This is an examination of the critical reception and canonical status of Ernest Bucklers <i>The Mountain and the Valley </i> and Sinclair Rosss <i>As For Me and My House</i>. While both novels have been regarded as important works of Canadian literature,<i> As For Me and My House</i> is currently regarded as a canonical novel and <i>The Mountain and the Valley</i> is not. This study examines the notion of the Canadian canon and its relation to Bucklers and Rosss novels to show how the specific case of Ross and Buckler illustrates the process of Canadian canon formation. Through a review of the critical work produced on each novel, an understanding of trends in Canadian critical practice and theory, and the application of canon theory, this thesis examines the reasons for the differences in the reception and status of the two works. This thesis argues that the interplay between critical trends, academic interests, and literary value ultimately determines the canonical status of a text.

This thesis investigates the womanist theme of spirituality in Amy Tan’s novel, The Bonesetter’s Daughter. Spirituality unfolds in five linked themes: ghosts, ghostwriting, nature, bones, and memory. In structure, the thesis is composed of four parts. The Introduction proposes spirituality as a womanist way of reading The Bonesetter’s Daughter. Chapter one investigates how the spirit of Gu Liu Xin, the Chinese grandmother, plays a critical role in developing the psychological integrity of Ruth Luyi Young, the American-born Chinese granddaughter. The second chapter examines how Gu Liu Xin’s ghost helps to guide LuLing Liu Young, Liu Xin’s daughter and Ruth’s mother, out of the hazardous situation in China, and how Gu’s spirit sustains LuLing in times of alienation and hardship in America. The thesis concludes that spirituality is essential for a subjugated woman character to achieve her personal and political freedom as well as her physical and spiritual wholeness.

This is an examination of the critical reception and canonical status of Ernest Bucklers <i>The Mountain and the Valley </i> and Sinclair Rosss <i>As For Me and My House</i>. While both novels have been regarded as important works of Canadian literature,<i> As For Me and My House</i> is currently regarded as a canonical novel and <i>The Mountain and the Valley</i> is not. This study examines the notion of the Canadian canon and its relation to Bucklers and Rosss novels to show how the specific case of Ross and Buckler illustrates the process of Canadian canon formation. Through a review of the critical work produced on each novel, an understanding of trends in Canadian critical practice and theory, and the application of canon theory, this thesis examines the reasons for the differences in the reception and status of the two works. This thesis argues that the interplay between critical trends, academic interests, and literary value ultimately determines the canonical status of a text.

Thesis (M.A.) -- University of Texas at Arlington, 2008.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Memorial University of Newfoundland, 2002. / Bibliography: leaves 322-336.

Bound to violence (1968) is the first novel written by the Malian author Yambo Ouologuem. Winner of the Renaudot Award (November 1968), the novel was pulled from bookstore shelves by the French editor in the early 1970’s, following the accusations of plagiarism, which never went to trial. When the French text is reprinted in 2003, it is presented as an attempt to rehabilitate its reputation to the francophone public. Our study analyzes the intertextual practices, of which plagiarism is a major constituent, that are the foundation of the innovative narrative process of Bound to violence. The author appropriates the texts of the occidental novel as well as of the Bible, which various theories of intertextuality allow to identify. Similarly, the paratext of Bound to violence, which categorizes it as a novel, permits the blending of different discourses of that period in a mixture of narratives and genres. The novel presents “fixed” discourses such as the story of Hamitic Myth, ideological discourses about blackness and colonialism but also discourse about society, particularly History. The intertextual and hypertextual practices allow a fusion of narratives and genres which defines the novel’s originality. This study goes beyond a simple listing of the literary texts which are part of Bound to violence and examines the elaboration of an intertextual link between Bound to violence and other literary texts, as well as their function in the newly created novel. / Thesis (Master, French) -- Queen's University, 2009-10-06 17:23:10.38

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This thesis is about a problem of interest to reading theorists, psychological anthropologists and cultural studies researchers alike: why we find some narratives, plots, and images compelling and what this phenomenon can tell us about the cultural bases of human motivation. Gesturing to the interdependence of emotion, cognition, and motivation, the notion of the '(dis)positioned self' is proposed as a conceptual tool by which to address how motivation is both acquired and expressed in the way the self as 'feeling-mind' reads, that is, negotiates an interpretation of the signifying systems of a text to render it personally meaningful. (Dis)position allows us to overcome the sociocultural determinism of French structuralist and some poststructuralist reductions of the self to a precipitate of cultural constructs by reconceptualizing the interpreting self as an embodied, affective agent who employs unconscious knowledge that itself draws on another form of sociality. On this account, reading performance is culturally informed action and interpretations are motivated. Emotion is introduced as symptomatic of the intrapsychic investments which mediate how readers internalize cultural knowledge. The thesis looks at three soundings from social discourse--Janice Radway's Reading the Romance; The Singing Detective, a contemporary metafictional text; and the literature and group therapy practices associated with the codependency movement--in order to examine how presuppositions about emotion and the psychical reality of fantasy appear in cultural representations of the 'ill self as reader' while being fundamental to psychological notions of the self upon which healing practices themselves depend for their efficacy.

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