Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hong Kong, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 281-294).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept. of Political Science, August 2000. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (M. Phil.)--University of Hong Kong, 2000. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on Dec. 19, 2005). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 145-148). Also issued as print manuscript.

published_or_final_version / Comparative Literature / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Doctor of Philosophy / Following on the proposition that the history of Western thought is importantly constituted by a discourse of male-male pedagogic or pederastic relations stretching in narrative form, according to Allan Bloom, from the Phaedrus to Death in Venice, the deconstructive project of reading 'against the visible grain' has been mobilised in the interests of interrogating and unsettling what can only be defined as homophobic misreadings of Martin Boyd. Critical discursive practice, by the near-uniform imposition of a tacit censorship, has refused by means of erasure, silence and repression to reflect on Boyd from the perspective of sexual definition or same-sex love and desire, presumably in the belief that there are no interpretive consequences. In the process, an hypothesis of Boyd as himself mounting an act of social criticism by surreptitiously contesting conventional and hierarchical typologies of masculinity in the margins of institutionalised and popular hegemonic culture, seems to have escaped inscription in the canonical records. Martin Boyd's 'dividedness', 'doubleness', ambivalences and dichotomies point to a complexity that is not ultimately or ontologically resolvable. The Derridean 'de-sedimentation' modus operandi used here makes no claim to a relevatory hermeneutics of Hegelian essence. It does, however, utilise the various tropes of ambivalence, uncertainty, anxiety and incoherence — aspects of Boyd which may be correlated, perhaps, with his sense of the unheimlich or not being at home with himself or his environment — to reposition him in terms of his psychosexual constitution. In the process, the advocacy of aestheticism and pleasure for which he is recognised is found to be tempered and/or subverted by an overt recourse to the transgressive and 'decadent', elements irretrievably linked to his fetishization of the beautiful male body and his obsessive redeployment of the Hellenic ideal of manly love. The interpretive frameworks applied in the reclamation of the 'different' sensibility Boyd articulates by means of an alternately subtilized and strenuous challenge to sex/gender identity and behavioural norms encompass a field ranging from late nineteenth century theoretical discourse on homosexuality through to the intertextual influences of cultural innovators like Pater and Wilde. It includes reference to the literary strategies devised by Sedgwick to uncover deviance and 'erotic pathways'; it surveys the psychoanalytic hypotheses of Freud and Adler as relevant; and it pays heed to an aesthetics of the religio-erotic.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Committee on Human Development, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2004. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on Apr. 29, 2006). Advisor: William J. Tyler, Dept. of East Asian Language and Literatures. Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 376-400).

Boys‘love (BL) is originated from the Japanese comics. The phrase ―”boy‘s love” first appeared as a proper noun in the comics at an approximate time of 1966 in Japan. Most BL comics depicted hopeless love of boys. Then, the 1990s saw the emergence of new type of BL comics, namely 耽美 (Tanbi). Tanbi is a Japanese word, it can be attributed the same meaning as aestheticism. Tanbi comics showed a perfect scene to audiences within beautiful boys’ love, pleasure stories also end up with a comedy. The boys‘ love or nature love between boys is different from the circle of gay. BL is a kind of emotion always can only be seen in literary output due to its strict conditions. BL ought to be explained like this, a beautiful boy is falling love with somebody else, by coincidence, it is a beautiful boy. BL is more like a Platonic love, BL always give a picture of spiritual experiences of boys‘love but fewer sex. In other word, BL is just a kind of comic form. The researchers in Japanese comics always concentrated on its social influences, characteristics, conditions, etc. There is scarce any research touching on the comic forms. BL comics are a special component of the comics, and this form demonstrates a series of phenomenon in sociology. With an informal research, BL comics is now turning into a common fashionable comic form among the Asia regions. However, with great exchanges with other areas, there also exists a large number of BL comic fans in Mainland China, and most of them are young ladies. Given this background, BL is treated as an exclusive form to the young ladies, and it largely reflects values and tastes of these ladies. The findings of this thesis might provide insights into a desire understanding males and an expectation of a fathfully lover. Undeniably, Japanese people attain amazing achievements in many fields, the success of circulating BL products is one of them. To some extent, researching the circulation and consumption patterns of BL comics may reveal the great achievement of Japan in culture transmission. / published_or_final_version / Modern Languages and Cultures / Master / Master of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / Japanese Studies / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Doctor of Philosophy / Following on the proposition that the history of Western thought is importantly constituted by a discourse of male-male pedagogic or pederastic relations stretching in narrative form, according to Allan Bloom, from the Phaedrus to Death in Venice, the deconstructive project of reading 'against the visible grain' has been mobilised in the interests of interrogating and unsettling what can only be defined as homophobic misreadings of Martin Boyd. Critical discursive practice, by the near-uniform imposition of a tacit censorship, has refused by means of erasure, silence and repression to reflect on Boyd from the perspective of sexual definition or same-sex love and desire, presumably in the belief that there are no interpretive consequences. In the process, an hypothesis of Boyd as himself mounting an act of social criticism by surreptitiously contesting conventional and hierarchical typologies of masculinity in the margins of institutionalised and popular hegemonic culture, seems to have escaped inscription in the canonical records. Martin Boyd's 'dividedness', 'doubleness', ambivalences and dichotomies point to a complexity that is not ultimately or ontologically resolvable. The Derridean 'de-sedimentation' modus operandi used here makes no claim to a relevatory hermeneutics of Hegelian essence. It does, however, utilise the various tropes of ambivalence, uncertainty, anxiety and incoherence — aspects of Boyd which may be correlated, perhaps, with his sense of the unheimlich or not being at home with himself or his environment — to reposition him in terms of his psychosexual constitution. In the process, the advocacy of aestheticism and pleasure for which he is recognised is found to be tempered and/or subverted by an overt recourse to the transgressive and 'decadent', elements irretrievably linked to his fetishization of the beautiful male body and his obsessive redeployment of the Hellenic ideal of manly love. The interpretive frameworks applied in the reclamation of the 'different' sensibility Boyd articulates by means of an alternately subtilized and strenuous challenge to sex/gender identity and behavioural norms encompass a field ranging from late nineteenth century theoretical discourse on homosexuality through to the intertextual influences of cultural innovators like Pater and Wilde. It includes reference to the literary strategies devised by Sedgwick to uncover deviance and 'erotic pathways'; it surveys the psychoanalytic hypotheses of Freud and Adler as relevant; and it pays heed to an aesthetics of the religio-erotic.