Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Sex In literature History and criticism'
To see the other types of publications on this topic, follow the link: Sex In literature History and criticism.
Create a spot-on reference in APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, and other styles
Consult the top 50 dissertations / theses for your research on the topic 'Sex In literature History and criticism.'
Next to every source in the list of references, there is an 'Add to bibliography' button. Press on it, and we will generate automatically the bibliographic reference to the chosen work in the citation style you need: APA, MLA, Harvard, Chicago, Vancouver, etc.
You can also download the full text of the academic publication as pdf and read online its abstract whenever available in the metadata.
Browse dissertations / theses on a wide variety of disciplines and organise your bibliography correctly.
1
Ross, Oliver Paul. "Same-sex desire and syncretism : 'homosexualities' in Indian literature and film." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2011. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.609810.
Full text
2
Gao, Qian. "Remembering the Cultural Revolution : history and nostalgia in the marketplace /." view abstract or download file of text, 2007. http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=1421604431&sid=1&Fmt=2&clientId=11238&RQT=309&VName=PQD.
Full textAbstract:
Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2007.Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 182-204). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.
3
Deans, Sharon. "Teen Gothic : sex, death and autonomy in young adult Gothic literature." Thesis, University of Stirling, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/1893/15908.
Full textAbstract:
Adolescence – that tricky time when children have not yet reached adulthood – is a time of much disturbance, change and growth. Faced with a body that changes, stretches and grows in all directions, as does the mind, the adolescent finds that they are not who they once were, and that their concerns are not what they once were. According to David Punter, the nature of adolescence is integral to Gothic writing; for him, adolescence can be seen as a time when there is a fantasised inversion of boundaries: ‘where what is inside finds itself outside (acne, menstrual blood, rage) and what we think should be visibly outside (heroic dreams, attractiveness, sexual organs) remain resolutely inside and hidden’ (Punter 1998, 6). However, this is to ‘Gothicise’ adolescents - to view adolescents themselves as Gothic beings – rather than to understand what the true nature of their concerns and fears really are. This thesis intends to investigate, therefore, those fears and concerns as they are represented through the medium of Gothic texts written for adolescents. I propose to examine what happens to the Gothic mode in the gap between young children’s literature and adult fiction and will look at, through the Gothic lens, Young Adult literature which explores the teenager's relationships with issues such as sex, death and autonomy. As the Gothic is ‘erotic at root’ (Punter 1996, 191) and often focused on the centrality of sexuality, I explore the nature of ‘changing bodies’ and consider the adolescent’s burgeoning sexuality and desire for romantic relationships; however, the Gothic is not just about sex, and I also examine adolescent engagement with the concept of death, before finally going on to study issues of adolescent power and autonomy.
4
Mei, Zhen, and 梅真. "A study of the third generation poetry from the gender perspective = Xing bie shi jiao xia de "di san dai" shi ge." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10722/207897.
Full textAbstract:
The Third Generation Poetry that existed in the 1980s’ Chinese literary circle has usually been regarded as the rebellion of the prevailing Misty Poetry. The Third Generation poets began to experiment with colloquial poems which were emphasizing on individual expressions and advocating for the importance of “self”, including the ego and sub-consciousness of both male and female. Through the gender perspective, it could be observed the Third Generation Poetry was rich in gender flavor. The poets especially those of the Female Poetry and the Boorish Fellows Poetry had respectively expressed the awareness and concerns of their own with poem writings.
The Female Poetry, featured with the structure of group poems, the rhetoric of metaphor and symbol, the connotation of the nocturnal consciousness and the lyric of confession, was a showcase for female perception. The issues regarding ego, private space, social identity, pain and love as well as "body writing" had been narrated and depicted by most of women writers. In the meantime, the poetry written by male turned to the descriptions of the lack of masculinity, or the flaunting of male power, or groaning with bitterness. Besides, the desire to vent, the memories of growth and even the detestation on the phenomenon of female being butchered had also been illustrated. Therefore an alternate inspection of the male poets’ views on female and vice versa would help to have a better understanding of gender concepts and the changing relationship between men and women in the last few decades of Chinese society.
Apart from thinking of gender differences and sexual identities the Third Generation Poetry not only focused on the relationship between parents and their children, but also on the connotations of the traditional idea of reproduction and the infant imagery, and even on portraying the rare image of the ego of androgyny. In addition, The Third Generation poetry also presented abundant interlinked gender imagery, such as natural things and body, the darkness and death, the space and items etc., which had been created for the enrichment of the symbolic meanings and the aesthetic significance of the poems.
In short, the social and cultural significance of various gender issues in line with the artistic techniques of the Third Generation Poetry had been scrutinized deeply in the chapters.published_or_final_version
Chinese
Doctoral
Doctor of Philosophy
5
Du, Preez Jenny Bozena. "Re-imagining love and intimacy in the poetry of Gabeba Baderoon, Ingrid De Kok, and Makhosazana Xaba." Thesis, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10948/d1020039.
Full textAbstract:
This dissertation explores the ways in which the poetry of Gabeba Baderoon, Ingrid de Kok and Makhosazana Xaba challenge the sexist discourses that allow for the exploitation of women‘s bodies. It will also examine how they re-imagine the script 1 of heterosexual romantic love which places women in a submissive position and closes down possibilities for human connections which do not fit within the narrow strictures of this notion of love. The poems selected come from Baderoon‘s two collections, The Dream in the Next Body (2005) and A Hundred Silences (2006), an anthology of Ingrid de Kok‘s poetry spanning all her previous collections entitled Seasonal Fires: New and Selected Poems (2006), and Makhosazana‘s Xaba‘s first poetry collection, These Hands (2005). All three of these contemporary, South African, woman poets present critiques of the sexual exploitation of women and offer explorations of romantic love, relationships and sexual intimacy alternative to contemporary, patriarchal heteronormativity. This analysis will take cognizance of the influence of apartheid and colonial history on the formation of gender politics. It will also examine the representation of women as sexual objects and the spectacularized and graphic depictions of sex and how these poets can be seen to re-present women and re-script sex. Whilst Baderoon and De Kok are concerned with re-imagining heterosexual romantic love and sexual intimacy, their rethinking of love can also be read as useful in engaging with 'queer'2 sexuality and romantic love outside of the heterosexual norm along with Xaba, who is concerned with lesbian desire. Finally, all three poets experiment with traditional poetic form and techniques and it is through this experimentation with poetic language, and the employment of what Julia Kristeva calls the semiotic, that these poets are able to re-imagine love and intimacy. Thus they might be said, to use Kristeva‘s phrase, to stage a 'revolution in poetic language'.
6
陳家春 and Ka-chun Chan. "Eros and mainland Chinese novels after the cultural revolution." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 1994. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B31212074.
Full text
7
Clarke, Joni Adamson. "A place to see: Ecological literary theory and practice." Diss., The University of Arizona, 1995. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/187115.
Full textAbstract:
"A Place to See: Ecological Literary Theory and Practice" approaches "American" literature with an inclusive interdisciplinarity that necessarily complicates traditional notions of both "earliness" and canon. In order to examine how "Nature" has been socially constructed since the seventeenth century to support colonialist objectives, I set American literature into a context which includes ancient Mayan almanacs, the Popol Vuh, early seventeenth and eighteenth century American farmer's almanacs, 1992 Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchu's autobiography, the 1994 Zapatista National Liberation army uprising in Mexico, and Leslie Silko's Almanac of the Dead. Drawing on the feminist, literary and cultural theories of Donna Haraway, Carolyn Merchant, and Michel Foucault, Julia Kristeva, Edward Said, Annette Kolodny, and Joseph Meeker, I argue that contemporary Native American writers insist that readers question all previous assumptions about "Nature" as uninhabited wilderness and "nature writing" as realistic, non-fiction prose recorded in Waldenesque tranquility. Instead the work of writers such as Silko, Louise Erdrich, Simon Ortiz, and Joy Harjo is a "nature writing" which explores the interconnections among forms and systems of domination, exploitation, and oppression across their different racial, sexual, and ecological manifestations. I posit that literary critics and teachers who wish to work for a more ecologically and socially balanced world should draw on the work of all members of our discourse community in cooperative rather than competitive ways and seek to transform literary theory and practice by bringing it back into dynamic interconnection with the worlds we all live in--inescapably social and material worlds in which issues of race, class, and gender inevitably intersect in complex and multi-faceted ways with issues of natural resource exploitation and conservation.
8
Pereira, Fellipe Ramos 1988. "Erotismo e crueldade em Coxas - sex fiction & delírios de Roberto Piva." [s.n.], 2015. http://repositorio.unicamp.br/jspui/handle/REPOSIP/270070.
Full textAbstract:
Orientador: Marcos Aparecido LopesDissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem
Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-27T21:59:09Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Pereira_FellipeRamos_M.pdf: 992086 bytes, checksum: 35d2346ea14779e6bf9fb3879bf1860b (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015
Resumo: O presente trabalho tem por objetivo desenvolver um estudo sobre a obra Coxas ¿ sex fiction & delírios de Roberto Piva. Buscar-se-á analisar os pontos de contato entre a crueldade e o erotismo no interior desta obra. Cabe assinalar que Coxas é uma obra erótica, que tem por tema o erotismo, e não uma obra com passagens eróticas. Por isso o que se busca fundamentalmente neste trabalho é analisar como erotismo e a crueldade são trabalhados pelo poeta. Para isso se desenvolveu dois pontos principais na pesquisa. O primeiro é exatamente o que diz respeito ao erotismo, porque a crueldade que se busca analisar provém deste aspecto e ele se mostra bastante relevante na obra em questão. O segundo é uma análise formal, pois há nitidamente em Coxas certa hibridização dos gêneros poesia e prosa. Para cumprir estas tarefas buscou-se primeiramente compreender como se compunha o quadro poético da época em que Roberto Piva inicia sua trajetória nas letras e como se configura o erotismo em sua obra. Em seguida se procurou alguns parâmetros especulativos que servissem de apoio à análises da obra nos aspectos apontados, por fim o problema formal se mostrou também de grande relevância, por isso há um capítulo destinado a expor os traços formais de Coxas
Abstract: This dissertation aims to develop a study about the book "Coxas" ¿ sex fiction & delirious, by Roberto Piva. We intend to analyze the points of contact between cruelty and eroticism within this work. It is worth highlighting that "Coxas" is an erotic literary work, whose theme is eroticism, and not an erotic passages book. That is why we seek primarily to investigate how eroticism and cruelty were used by the poet. In this regard we had developed two main points in the research. The first is exactly what concerns the eroticism, because the idea of cruelty that we seek to analyze comes from this aspect and it shows high relevance in the mentioned work. The second one is a formal analysis because it is possible to notice that there is poetry and prose genre hybridization into "Coxas". In order to accomplish this goal we sought to understand firstly on how the poetic scenario was composed from the time that Roberto Piva had begun his career in the poetic world and how eroticism had been configured in his work. And then, we tried some speculative parameters that work in order to give us support in the work analysis on what concerns the highlighted aspects. Finally, the formal point had also been showed highly relevant, so there is a chapter that intends to expose the formal features in "Coxas"
Mestrado
Teoria e Critica Literaria
Mestre em Teoria e História Literária
9
Roth, Jenny. "Law, gender and culture : representations of the female legal subject in selected Jacobean texts." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2003. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/14658.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis addresses some of the extant gaps in law and literature criticism using an historical cultural criticism of law and literature that focuses on the Jacobean female legal subject in cases of divorce and adultery. It examines the intellectual milieu that constructs law and literature in this period to contribute to research on female subject formation, and looks specifically at how literature and law work to construct identity. This thesis asks what views Jacobean literature presents of the female legal subject, and what do those views reveal about identity and gender construction? Chapter one offers some essential historical contexts. It establishes the jurisprudential conditions of the period, defines the ideal female legal subject, touches on recent historical scholarship regarding women and law, explores how literature reveals law's artificiality, and links the Inns of Court to the theatres. Chapter two focuses on women and divorce. The first sections discuss the theology and ideology which impacted on divorce law. The latter sections examine Elizabeth Cary's Tragedy of Mariam, ca. 1609, and two manuscript accounts of Frances Howard's 1613 divorce trial, William Terracae's poem, A Plenarie Satisfaction, ca. 1613, and The True Tragi-Comedie Formarly Acted at Court, a play by Francis Osborne, 1635. These texts reveal the legal construction and frustrations of married women, and illustrate a gendered divide in attitudes towards women's legal position. Chapter three examines women and adultery law. It then juxtaposes representations of women justly accused of adultery, like the real-life Alice Clarke, and the fictional Isabella in John Marston's The Insatiate Countess, 1613, and unjustly accused, like the virtuous wives in Marston's play. This chapter reveals how male anxiety creates the stereotypes that constrain the female legal subject within systems of patrilineal inheritance. As a whole, this thesis uses literature to explore the Jacobean female legal subject's relationship to her husband and to the law, and, in some cases, it challenges the assumption that women were effectively constrained by legal dictates which would keep them chaste, silent and submissive. Literature, in some cases, works alongside law to sustain constructed identities, but radical literature can undermine law by challenging the stereotypes and identities law works to maintain.
10
James, Sarah J. "Not without my body : feminist science fiction and embodied futures." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/14613.
Full textAbstract:
This study explores the interaction between feminist science fiction and feminist theory, focusing on the body and embodiment. Specifically, it aims to demonstrate that feminist science fiction novels of the 1990s offer an excellent platform for exploring the critical theories of the body put forward by Judith Butler in particular, and other feminist/queer theorists in general. The thesis opens with a brief history of science fiction's depiction of the body and feminist science fiction's subversions and rewritings of this, as well as an overview of Judith Butler's theories relating to the body and embodiment. It then considers a wide range of feminist science fiction novels from the 1990s, focusing on four key areas; bodies materialised outside patriarchal systems in women-only or women-ruled worlds, alien bodies, cyborg bodies and bodies in cyberspace. An in-depth analysis of the selected texts reveals that they have important contributions to make to the consideration of bodies as they develop and expand the issues raised by theorists such as Butler, Elisabeth Grosz, Luce Irigaray and Julia Kristeva.
11
Kong, Wai-ping Judy, and 江偉萍. "Gender and sexuality in modern Shanghai: Chinese fiction of the early twentieth century." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2004. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B31245432.
Full text
12
Kerr, Matthew P. M. "With many voices : the sea in Victorian fiction." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2013. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:873709c4-cc2e-4679-a7c3-12ddcca7c02e.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis considers some of the ways in which the sea was written about and written with in English nineteenth-century prose fiction. It has become a commonplace of literary criticism that, in the century preceding modernism, prose fiction about the sea was unthinking and uninteresting: indentured to outworn generic codes, tied to certain clichés of national identity, Empire, or slipshod sublimity, and vaguely evoking some or all of them. This thesis does not attempt a general contradiction of this view. What this thesis does suggest is that Victorian fiction is not always naïve about its subject and, at times, displays an awareness of the generic and stylistic hazards attendant upon writing about the sea. To write about the sea was to risk writing vaguely. However, to Victorian novelists who wished to draw on vagueness, the sea offered a subject and a style that could be put to use. The introduction sets out the terms of my discussion both of vagueness, and of the attitudes of Victorian writers and readers to the sea as a setting and theme for fiction. The terms of philosophical vagueness are compared with the nineteenth century’s most influential aesthetics of obscurity: the sublime. The purchase of these theories is then tested, first in relation to Ruskin’s lifelong interest in representing the sea in painting and prose, and second with reference to novels by George Eliot, Thackeray, and Gaskell. Prior critical approaches are also considered, as is the topic of empire, which I explain is not my primary focus. The body of the thesis is devoted primarily to three author studies: Frederick Marryat, Charles Dickens, and Joseph Conrad. Each author wrote vaguely about the sea, though vagueness is shown to be, in all three cases, a resource that can be drawn upon with degrees of self-consciousness; if, by the beginning of the nineteenth century, vague language was considered appropriate to the sea, the linguistic resources that the sea in turn offered began to seem increasingly applicable to experiences characterised by uncertainty. I suggest that the sea establishes conditions that invite a rereading of the many repetitions in Marryat’s novels. These repetitions can be viewed, I argue, as traces of Marryat’s struggle to find a language appropriate to the ocean. In Dickens’s writing, the sea is often present as a source both of metaphor and of experience. I suggest that the slippery doubleness of the literary sea is a means by which both Dickens’s characters, and the individuals he encounters as a journalist, can be made to coexist with their ideal or literary doubles. In my chapter on Conrad, I argue that the sea forms a crucial element of the kind of literary impressionism Conrad recommends in his preface to The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’ (1897) and elsewhere. Vagueness arises when the border between linguistic concepts becomes blurred. Two short interludes, on the subject of shores and depths respectively, consider such permeable thresholds. These interludes also provide a means of charting changes that occurred across the period, a counterpoint to the more temporally specific focus of the author studies. I conclude with a brief discussion of Virginia Woolf’s The Waves (1931). Critics have distinguished the high modernist sea from what came before; this coda insists that the sort of vagueness valued by Woolf has an earlier origin.
13
Berlando, Maria Elena, and University of Lethbridge Faculty of Arts and Science. "De-colonizing bodies : the treatment of gender in contemporary drama and film." Thesis, Lethbridge, Alta. : University of Lethbridge, Faculty of Arts and Science, 2007, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/10133/648.
Full textAbstract:
Dramatic literature and film are often political and work to deconstruct and dismantle some of the assumptions of a dominant ideology. Tomson Highway’s Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing, Caryl Churchill’s Cloud Nine, and Neil Jordan’s The Crying Game, show how gender roles are used in oppression and show that other social categories like race, class, and sexuality are interrelated and constructed. This shows the hollowness of the so-called inherent categories that cause “naturalized” divisions between people and groups. Through exploring these works I hope to draw attention to how these artists use theater and film to educate their audiences, as well as challenge them to take control over complicated issues surrounding power and oppression. These writers encourage their audiences to employ social criticism and to re-evaluate the social order that is often naturalized through dominant ideology and discourse.v, 104 leaves ; 29 cm.
14
Ramday, Morna B. "Man up : a study of gendered expectations of masculinity at the 'fin de siècle'." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/5551.
Full textAbstract:
The main themes of this thesis are masculinities, fluctuations in socially constructed gender roles at the fin de siècle and how a number of cathartic issues influenced these. The strongest of these issues was the New Woman Question which, while demanding developments for women, threatened the stability of Victorian gender norms. This forced both sexes to rethink and renegotiate their positions within society. Women sought options that would free them from the vagaries of the marriage market and looked to move into a more public sphere. Many saw this as a threat to the patriarchal status quo and the debates that ensued were many and vociferous. In response to this, men had to look within and question various modes of masculinity and manliness that they had previously taken for granted and that they now viewed as under threat. The fin de siècle was a time of major gender upheaval which, I propose, is reflected in its literature. I intend to explore the anxieties of both genders by examination of the selected texts which cover pertinent aspects of the similarities and contrasts in the way male and female authors negotiate masculinities in relation to social and gendered spaces. In this way, I hope to investigate the underlying themes which inform the novels. I aim to research reasons for disparity in approaches to gender issues, to highlight the importance of masculinities in relation to gendered positions in fin-de-siècle discourses and to show why relations between the sexes had to evolve.
15
Cornwell, Gareth. "Ambiguous contagion the discourse of race in South African English writing, 1890-1930." Thesis, Rhodes University, 1996. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002269.
Full textAbstract:
This study explores representations of race and racial difference in the writing of white South Africans in English, between the years, approximately, of 1890 and 1930. The first chapter essays a theoretical and historical investigation of the concept of race and offers a narrative of the rise of Western racialism. Its conclusion, that race has functioned as a vehicle of displacement for other forms of difference in the competition for advantage among social groups, is qualified in Chapter Two by the postulate of an anthropologial absolute, the "ethnic imperative", to help account for the strategic emergence of racialism in specific historical circumstances. The role of the ethnic imperative in the moral economy of colonial South Africa in the years 1890-1930 is examined through the analysis of three representative texts. In Chapter Three, a wide range of primary material is canvassed for prevailing views on the "Native Question", the perceived social threat posed by the half-caste, and the "Black Peril", culminating in the detailed examination of a fictional text. A particular concern in both Chapters Two and Three is the imagery of disease and contagion in terms of which racial contact is typically represented. The following chapter situates the literary works discussed in the study in the context of the South African literary tradition, then uses the example of selected short stories to indicate some narratological problems encountered by the writer with a racialist agenda within the medium of realist fiction. Chapters Five and Six investigate, through the close reading of selected novels, thematic concerns rooted in the intersection of the discourse of race with those of gender and social class. The final chapter reveals how William Plomer's novel, Turbott Wolfe, represents a volatile synthesis of a standard discourse on social class, an acknowledgement of the ethnic imperative, the imagery of contagion, and a principled repudiation of racialism, in a multi-faceted, modernist, and partially self-aware fashion. The more salient conclusions reached by this study concern the inadequacy of purely materialist analysis to account for the phenomenon of racialism, the historically determined link between racial attitudes and sexuality, and the manifest incompatibility of racial ideology with the liberal humanism inscribed in the formal requirements of the realist work of fiction.
16
Barnhill, Gretchen Huey, and University of Lethbridge Faculty of Arts and Science. "Fallen angels : female wrongdoing in Victorian novels." Thesis, Lethbridge, Alta. : University of Lethbridge, Faculty of Arts and Science, 2005, 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/10133/241.
Full textAbstract:
In the Victorian novel, gender-based social norms dictated appropriate behaviour. Female wrongdoing was not only judged according to the law, but also according to the idealized conception of womanhood. It was this implicit cultural measure, and how far the woman contravened the feminine norms of society, that defined her criminal act rather than the act itself or the injury her act inflicted. When a woman deviated from the Victorian construction of the ideal woman, she was stigmatized and labelled. The fallen woman was viewed as a moral menance, a contagion. Foreign women who committed crimes were judged for their 'lack of Englishness.' Insanity evolved into not only a medical explanation for bizarre behaviour, but also a legal explanation for criminal behaviour. Finally, the habitual woman criminal and the infanticidal mother were seen as unnatural. Regardless of the crime committed, female criminals were ostracized and removed from 'respectable' English society.vii, 163 leaves ; 29 cm.
17
Chanda, Geetanjali. "Indian women in the house of fiction : place, gender, and identity in post-independence Indo-English novels by women /." Thesis, Hong Kong : University of Hong Kong, 1998. http://sunzi.lib.hku.hk/hkuto/record.jsp?B19736617.
Full text
18
Liu, Wenjia 1981. "The tanci "Feng shuangfei": A female perspective on the gender and sexual politics of late-Qing China." Thesis, University of Oregon, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/1794/11140.
Full textAbstract:
x, 276 p. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number.The late-Qing tanci "A Pair of Male Phoenixes Flying Together" (Feng shuangfei ; preface dated 1899) is unusual for its depiction of a wide variety of gender issues and sexual relationships. Because the 52-chapter work is credibly attributed to the female poet Cheng Huiying, who is known to have written the poetry collection Beichuang yin 'gao , the tanci gives scholars a unique opportunity to see how a gentry woman thought of the gender roles and sexual politics of the late Qing. My dissertation contains two major sections. Chapters I and II look at Cheng Huiying and her work as part of the `talented women" ( cainü ) culture. These two chapters demonstrate how Cheng Huiying deliberately establishes herself as a unique female writing subject and advocates women's agency in determining their own marriage arrangements. one of women's biggest concerns in premodern China. Chapters III to VI put Feng shuangfei into the larger context of male-authored fiction and examine how it adopts and rewrites the conventions and motifs common to xiaoshuo fiction from a female writer's perspective. I first argue that Feng shuangfei can be considered a serious literary work due to its sophisticated structural design and characterization, although tanci are usually considered as more popular literature. I then evaluate how the female author of this tanci subtly reinvents three gendered motifs that commonly appear in male-authored xiaoshuo fiction. The three motifs are male same-sex eroticism and homosociality, female same-sex desires, and the stereotypes of shrew and ideal wife. Through subtle twists in the plot, the tanci suggests the possibility of the expression of female subjectivity and agency within patriarchal Confucian society even while it follows and supports the normative Confucian order. The perspectives on gender norms and sexual practices offered in this tanci both display how a gentry woman thought about these issues in late imperial China and suggest how the rapid and vast social and ideological changes occurring during the turn of the century opened new spaces for Cheng Huiying to imagine increased agency and autonomy for women within the domestic sphere.
Committee in charge: Maram Epstein, Chairperson, East Asian Languages & Literature; Yugen Wang, Member, East Asian Languages & Literature; Tze-lan Sang, Member, East Asian Languages & Literature; Ina Asim, Outside Member, History
19
Adams, Dana W. (Dana Wills). "Female Inheritors of Hawthorne's New England Literary Tradition." Thesis, University of North Texas, 1994. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc279406/.
Full textAbstract:
Nineteenth-century women were a mainstay in the New England literary tradition, both as readers and authors. Indeed, women were a large part of a growing reading public, a public that distanced itself from Puritanism and developed an appetite for novels and magazine short stories. It was a culture that survived in spite of patriarchal domination of the female in social and literary status. This dissertation is a study of selected works from Nathaniel Hawthorne, Sarah Orne Jewett, and Mary E. Wilkins Freeman that show their fiction as a protest against a patriarchal society. The premise of this study is based on analyzing these works from a protest (not necessarily a feminist) view, which leads to these conclusions: rejection of the male suitor and of marriage was a protest against patriarchal institutions that purposely restricted females from realizing their potential. Furthermore, it is often the case that industrialism and abuses of male authority in selected works by Jewett and Freeman are symbols of male-driven forces that oppose the autonomy of the female. Thus my argument is that protest fiction of the nineteenth century quietly promulgates an agenda of independence for the female. It is an agenda that encourages the woman to operate beyond standard stereotypes furthered by patriarchal attitudes. I assert that Jewett and Freeman are, in fact, inheritors of Hawthorne's literary tradition, which spawned the first fully-developed, independent American heroine: Hester Prynne.
20
Hunt, Sally Ann. "The discoursal construction of female physical identity in selected works in children's literature." Thesis, Rhodes University, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1005965.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis reports on an analysis of the discursive construction of female and male physical identity in children’s literature and explicitly combines corpus linguistic methods with a critical discourse approach. Based on three novels from each of the Chronicles of Narnia and the Harry Potter series, it shows clear gendering of body parts, not only in terms of the purely quantitative preferences for certain body parts to be associated with one or other gender, but in terms of discourse prosody, or the uses to which the body parts are put. Human body parts in these series are mostly used in the following four ways, all of which show differences in realisation in terms of gender: · to describe individuals, physically, in order to distinguish one from the other; · to convey emotion, unintentionally as well as consciously; · for physical interaction between people and · for interaction with the world more broadly: responses to danger and agency, i.e. the ability to act on the world and the nature of what is achieved. The use of body parts by characters to express emotion and act agentively on the world is revealed to be strongly gendered in the two series. I characterise the most prominent patterns in terms of the bodily products blood, sweat and tears, of which the last is strongly connected to female characters, who are generally associated with emotion. The other two, referring to active participation in fighting and injury, as well as agency, are almost exclusively reserved for males, with female characters rendered unable to act on the physical world as a result of overwhelming feelings. The females’ response to danger suggests stereotyped discourses of inequality which see women and girls as requiring protection and being physically incapable. Thus gender is still a particularly salient aspect in these widely-read examples of children’s literature, despite plots which appear to be fairly positive towards women. The strength of the inclusion of a corpus approach in this study lies in its capacity to reveal objective, and often fairly covert, trends in language use. These in turn enrich the critical analysis of discourses in these influential texts, which facilitates social change through linguistic analysis.
21
Davies, Ben. "Exceptional intercourse : sex, time and space in contemporary novels by male British and American writers." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/2582.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis provides a theory of exceptional sex through close readings of contemporary novels by male British and American writers. I take as my overriding methodological approach Giorgio Agamben’s theory of the state of exception, which is a juridico-political state in which the law has been suspended and the difference between rule and transgression is indistinguishable. Within this state, the spatiotemporal markers inside and outside also become indeterminable, making it impossible to tell whether one is inside or outside time and space. Using this framework, I work through narratives of sexual interaction – On Chesil Beach, Gertrude and Claudius, Sabbath’s Theater, and The Act of Love – to conceptualise categories of sexual exceptionality. My study is not a survey, and the texts have been chosen as they focus on different sexual behaviours, thereby opening up a variety of sexual exceptionalities. I concentrate on male writers and narratives of heterosexual sex as most work on sex, time and space is comprised of feminist readings of literature by women and queer work on gay, lesbian or trans writers and narratives. However, in the Coda I expand my argument by turning to Emma Donoghue’s Room, which, as the protagonist has been trapped for the first five years of his life, provides a tabula rasa’s perspective of exceptionality. Through my analysis of exceptionality, I provide spatiotemporal readings of the hymen, incest, adultery, sexual listening and the arranged affair. I also conceptualise textual exceptionalities – the incestuous prequel, auricular reading and the positionality of the narrator, the reader and literary characters. Exceptional sex challenges the assumption in recent queer theory that to be out of time is ‘queer’ and to be in time is ‘straight’. Furthermore, exceptionality complicates the concepts of perversion and transgression as the norm and its transgression become indistinct in the state of exception. In contrast, exceptionality offers a new, more determinate way to analyse narratives of sex.
22
Yantolo-Sotyelelwa, Betty Matase. "The portrayal of characters through dialogue and action in isiXhosa drama : dramatic and cultural perspectives." Thesis, Stellenbosch : University of Stellenbosch, 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/3361.
Full textAbstract:
Thesis (MA (African Languages))--University of Stellenbosch, 2005.This study aims at highlighting one of the crucial aspects of Xhosa drama: how women have been regarded by a variety of communities as being inferior to men. This stereotype pervades almost all spheres of life. The low status assigned to women find its way into literature as well. Ngewu’s drama “Yeha mfazi obulala indoda” and Taleni’s drama “Nyana nank’uNyoko” has been examined. In most Xhosa literature, women are portrayed as submissive, obedient and minor characters. The advent of Ngewu’s work changed this scenario by portraying women as independent characters. This has led to great conflict with male characteristics and this demonstrates clearly that partriarchal domination is deep rooted in Xhosa culture.
23
Götting, Elena Rebekka. "Challenging maleness : the new woman's attempts to reconstruct the binary code." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/6612.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis explores the construction of masculinity in novels written by New Women authors between the years 1881-1899. The fin de siècle was a period during which gender roles were renegotiated with fervour by both male and female authors, but it was the so-called New Woman in particular who was trying to transform the Victorian notion of femininity to incorporate the demands of the burgeoning women's movement. This thesis argues that in their fiction, New Women authors often tried to achieve this transformation by creating male characters who were designed to justify and to mitigate the New Woman protagonist's departure from traditional structures of heterosexual relationships. The methodology underlying this thesis is the notion that men and women were perceived as binary opposites during the Victorian period. I refer to this as the binary code of the sexes. This code assumes that men and women naturally possess diametrically opposed character attributes, and also that “masculine” attributes are perforce better than “feminine” ones. In the body of this work, I argue that New Women authors attempted to contest both of these assumptions by creating, on the one hand, traditional male characters whose masculinity is corrupted in crucial and recurring ways, and on the other, impaired male characters who cannot assume the traditional role of man. The comparison of the New Woman protagonist with the corrupt traditional man elevates her feminine attributes, while the impaired man's dependency legitimises her acquisition of what were otherwise considered “masculine” attributes and privileges, thereby contesting the notion that men and women possess sex-specific attributes at all. The second part of my thesis examines contrasting examples, in which this way of characterising masculinity – as traditional or impaired – is questioned and manipulated. It examines the limitations of the New Women authors' specific approach to reconstructing the binary code.
24
Villasenor-Oldham, Victoria Anne. "Multiplicity and gendering the Holy Grail in The Da Vinci Code and the Mists of Avalon." CSUSB ScholarWorks, 2007. https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/etd-project/3237.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis explores how both texts - The Da Vinci Code and The Mists of Avalon - write femininity onto the Holy Grail in seemingly problematic ways, and the way in which women's voices, through the feminization of the Grail, are often silenced.
25
Hanaway-Oakley, Cleo Alexandra. "'See ourselves as others see us' : a phenomenological study of James Joyce's Ulysses and early cinema." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2012. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:80821e26-de35-483a-a37c-7a4c60e138b7.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis examines James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922) and early cinema (c. 1895-1920) through Merleau-Pontian phenomenology. Instead of arguing for lines of direct influence between specific films and particular parts of Ulysses, I show that Joyce’s text and selected early films and film genres exhibit parallel philosophies. Ulysses and early cinema share similar ideas on the embodied nature of perception, the close relationship between mind and body, the intermingling of the human and the mechanical, intersubjectivity, and the subject’s inherence in the world. All of these shared ideas are inherently phenomenological. My phenomenological position on the Joyce-and-cinema relationship is at odds with a popular strain of scholarship which cites impersonality, neutrality, and automatism as the key linking factors between early cinema and modernist literature (including Joyce). ‘Joyce-and-cinema’ studies is a relatively large, and growing, field; as is ‘modernism-and-cinema’ studies. As well as ploughing my own path through an already crowded area, I analyse the different trends present (both historically and currently) in each area of study. I also add to the scholarship on phenomenological film theory by analysing the work of phenomenologically inflected film-philosophers and suggesting some new ways in which Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology might be used in the analysis of films and literature. I provide close analyses of several episodes of Ulysses and pay particular attention to ‘Ithaca’, ‘Circe’, ‘Nausicaa’, and ‘Wandering Rocks’. Several of Charlie Chaplin’s Mutual films are analysed, as are a select number of films by George Méliès. I also look at other trick-films, Irish melodrama, panoramas, ‘phantom rides’, and local actuality films (especially Mitchell and Kenyon’s Living Dublin series). Proto-cinematic devices – the Mutoscope and stereoscope – are also included in my analyses.
26
Lamborn, Erin Alice. "From Darwin to Dracula: A study of literary evolution." CSUSB ScholarWorks, 2005. https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/etd-project/2836.
Full textAbstract:
Argues that, without the publication of Charles Darwin's "Origin of Species," Bram Stoker's novel "Dracula" and Oscar Wilde's novel "The Picture of Dorian Gray" would not have been written with their distinct style and themes, as evolution clashes with degeneration and female power (and the sexuality derived from that power) clashes with the new science. Stoker and Wilde combine the science of the late 19th century with the characters of their imaginations. Natural and sexual selection plays a part in these characters' core development. The mixture of sexuality, science and power in these two novels all combine to formulate what is known as Victorian sexology.
27
Zhang, Xin. "The problem of identity in Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea." Thesis, University of Macau, 2009. http://umaclib3.umac.mo/record=b2456325.
Full text
28
Williams, Vivien Estelle. "The cultural history of the bagpipe in Britain, 1680-1840." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2013. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/5085/.
Full textAbstract:
Bagpipes and pipers, as cultural identifiers, are embedded within their national culture, charged with symbolisms. British authors have often viewed bagpipes as cultural icons, endowing them with connotations from devilish to virtuous, from rural to military. By analysing literary and artistic references one can perceive how the attitude towards the bagpipe changes with the evolution of Britain’s internal dynamics. Jacobitism contributed in casting a particular light on the bagpipe: it was the ‘voice of the rebellion’. In Scotland this constituted a reason for national pride, while in England the ‘common denominator’ of the Scot-enemy charged the bagpipe with the worst connotations. After Jacobitism stopped being seen as a threat, authors and artists came to view the bagpipe in a different light: the once negative icon was now imbued with ancestral values. The Scot – and the bagpipe by synecdoche – was romanticised: as James Boswell wrote, “The very Highland names, or the sound of a bagpipe, will stir my blood, and fill me with [...] a crowd of sensations with which sober rationality has nothing to do” (1785). The words of many Romantic authors contributed in characterising the instrument, endowing it with implications the influence of which is still relevant today.
29
Rawson, Angela. "A critical linguistic analysis of a popular comic genre in Japan." Thesis, Edith Cowan University, Research Online, Perth, Western Australia, 2001. https://ro.ecu.edu.au/theses/1021.
Full textAbstract:
This research will focus on the issue of power and gender in the language of Japanese comics (manga). Comics in Japan are enormously popular and are read by a wide audience. They are aimed at specific audiences and it is my argument that the language of manga helps to reinforce certain social stereotypes - particularly the inferiority of women and the dominance of males. The language of children's manga will be analyzed using the framework of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), which concerns itself with the relation between ideology and power in discourse. The analysis will be at various levels including lexica-semantic, pragmatic, textual and ideological. The texts to be analyzed will be Japanese manga in the original Japanese language. Manga aimed at specific audiences, i.e. young boys and girls, will be analyzed to determine the presence of male-dominant ideology in the text. I argue that an interpretation of the text under the framework of GOA supports the hypothesis that the ideology of male dominance is present in manga and that it has become normalized in Japan.
30
Paula, Claudemir da Silva [UNESP]. "Negra sem reticências: corpo e corporeidade na poesia de escritoras afro-brasileiras." Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP), 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/11449/154712.
Full textAbstract:
Made available in DSpace on 2018-07-27T18:26:10Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0
Previous issue date: 2015-12-03. Added 1 bitstream(s) on 2018-07-27T18:30:31Z : No. of bitstreams: 1
000869203_20181203.pdf: 474237 bytes, checksum: 587f35c89deedbda8b87713164585298 (MD5)Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)
Numa sociedade que associa a beleza feminina aos atributos físicos (e culturais) brancos e personifica a fealdade num corpo negro, afirmar-se mulher negra, valorizando as próprias características corporais, constitui vigoroso processo de ressignificação dos conceitos e juízos negativos. Isso porque, o sentir-se bem com contornos naturais pressupõe a existência de uma beleza capaz de tornar falsa a necessidade da adequação às regras do padrão hegemônico, presumindo, para esse tipo de enfrentamento, um discurso hábil o suficiente para subverter as formas representativas da literatura assentadas nas cenas racistas de inferioridade e objetificação, desestabilizando a exigência do embelezamento como condição para a felicidade nas experiências quotidianas. O corpo desenhado a partir dessa perspectiva esquiva-se do binarismo do eurocentrismo e reforma, ao modo negro de ser, a ideia do feminino, assumido como principal forma de atuação, sem a imprescindibilidade de se comparar aos modelos idealizados nos parâmetros do branqueamento. Para algumas mulheres negras, a literatura é o campo privilegiado para forjar as interpretações corporais destituídas dos aspectos da submissão natural e combater os lugares (in)apropriados aos corpos que se apresentam contrariando às normas. Como escritoras, colocam-se em local privilegiado da sua própria escrita e, na condição de locutoras, tecem uma poética decolonial do corpo. É deste fazer literário que se ocupa este trabalho, tendo por objetivo refletir sobre a poetização da corporeidade na poesia das escritoras afro-brasileiras Alzira Rufino, Conceição Evaristo, Geni Guimarães e Miriam Alves, em convergência/divergência com o padrão eurocêntrico de beleza no paradigma da colonialidade do poder. De forma especifica, realiza-se a leitura do corpo como elemento de emancipação política da mulher negra, circunscrevendo a rejeição da subserviência...
In a society that associates feminine beauty to physical (and cultural) white attributes and embodies ugliness in a black body it is easy to affirm that black women, who values their own body features, constitutes a vigorous process of negative concept and judgment resignification. This may happen due to a positive feeling towards their natural contours, which may presuppose a beauty able to make the need for compliance with the rules of hegemonic power fake, assuming, in that kind of confrontation, a skillful speech, enough to subvert representative forms of literature based on racist scenes of inferiority and objectification. This may destabilize the requirement of beautification as a condition for happiness in everyday experience. The body drawn from that perspective is beating Eurocentric binarism and reform. It is a black mode of being. The feminine idea assumed as a main form of activity, without essentialism, compares models devised in whitening parameters. For some black women, literature is the privileged field to forge the body deprived by interpretations of natural submission and combat places aspects (in) appropriated to those bodies that are contrary to the rules. As writers, placed in a privileged place of their own writing and, as announcers of the black condition, weave a 'de-colonial' poetics of the body. It is about the literary performance that we deal in this work. We intended to reflect on the corporality poetic of some Afro-Brazilian writers Alzira Rufino, Conceição Evaristo, Geni Guimarães and Miriam Alves, in convergence/divergence with the Eurocentric standard of beauty in the colonial paradigm of power. Specifically, it is the body - read as an element of black woman political emancipation, focusing solely on the rejection of subservience to the dictates of whiteness - the creation of their own standard of beauty and autonomy ideal conducted by disobedient choices and unsubmissive figurative types
31
Paula, Claudemir da Silva. ""Negra sem reticências" : corpo e corporeidade na poesia de escritoras afro-brasileiras /." São José do Rio Preto, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/11449/154712.
Full textAbstract:
Orientador: Cláudia Maria Ceneviva NigroBanca: Norma Wimmer
Banca: Giséle Manganelli Fernandes
Banca: Raquel Terezinha Rodrigues
Banca: Júlio César Barreto Rocha
Resumo: Numa sociedade que associa a beleza feminina aos atributos físicos (e culturais) brancos e personifica a fealdade num corpo negro, afirmar-se mulher negra, valorizando as próprias características corporais, constitui vigoroso processo de ressignificação dos conceitos e juízos negativos. Isso porque, o sentir-se bem com contornos naturais pressupõe a existência de uma beleza capaz de tornar falsa a necessidade da adequação às regras do padrão hegemônico, presumindo, para esse tipo de enfrentamento, um discurso hábil o suficiente para subverter as formas representativas da literatura assentadas nas cenas racistas de inferioridade e objetificação, desestabilizando a exigência do "embelezamento" como condição para a felicidade nas experiências quotidianas. O corpo desenhado a partir dessa perspectiva esquiva-se do binarismo do eurocentrismo e reforma, ao modo negro de ser, a ideia do feminino, assumido como principal forma de atuação, sem a imprescindibilidade de se comparar aos modelos idealizados nos parâmetros do branqueamento. Para algumas mulheres negras, a literatura é o campo privilegiado para forjar as interpretações corporais destituídas dos aspectos da "submissão natural" e combater os "lugares" (in)apropriados aos corpos que se apresentam "contrariando às normas". Como escritoras, colocam-se em local privilegiado da sua própria escrita e, na condição de locutoras, tecem uma poética decolonial do corpo. É deste fazer literário que se ocupa este trabalho, tendo por objetivo refletir sobre a poetização da corporeidade na poesia das escritoras afro-brasileiras Alzira Rufino, Conceição Evaristo, Geni Guimarães e Miriam Alves, em convergência/divergência com o padrão eurocêntrico de beleza no paradigma da colonialidade do poder. De forma especifica, realiza-se a leitura do corpo como elemento de emancipação política da mulher negra, circunscrevendo a rejeição da subserviência...
Abstract: In a society that associates feminine beauty to physical (and cultural) white attributes and embodies ugliness in a black body it is easy to affirm that black women, who values their own body features, constitutes a vigorous process of negative concept and judgment resignification. This may happen due to a positive feeling towards their natural contours, which may presuppose a beauty able to make the need for compliance with the rules of hegemonic power fake, assuming, in that kind of confrontation, a skillful speech, enough to subvert representative forms of literature based on racist scenes of inferiority and objectification. This may destabilize the requirement of "beautification" as a condition for happiness in everyday experience. The body drawn from that perspective is beating Eurocentric binarism and reform. It is a black mode of being. The feminine idea assumed as a main form of activity, without essentialism, compares models devised in whitening parameters. For some black women, literature is the privileged field to forge the body deprived by interpretations of "natural submission" and combat "places" aspects (in) appropriated to those bodies that are "contrary to the rules". As writers, placed in a privileged place of their own writing and, as announcers of the black condition, weave a 'de-colonial' poetics of the body. It is about the literary performance that we deal in this work. We intended to reflect on the corporality poetic of some Afro-Brazilian writers Alzira Rufino, Conceição Evaristo, Geni Guimarães and Miriam Alves, in convergence/divergence with the Eurocentric standard of beauty in the colonial paradigm of power. Specifically, it is the body - read as an element of black woman political emancipation, focusing solely on the rejection of subservience to the dictates of whiteness - the creation of their own standard of beauty and autonomy ideal conducted by disobedient choices and unsubmissive figurative types
Doutor
32
Cousseau, Salete Nair Carletto. "O particular e o universal em Histórias sem amanhã, de Lara de Lemos." reponame:Repositório Institucional da UCS, 2010. https://repositorio.ucs.br/handle/11338/1016.
Full textAbstract:
Esta dissertação analisa crônicas do livro Histórias sem amanhã, de Lara de Lemos, escritas nos anos de 1950, para o Jornal Correio do Povo, de Porto Alegre, e publicadas em livro em 1963. O propósito da análise é evidenciar o modo como a autora problematiza a condição feminina, expandindo a sua discussão para a condição humana, os problemas sociais e os paradoxos da vida na cidade, buscando verificar a relação entre o particular e o universal, uma vez que os textos, ao abordar questões do cotidiano, atingem uma dimensão estética que os torna universais.Submitted by Ana Guimarães Pereira (agpereir@ucs.br) on 2015-09-30T16:54:23Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao Salete Nair Carletto Cousseau.pdf: 1159734 bytes, checksum: 47d412306cb6bcc32e6a730716e90dd8 (MD5)
Made available in DSpace on 2015-09-30T16:54:23Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao Salete Nair Carletto Cousseau.pdf: 1159734 bytes, checksum: 47d412306cb6bcc32e6a730716e90dd8 (MD5)
This dissertation analyzes some chronicles from the book Histórias sem Amanhã, from Lara de Lemos, written in the 1950‟s, to be published in Correio do Povo newspaper in Porto Alegre further the chronicles had been published as a novel in 1963. The purpose of this analysis is to evidence the way the author discusses the status of the female condition, expanding her argument to the human condition, social problems and paradoxes from de life in the city, searching to reflect the relationship between particular and universal, once the texts, approaching this daily issues reaching an aesthetic dimension that turns then universal.
33
Pang, Tian Yang. "Lisa See's Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, the Lao Tong relationship from a feminist perspective." Thesis, University of Macau, 2018. http://umaclib3.umac.mo/record=b3953434.
Full text
34
King, Richard Jay. "Immediate passage : the narrative of Joel H. Brown, with a critical essay on form and style in the sea voyage narrative." Thesis, St Andrews, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/550.
Full text
35
Lindfield-Ott, Kristin. ""See SCOT and SAXON coalesc'd in one" : James Macpherson's 'The Highlander' in its intellectual and cultural contexts, with an annotated text of the poem." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/2096.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis explores James Macpherson’s The Highlander (1758) in relation to originality, Scottish identity and historiography. It also situates the Ossianic Collections in the context of Macpherson’s earlier poetical and later historical works. There are three parts to it: a biographical sketch of Macpherson’s early life, the annotated edition of The Highlander, and discursive commentary chapters. By examining The Highlander in detail this thesis questions the emphasis of other Macpherson criticism on the Ossianic Collections, and allows us to see him as a writer who is historically minded, very aware of sources, well versed in established forms of poetry and thoroughly, and positively, British. The Highlander stands out among the corpus of his works not because it can give us insights into the Ossianic Collections, which is its usual function in Macpherson criticism, but because it can help us understand what it is that connects Macpherson’s earlier and later works with the Ossianic Collections: history, Britishness, tradition. Macpherson’s poetical works are united by a desire to translate Scotland’s factual past into sentimental British poetry. In the Ossianic Collections he does so without particular faithfulness to his sources, but in The Highlander he converts historical sources directly into neo-classic verse. This is where Macpherson’s originality lies: his ability to adapt history. In different styles and genres, and based on different sources, Macpherson’s works are early examples of Scotland’s great literary achievement: historical fiction. Instead of accusing him of forgery or trying to trace his knowledge of Gaelic ballads, this thesis presents Macpherson as a genuine historian who happened to write in a variety of genres.
36
Collins, Brenda. "Representations of landscape and gender in Lady Anne Barnard's "Journal of a month's tour into the interior of Africa"." Thesis, Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/17744.
Full textAbstract:
Thesis (MPhil)--University of Stellenbosch, 2007.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis will focus on Barnard’s representations of gender and landscape during her tour into the interior of the South of Africa. Barnard’s conscious representation of herself as a woman with many different social roles gives the reader insight into the developing gender roles at the time of an emerging feminism. On their tour, Barnard reports on four aspects of the interior, namely the state of cultivation of the land, the type of food and accommodation available in the interior, the possibilities for hunting and whether the colony will be a valuable acquisition for Britain. Barnard’s view of the landscape is representative of the eighteenth century’s preoccupation with control over and classification of nature. She values order and cleanliness in her vision of a domesticated landscape. She appropriates the land in wanting to make it useful and beautiful to the colonisers. However, her representations of the landscape, as well as its inhabitants, remain ambivalent in terms of the discourse of imperialism because she is unable to adopt an unequivocal colonial voice. Her complex interaction with the world of colonialism is illustrated by, on the one hand, her adherence to the desire to classify the inhabitants of the colony according to the eighteenth century’s fascination with classification and, on the other hand, her recognition of the humanity of the individuals with whom she interacts in a move away from the colonial stance.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie tesis fokus op Barnard se voorstellings van gender en landskap gedurende haar toer in die binneland van die suide van Afrika. Barnard se bewuste voorstelling van haarself as ‘n vrou met vele sosiale rolle gee die leser insig in die ontwikkelende genderrolle gedurende ‘n tydperk van ontluikende feminisme. Gedurende haar toer doen Barnard verslag oor vier aspekte van die binneland, naamlik hoeveel van die grond reeds bewerk is, die tipe kos en akkommodasie wat beskikbaar is, die jagmoontlikhede, en of die kolonie ‘n waardevolle aanwins vir Brittanje sal wees. Barnard se beskouing van die landskap is verteenwoordigend van die agtiende-eeuse obsessie met beheer oor en klassifikasie van die natuur. Sy heg groot waarde aan orde en netheid in haar visie van ‘n getemde landskap. Sy lê beslag op die land deurdat sy dit bruikbaar en mooi wil maak vir die kolonialiste. Haar voorstellings van die landskap sowel as die inwoners weerspieël egter haar ambivalente posisie jeens die koloniale diskoers omdat sy sukkel om ‘n ondubbelsinnige koloniale stem te gebruik. Haar komplekse interaksie met die wêreld van kolonialisme word weerspieël deur, enersyds, haar navolging van die koloniale neiging om die inwoners van die land te kategoriseer in lyn met die agtiende-eeuse obsessie met klassifikasie en, andersyds, haar herkenning van die menslikheid van die individue met wie sy kontak maak in ‘n skuif weg van die koloniale standpunt.
37
Watson, Anna Elizabeth. "Music lessons and the construction of womanhood in English fiction, 1870-1914." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/5479.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis explores the gendered symbolism of women's music lessons in English fiction, 1870-1914. I consider canonical and non-canonical fiction in the context of a wider discourse about music, gender and society. Traditionally, women's music lessons were a marker of upper- and middle-class respectability. Musical ‘accomplishment' was a means to differentiate women in the ‘marriage market', and the music lesson itself was seen to encode a dynamic of obedient submission to male authority as a ‘rehearsal' for married life. However, as the market for musical goods and services burgeoned, musical training also offered women the potential of an independent career. Close reading George Eliot's Daniel Deronda (1876) and Jessie Fothergill's The First Violin (1877), I discuss four young women who negotiate their marital and vocational choices through their interactions with powerful music teachers. Through the lens of the music lessons in Emma Marshall's Alma (1888) and Israel Zangwill's Merely Mary Ann (1893), I consider the issues of class, respectability and social emulation, paying particular attention to the relationship between aesthetic taste and moral values. I continue by considering George Du Maurier's Trilby (1894) alongside Elizabeth Godfrey's Cornish Diamonds (1895), texts in which female pupils exhibit genuine power, eventually eclipsing both their music teachers and the artist-suitors for whom they once modelled. My final chapter discusses three texts which problematize the power of women's musical performance through depicting female music pupils as ‘New Women' in conflict with the people around them: Sarah Grand's The Beth Book (1895), D. H. Lawrence's The Trespasser (1912) and Compton Mackenzie's Sinister Street (1913). I conclude by looking forward to representations of women's music lessons in the modernist period and beyond, with a reading of Katherine Mansfield's ‘The Wind Blows' (1920) as well as Rebecca West's The Fountain Overflows (1956).
38
Barga, Rachel M. "Sex Theory: Theology of the Body as Literary Criticism." Miami University Honors Theses / OhioLINK, 2011. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=muhonors1304527876.
Full text
39
Fairley, Ian. "Criticism in history : the work of György Lukacs, 1902-1914." Thesis, University of York, 1992. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.333708.
Full text
40
Sutton, Peter David. "'The trade of application' : political and social appropriations of Ben Jonson, 1660-1776." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/16547.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis is an analysis of the manner in which the persona and works of Ben Jonson were appropriated – between the Restoration, in 1660, and the retirement of David Garrick, in 1776 – to reflect the political and social concerns of the age. Unlike previous studies, rather than primarily focusing on the stage history of Jonson, I analyse a wide range of sources – produced both within and outwith the theatre – in order to explore, across a variety of media, a breadth of material which appropriates the playwright and his works. I shall consider in my first main chapter the appropriations of Jonson within the Restoration court, in particular noting the assimilation of the playwright's work to what might be styled a proto-Tory ideology, as well as the way in which his plays could mirror the destabilising effects of the king's romantic liaisons. In my second chapter, I explore the moral reformation at the turn of the eighteenth century, in which we can see appropriations of Jonson which cast his works as being primarily didactic. The third chapter moves the narrative of the thesis into the years of the premiership of Sir Robert Walpole. I shall consider the way in which the playwright's works – especially The Alchemist and Eastward Ho! – were seen as being especially relevant to an age of speculation and mercantile endeavour, as well as examining the manner in which the figures of Sejanus and Volpone were appropriated to mock the increasingly unpopular premier. In the final chapter, I shall offer an analysis of Garrick's seminal portrayal of Drugger in the contexts of the political philosophy of the mid-eighteenth century, considering the manner in which it was interpreted alongside the character's further appropriations by Francis Gentleman. The thesis concludes by exploring political appropriations of Jonson up to the present day.
41
Schillinger, Stephen. "Common representations : Jack Straw and literary history as cultural history on the early modern stage /." Thesis, Connect to this title online; UW restricted, 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/1773/9363.
Full text
42
葉淑蘭 and Sook-lan Yap. "A study of Zhang Tianyi's children's literature." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 1992. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B31211057.
Full text
43
Byrne, Aisling Nora. "The otherworlds of medieval insular literature." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2012. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.610076.
Full text
44
何倬榮 and Cheuk-wing Ho. "Engendering children: from folk tales to fairy tales." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2002. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B31227363.
Full text
45
Habel, Chad Sean, and chad habel@gmail com. "Ancestral Narratives in History and Fiction: Transforming Identities." Flinders University. Humanities, 2006. http://catalogue.flinders.edu.au./local/adt/public/adt-SFU20071108.133216.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis is an exploration of ancestral narratives in the fiction of Thomas Keneally and Christopher Koch. Initially, ancestry in literature creates an historical relationship which articulates the link between the past and the present. In this sense ancestry functions as a type of cultural memory where various issues of inheritance can be negotiated. However, the real value of ancestral narratives lies in their power to aid in the construction of both personal and communal identities. They have the potential to transform these identities, to transgress natural boundaries and to reshape conventional identities in the light of historical experience.
For Keneally, ancestral narratives depict national forbears who narrate the nation into being. His earlier fictions present ancestors of the nation within a mythic and symbolic framework to outline Australian national identity. This identity is static, oppositional, and characterized by the delineation of boundaries which set nations apart from one another. However, Keneallys more recent work transforms this conventional construction of national identity. It depicts an Irish-Australian diasporic identity which is hyphenated and transgressive: it transcends the conventional notion of nations as separate entities pitted against one another. In this way Keneallys ancestral narratives enact the potential for transforming identity through ancestral narrative.
On the other hand, Kochs work is primarily concerned with the intergenerational trauma causes by losing or forgetting ones ancestral narrative. His novels are concerned with male gender identity and the fragmentation which characterizes a self-destructive idea of maleness. While Keneallys characters recover their lost ancestries in an effort to reshape their idea of what it is to be Australian, Kochs main protagonist lives in ignorance of his ancestors life. He is thus unable to take the opportunity to transform his masculinity due to the pervasive cultural amnesia surrounding his family history and its role in Tasmanias past.
While Keneally and Koch depict different outcomes in their fictional ancestral narratives they are both deeply concerned with the potential to transform national and gender identities through ancestry.
46
McAllister, Catriona Jane. "Rewriting independence in contemporary Argentine literature : postmodernism, politics and history." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2014. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.648742.
Full text
47
Wills, Clair. "Language, history and sex in the poetry of Paul Muldoon and Medbh McGuckian." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1989. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.305288.
Full text
48
Dixon, Marzena M. "The structure and rhetoric of twentieth-century British children's fantasy." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 1992. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/14858.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis discusses twentieth century children's fantasy fiction. The writers whose creative output is dealt with include Penelope Lively, Alan Garner, Susan Cooper, Pat O'Shea, Peter Dickinson, T.H.White, Lloyd Alexander and, to a lesser extent, C.S.Lewis and J.R.R.Tolkien. These authors have been chosen because their books, whilst being of a broadly similar nature, nevertheless have a sufficient diversity to illustrate well many different important aspects of children's fantasy. Chapter I examines the sources of modern fantasy, presents the attitudes of different authors towards borrowing from traditional sources and their reasons for doing so, and looks at the changing interpretation of myths. Chapter II talks about the presentation of the primary and secondary worlds and the ways in which they interact. It also discusses the characters' attitudes towards magic. Chapter III looks at the presentation of magic, examines the traditional fairy-tale conventions and their implementation in modern fantasies, and discusses the concepts of evil, time, and the laws governing fantasy worlds. Chapter IV deals with the methods of narration and the figure of the narrator. It presents briefly the prevailing plot patterns, discusses the use of different kinds of language, and the ideas of pan-determinism and prophecy. The concluding chapter considers the main subjects and aims of children's fantasy, the reasons why the genre is so popular, and its successes and failures.
49
Feng, Liping. "Modernity and tradition : Chinese theories of literature from 1900 to 1930." Thesis, McGill University, 1994. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=28445.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis examines the development of Chinese theories of literature in the early twentieth century: what was considered as literature, the role of the writer and reader, and the function of literature in society. The central purpose of the thesis is to retrace the Western-influenced theories of literature of the 1920s back to the theoretical developments at the turn of the century. The thesis also shows that, as a whole, modern Chinese theories of literature are deeply rooted in traditional Chinese poetics. In characterizing traditional Chinese theories, it compares the latter with the mimetic model of Western literature. Throughout the thesis, the account of the theoretical developments makes constant reference to the changes taking place within two major literary genres: lyrical poetry and the narrative.
50
Smith, Mark Ryan. "The literature of Shetland." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2013. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/3938/.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis is the first ever survey of Shetland’s literature. The large body of material the thesis covers is not well known, and, apart from Walter Scott’s 1822 novel The Pirate, and Hugh MacDiarmid’s sojourn in the archipelago, Shetland is not a presence in any account of Scottish writing. ‘The Literature of Shetland’ has been written to address this absence. Who are Shetland’s writers? And what have they written? These are the fundamental questions this thesis answers. By paying close attention to Shetland’s writers, ‘The Literature of Shetland’ extends the geographical territory of the Scottish canon. ‘The Literature of Shetland’ covers a chronological period from the early nineteenth century to the present day. Virtually no creative poetry or prose, either written or oral, survives in Shetland from before this time so, after a brief discussion of the fragmentary pre-nineteenth century sources, the thesis discusses the archipelago’s literature in eight chronologically arranged chapters. Chapter One concentrates on a group of three obscure early nineteenth-century Shetland authors – Margaret Chalmers, Dorothea Primrose Campbell, and Thomas Irvine – and also explores Scott’s involvement with the northern isles. Chapters Two and Three discuss an important period at the end of the nineteenth century, in which books and newspapers were published in Shetland for the first time, and in which a number of pioneering and influential local writers emerged. Jessie M.E. Saxby became the first professional writer from Shetland and, in the work of George Stewart, James Stout Angus, Basil Anderson, and especially J.J. Haldane Burgess, the Shetland dialect developed as a serious literary idiom. These writers laid down foundations for much of what came next. Chapter Four discusses the end of this period of growth, with James Inkster posed as the last significant figure of his generation, and the war poet John Peterson as the first local writer to depart from the literary principles which developed in the Victorian era. Chapter Five looks at the work Hugh MacDiarmid did in Shetland from 1933-1942. MacDiarmid is not really part of the narrative of the thesis, but the work he produced in the isles is vast. Because he does not need to be introduced in the way the other writers do, this chapter takes a different approach to the rest of the thesis and looks at MacDiarmid’s Shetland-era work alongside that of Charles Doughty. Doughty was a crucial presence for MacDiarmid during his time in the isles, and considering their work together opens up a better understanding of the work MacDiarmid did in Shetland. Chapters Six and Seven discuss the second major period of growth in Shetland’s literature, focussing on the writers associated with the New Shetlander magazine, an important local journal which emerged in 1947. The final chapter then looks at contemporary Shetland authors and asks how they negotiate the literary tradition the thesis has worked through. This chapter also discusses the Shetland-related work of several non-native authors, Jen Hadfield being the most well known. In moving through these authors, as well as providing necessary introductory material, several general questions are asked. Firstly, because almost all the writing studied emerges from the isles, the question of how each writer engages with those isles is consistently relevant. How do local writers find ways of writing about their native archipelago? Do writers who are not from Shetland write about the islands in different ways than local people? The thesis shows how Scott and MacDiarmid, the two most famous non-native authors dicussed here, draw on earlier literary sources – the sagas and the work of Doughty – to construct their respective creative visions of the isles. And, in discussing the work of local authors, it will be shown that, in the early period covered in Chapter One, landscape is the most prominent idea whereas, from the Victorian era to the present day, the croft provides the central imaginative space for Shetland’s writers. A second question that runs through the thesis is one of language. Almost every local author has written extensively in Shetland dialect, and this study explores how they have developed that language as a literary idiom. The thesis shows how Shetland dialect writing gets underway in the 1870s, and how writers have continued to expand and diversify that literary tradition. The two most innovative figures to emerge are J.J. Haldane Burgess and William J. Tait and, after demonstrating how the corpus of writing in Shetland dialect has grown, the thesis concludes by examining the ways in which contemporary writers engage with the vernacular legacies their predecessors have left. Extensive use of the local language gives Shetland’s writing a regional distinctiveness, and this thesis shows how some writers have been enabled and inspired by that idiom, how some have taken dialect writing in exciting new directions, but also how some have felt limited by it and how, by not using the language, some writers have been unfairly ignored by local editors and critics. The thesis also shows that, in its two main eras of development – at the end of the nineteenth century and in the middle of the twentieth – Shetland’s writers took their cues from the general movements in Scottish writing. In the Victorian period, developments in local letters paralleled the interest in regionality and upsurge in vernacular writing that are marked characteristics of Scottish writing at the time. And, in discussing the emergence of the New Shetlander and the writers associated with it, the thesis demonstrates how the second period of flourishing in Shetland’s literature is part of the wider cultural movement of the Scottish Renaissance. The picture of Shetland’s literature the thesis offers is a self-consciously heterogeneous one. Despite the marked use of the vernacular, the thesis resists moving towards an encompassing definition of the large body of work covered, preferring to celebrate the diversity of the writing that Shetland has inspired during the last two centuries. Questions of engagement with the local environment and the use of the local language are constantly asked, but the primary scholarly contribution offered by ‘The Literature of Shetland’ is a realignment of Scotland’s northern literary border.