauma is inherently problematic. Traces the disjunctions between narrative and war trauma which ensure that war trauma remains an elusive and private phenomonen; the gulf between private experience and public discourse haunts each of the novels.

Magister Artium - MA
In this paper I attempt to look critically at the literary construction of one particular 'race', namely the 'Coloureds', in Sarah Gertrude Millin's God's Stepchildren. To this end, the paper draws on the historical background of Millin, and investigates the way in which Millin has consciously and strategically formed, as it were, a 'unique' Coloured identity. Furthermore, the paper explores the proximity or tension between author and narrator in the novel. This tension, I suggest, emerges in response to various pressures in the novel which in turn are based upon the author's social, political and economic background. Evidence to this effect is derived from Millin's biography and other sources. What emerges from the paper is that the concepts 'race' and 'Coloured', as they are employed in this novel, are equally elusive. In attempting to piece together a 'race', the novel communicates Millin's aversion to miscegenation, and discloses characteristics of her 'self'. Ironically, I conclude, she falls prey to the same kinds of prejudices that she projects onto her literary subjects.

Thesis (PhD)--Macquarie University, Division of Humanities, Department of English, 2007.
Bibliography: p. 239-289.
Introduction -- Fantastic metamorphosis as childhood 'otherness' -- The metamorphic growth of wings : deviant development and adolescent hybridity -- Tenors of maturation: developing powers and changing identities -- Changing representations of werewolves: ideologies of racial and ethnic otherness -- The desire for transcendence: jouissance in selkie narratives -- Conclusion -- Bibliography -- Appendix: "The great Silkie of Sule Skerry": three versions.
My central thesis is that fantastic motifs work on a metaphorical level to encapsulate and express ideologies that have frequently been naturalised as 'truths'. I develop a theory of motif metaphors in order to examine the ideologies generated by the fantastic motif of metamorphosis in a range of contemporary children's and young adult fantasy texts. Although fantastic metamorphosis is an exceptionally prevalent and powerful motif in children's and young adult fantasy literature, symbolising important ideas about change and otherness in relation to childhood, adolescence, and maturation, and conveying important ideologies about the world in which we live, it has been little analysed in children's literature criticism. The detailed analyses of particular metamorphosis motif metaphors in this study expand and refine our academic understanding of the metamorphosis figure and consequently provide insight into the underlying principles and particular forms of a variety of significant ideologies.
By examining several principal metamorphosis motif metaphors I investigate how a number of specific cultural beliefs are constructed and represented in contemporary children's and young adult fantasy literature. I particularly focus upon metamorphosis as a metaphor for childhood otherness; adolescent hybridity and deviant development; maturation as a process of self-change and physical empowerment; racial and ethnic difference and otherness; and desire and jouissance. I apply a range of pertinent cultural theories to explore these motif metaphors fully, drawing on the interpretive frameworks most appropriate to the concepts under consideration. I thus employ general psychoanalytic theories of embodiment, development, language, subjectivity, projection, and abjection; poststructuralist, social constructionist, and sociological theories; and wide-ranging literary theories, philosophical theories, gender and feminist theories, race and ethnicity theories, developmental theories, and theories of fantasy and animality. The use of such theories allows for incisive explorations of the explicit and implicit ideologies metaphorically conveyed by the motif of metamorphosis in different fantasy texts.
In this study, I present a number of specific analyses that enhance our knowledge of the motif of fantastic metamorphosis and of significant cultural ideologies. In doing so, I provide a model for a new and precise approach to the analysis of fantasy literature.
Mode of access: World Wide Web.
[12], 294 p

There are many factors that contributed to the proliferation of visual codes, metaphors and references to the gendered gaze in women's fiction of the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. This thesis argues that the visual details in women's novels published between 1778 and 1815 are more significant than scholars have previously acknowledged. My analysis of the oeuvres of Jane Austen, Ann Radcliffe, Maria Edgeworth and Fanny Burney shows that visuality — the nexus between the verbal and visual communication — provided them with a language within language capable of circumventing the cultural strictures on female expression in a way that allowed for concealed resistance. It conveyed the actual ways in which women ‘should' see and appear in a society in which the reputation was image-based. My analysis journeys through physiognomic, psychological, theatrical and codified forms of visuality to highlight the multiplicity of its functions. I engage with scholarly critiques drawn from literature, art, optics, psychology, philosophy and anthropology to assert visuality's multidisciplinary influences and diplomatic potential. I show that in fiction and in actuality, women had to negotiate four scopic forces that determined their ‘looks' and manners of looking: the impartial spectator, the male gaze, the public eye and the disenfranchised female gaze. In a society dominated by ‘frustrated utterance,' penetrating gazes and the perpetual threat of misinterpretation, women novelists used references to the visible and the invisible to comment on emotions, socio-economic conditions and patriarchal abuses. This thesis thus offers new insights into verbal economy by reassessing expression and perception from an unconventional point-of-view.

Figure obsédante de l’imaginaire collectif, le fou a longtemps été chargé de significations qui le dépassent ; le mythe de la folie fait recette sur la scène littéraire mais les malades n’en sont que des figurants. Alors que le fou réel est maintenu dans les marges de la littérature comme de la société, le fantasme culturel de la folie est nourri et modelé au XIXe siècle par la littérature romantique ou fantastique et exalté au début du siècle suivant par les avant-gardes historiques. Un certain nombre de textes de romanciers du XXe siècle, parmi lesquels Georges Duhamel, André Baillon, Julien Green, Henry de Montherlant ou encore Alexandre Vialatte, mettent au contraire en œuvre un décentrement du regard littéraire de la folie vers le fou – du mythe à l’individu. Ce sont les modalités et les logiques de cette émancipation de la figure du fou et de son affirmation comme sujet – au sens de thème comme de subjectivité – autonome dans l’espace romanesque que ce travail s’applique à éclairer. Ces récits fictionnels qui font de la conscience aliénée à la fois le foyer et l’objet principal de la narration mettent en scène une folie presque familière, où l’idéalisation cède le pas à la représentation de troubles intimes et ordinaires, qui atteignent un personnage banal menant une existence modeste. Par leurs affinités sémantiques, syntaxiques et pragmatiques, ils forment un « sous-genre » romanesque, celui des "histoires de fous". L’enjeu de cette thèse est de déterminer le répertoire générique de ces romans tout en examinant la manière dont la folie interroge les moyens et les pouvoirs de la fiction romanesque. Il s’agit également de mettre au jour ce que la littérature nous aide à comprendre de cet impensable, envers de l’expérience partagée de la raison, et d’observer comment les romanciers contribuent à refléter tout autant qu’à remodeler les formes de cet objet social et culturel
Haunting our collective imagination, the madman has always been laden with symbolic significance. The myth of madness is abundantly present in literature, however those characters with an actual mental illness are ultimately overshadowed. While mental patients are pushed to the margins of literature, just as they are pushed to the outskirts of society, this particular cultural legend of madness develops during the nineteenth century in Romantic and fantastic literature and stays in the spotlight at the beginning of the following century through the avant-garde artists. In contrast to the aforementioned representation of madness, a number of novelists of the twentieth century, including Georges Duhamel, André Baillon, Julien Green, Henry de Montherlant or Alexandre Vialatte, brought on a literary shift away from “madness” towards “the madman” – from the myth to the individual. The focus of this piece of work is on the modality and logic leading to the emancipation of the figure of the madman and its affirmation as an autonomous subject – in every sense of the world – in the literary field. These fictional stories, where the alienated consciousness is both the focus and the main subject of the narrative, present the reader with an almost familiar madness. They don’t idealize insanity but provide representations of almost ordinary disorders, which affect a banal character living a modest life. Through their semantic, syntactic and pragmatic preferences, these stories form a fictional “sub-genre”, called “histoires de fous”. This research aims at determining the generic features of these novels and at considering the way madness questions the means and powers of fiction. Another purpose is to shed light on how literature helps us understand this inconceivable experience, which represents the other side of the commonly shared human experience of reason and logic, and to study how novelists help to reveal as well as reshape the characterization of this social and cultural topic

Often hailed as “China’s Stephen King,” Chinese psychological suspense author Cai Jun occupies a position at the peak of the new wave of young authors flooding China’s popular literature market. In order to understand Cai’s popularity as an author, the impact his works and writing have on this market, and how he creates his particular brand of suspense fiction, it is both necessary to put his works into a larger context and analyze his writing. This thesis provides a brief overview of the recent literary scene in China, from the rise of internet literature and the comeback of genre fiction to the advent of mooks, the evolution of young adult literature, and the development of the author marketing industry, and also addresses the “pure vs. popular” controversy in China’s literary world, identifies how Cai fits into these trends, and determines who Cai is as a writer in terms of genre, story content, and literary reception through the translation and analysis of Cai’s short story “Kidnapped.”

This thesis contains five short stories, each narrated by a character with a psychological disorder. The disorders represented are as follows: alcohol use disorder, schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s disease, phobic disorder, and autism spectrum disorder. Research was conducted in two parts: (1) study of psychological texts including peer reviewed articles and case studies and (2) study of literary works including memoirs and novels. The author aims to use storytelling to humanize and therefore generate empathy for those with mental illnesses.

This thesis examines the transgenerational aspects of trauma, focusing on both the phenomenon of anorexia and the discourse about it in the humanities. It seeks to determine the role of trauma in the disturbing a/effects, or affective and effective elements, that have been associated with first-hand accounts of anorexic experience, and to track the way that these same a/effects complicate those theories that reduce anorexia to culturalist frameworks. The dissertation Disgusting Woundedness: Anorexia and the transgenerational transmission of trauma argues that even when trauma is invoked in prominent discussions about anorexia in the humanities, the discourse fails to take proper account of it and also fails to notice, as it were, its own failure to do so, since an abjective, or compulsively dismissive, substitution of the traumatic material in the text is bound up with a teleological or goal-driven pursuit of the substituted object. This pattern of abjective substitution is also identifiable in the internal dynamics of anorexia, whose modes, furthermore, can be likened to key narrative features of the Gothic. Hence, against perspectives which maintain that the more disturbing textual features of a first-hand account of anorexic experience, such as its Gothic detail and narrative digression, threaten a vulnerable reader with anorexic “contagion”, this dissertation argues that these features are conduits, rather, of traumatic material that is yet to be brought to therapeutically representative language, and hence yet to be addressed. Therefore, any transmission of anorexia would require, in the first instance, a shared mode of response to the radical difficulty of putting words to trauma. Research findings from attachment theory are then used to form the proposition that the very same reflective, mentalising approach being advocated for eating disorders in the clinical context might be useful in moderating the abjective processes in our reading and writing of anorexia. A reflective approach has the capacity to do more than merely forestall our tendencies to abject traumatic material in a text which, otherwise, might prompt a potentially infinite series of teleological abjections. It also provides a means for this traumatic material to be articulated in the text and, as a result, for its distortive a/effects to be eased. The second part of this thesis – the novel, The Wall of Still Lives – complements the investigation by testing the extent to which a reflective use of digressive strategies has the capacity to access relevant traumatic material in a fictional account of anorexic experience, even when the anxious teleology of a narrative voice works to exclude it. Here, the relationship between teleological narrative processes and reflective disruptions to these processes is played out in full in a fictive realm.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 246-258)
258 leaves ; 30 cm.
Presents readings of six novels which depict something of the nature of war trauma. Collectively, the novels suggest that the attempt to narrativise war trauma is inherently problematic. Traces the disjunctions between narrative and war trauma which ensure that war trauma remains an elusive and private phenomonen; the gulf between private experience and public discourse haunts each of the novels.
Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of English, 2001

Cheung Fung-Ling.
Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2003.
Includes bibliographical references (leaves 106-112).
Abstracts in English and Chinese.
Abstract --- p.i
Acknowledgements --- p.v
Chapter Chapter One --- Introduction --- p.1
Chapter Chapter Two --- Passionate Impulses in Childhood and Adolescence --- p.26
Chapter Chapter Three --- Moral Dilemmas in Love --- p.52
Chapter Chapter Four --- The Ultimate Return --- p.75
Chapter Chapter Five --- Conclusion --- p.99
Notes --- p.104
Bibliography --- p.106

Towards the end of the 1960s in France we witness the awakening of the memory of the Holocaust and the Occupation which coincides with the publication of Patrick Modiano’s first novel, La place de l’étoile. It is from this time that Jewish memory of the Holocaust begins to surface and we see the emergence of a literature of the post-Holocaust generation. Modiano belongs to this generation that, being deprived of a personal memory of the Holocaust, turns to this period in a quest for roots and identity. Like his Jewish colleagues, Modiano struggles to come to terms with a past that he has not experienced and an absence of memory. This dissertation analyses Modiano’s use of the period of the Holocaust as signifier of Jewish identity in four of his novels in order to highlight the role of the issue of Jewish identity in the construction of a textual identity
Vers la fin des années 60 on voit en France le réveil de la mémoire de la Shoah et de l’Occupation qui coïncide avec la publication du premier roman de Patrick Modiano, La place de l’étoile. C’est à partir de cette époque que la mémoire juive de la Shoah va pouvoir se faire entendre et qu’on constate l’émergence d’une littérature de la génération d’après la Shoah. Modiano appartient à cette génération qui, étant dépourvue d’une mémoire personnelle de la Shoah, se tourne vers cette période dans une quête de racines et d’identité. Comme ses confrères juifs, Modiano a du mal à se réconcilier avec un passé qu’il n’a pas vécu et une absence de mémoire. Cette étude examine de près le recours de Modiano aux années de la Shoah en tant que signifiant de l’identité juive dans quatre ouvrages afin de mettre en exergue le rôle de la problématique de l’identité juive dans la construction d’une identité textuelle chez cet écrivain
Linguistics and Modern Languages
M. A. (French)

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)
In his novels Slaughterhouse-five and The Sirens of Titan, Kurt Vonnegut explores issues of cultural identity in technologically-advanced societies post-World War II. With the rise of globalization and rapid technological advancements that occurred postwar, humans worldwide were mitigating the effects of information overload and instability in cultural identity. The influx of cultural influences that accompany a global society draws attention to the fluidity and inevitability of cultural change. A heightened awareness of cultural influences—past and present—creates anxiety for the generation living postwar and before the dawn of the Information Age. This generation suffers from “cultural schizophrenia”: a fracturing of the psyche characterized by anxiety over unstable cultural identities and agency. With the characters of Billy Pilgrim and Winston Niles Rumfoord, Vonnegut explores the different reactions to and consequences of cultural schizophrenia. His unique writing style is an effective hybrid of science fiction conventions and the complexities of human culture and society. Ultimately, Vonnegut explores the dangers of detachment and the complicated nature of agency with novels that are both innovative and accessible.

Exegesis. The exegesis argues that contemporary women writers continue to find inspiration in the fairy tale, drawing on its form, themes, characters, symbolism and motifs to tell new stories. In particular, the exegesis claims that writers turn to the fairy tale for three broad purposes, two of which are contradictory, thereby suggesting the elasticity of the fairy tale as a structure. Firstly, fairy tales are used normatively, as a means of providing a structure that preserves traditional values, roles and politics (supporting the status quo). Secondly, fairy tales are used subversively to provide a structure that challenges ideas and assumptions around traditional values, usually associated with gender (subverting the status quo). And, thirdly, fairy tales are used as a structural formula, framework or technical tool to enhance characterisation, mood, atmosphere and meaning. The exegesis examines the way three writers, A.S. Byatt, Mercedes Lackey and Francesca Block employ Hans Christian Andersen's ""The Snow Queen"" as a framework for their fiction. Finally, I subject my own novel, ""Cold Vision"", to the same analysis, aiming to articulate the ideas and knowledge that were symbolically or indirectly expressed in the story, decoding the novel and exposing its themes and symbolism to discussion. Novel. When Evon Carr was a child, she believed in the power of her dreams. When her mother dies from cancer, Evon believes her dreams are responsible and vows never to dream again. As an adult, Evon works as a compliance officer for the Department of Immigration and Citizenship where she has learnt to be completely rational. She performs her duties with inhuman objectivity, remaining untouched by the human tragedy that she witnesses. Life starts to change for Evon on the day that her team raids a brothel and she detains an African healer dubbed "Mr Lucky", a man who never speaks. Instead, he gives Evon beads from his hair. Each bead unlocks a memory that takes Evon on a journey back to her childhood. With the help of her immigration team leader, Daniel Bell, Evon's unsympathetic approach to the people she encounters begins to change. When a woman commits suicide while being deported, Evon is forced to reconsider her hard-line approach to immigration enforcement and to come to terms with her own past. She returns to Mr Lucky, takes the last bead from him, and accepts her own guilt for her mother's death. Finally, she is able to dream again.
[pt.1]. Exegesis -- [pt. 2]. Cold vision (novel)