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The idea we have of a literary tradition is not a matter of fixity. In a living language the canon is continually being added to and therefore, to the extent that the tradition is present to us and simultaneous with us, liable to be changed by new work. Fresh contributions, innovative of necessity, realign our picture of the past and, above all, redefine it. Writers, to paraphrase Jorge Luis Borges, create their own ancestors. So it is that a hitherto peripheral writer or a form considered "low" may be reassessed and enlisted in the perpetual struggle with narrative forms. Just this is the case of Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-94) whose experimental transformations of a number of genres of fiction have an almost exemplary status at the present time. Meanwhile, Vladimir Nabokov's lectures on Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Borges' ubiquitous remarks on the Scots writers illuminate both his work and theirs. ' He is now an ancestor and requires the consideration of all who are interested in the continuing life of storytelling. From the point of view of literary criticism, the shifting tradition consists first and foremost only of literary works and not of a philosophy of literary form or of any ideas originating outside the realm of literature itself. The language which criticism uses to speak about the novel, for example, will derive from specific novels. At the same time it is engaged in selecting those very novels which will constitute its values. The language the critic uses to describe some kinds of fiction can seem absolute, when in actual fact it is simply the case that his language is suitable for describing one kind and is inappropriate to another.

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The thesis provides a scholarly introduction to most of Robert Louis Stevenson's short stories: New Arabian Nights, More New Arabian Nights: The Dynamiter, The Merry Men and Other Tales, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Island Nights' Entertainments, 'When the Devil was Well,' 'The Body-Snatcher,' 'The Misadventures of John Nicholson' and 'The Tale of Tod Lapraik' from the novel Catriona. The approach here is contextual: the discussions of each story draw on Stevenson's essays and other writings, and remark on some of the more significant literary or historical sources of which Stevenson had made use. The earlier versions (including manuscripts or manuscript fragments) of certain stories are also remarked on, in order to provide a fuller understanding of that story's development over a period of time. Five appendices are included, tabulating in detail the differences between the earlier versions and the final published versions of these stories. These introductory remarks are also directed towards providing a particular reading of the short stories. This reading begins by drawing attention to the neglected 'new' Arabian Nights, French and South Pacific stories, and refers to them as 'romantically comic.' It then suggests that, with endings characterised by reconciliation and resolution, these stories present an essentially 'restorative' or 'remedial' process: it is this process that allows these stories to be defined as 'romantically comic.' The term 'remedial' has significant implications: in these stories a character may literally be 'healed' or 'restored,' and the setting itself (for example, the forest of Fontainebleau in 'The Treasure of Franchard') may possess 'healing' properties. The thesis examines the implications of this comic 'remedial' process, and shows how it operates in and controls the outcome of these stories. By contrast, a number of these stories are not at all 'romantically comic.' Stories such as 'The Body-Snatcher' or The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde present a process that is by no means 'remedial' or 'restorative': instead, an opposite process of decline or 'deterioration' is traced where, now, a character may literally lose his health. These gloomier and more tragic stories examine the 'symptoms' of such a 'deteriorated' condition: premature ageing, the sleepless night, the nightmare or the feverish dream, the dependance upon and enslavement to drugs or 'powders,' and so on. The thesis thus classifies two essentially opposite kinds of short story: the 'romantically comic,' with its 'restorative' ending and its 'remedial' process, perhaps literally representing the recovery of a character's health; and the gloomier 'tales for winter nights' which, by contrast, present a process of 'deterioration' where, for various reasons, a character's health is lost and is never finally recovered. The thesis implies a connection between these two processes, operating throughout the short stories, and Stevenson's own condition as an invalid (with its connotations of 'deteriorating' health) and a convalescent (with its opposite connotations of recovery). Indeed, for Stevenson, the act of writing stories is itself significant in this context.

Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas. / Made available in DSpace on 2012-10-16T21:31:34Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0Bitstream added on 2016-01-08T14:13:47Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 170099.pdf: 30113052 bytes, checksum: fb50bb648cc73b9ce5d67e9fca93f2d0 (MD5)

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This thesis deals with three writers, George Gissing, Edmund Gosse and Robert Louis Stevenson. I use the words "introversion" and "extroversion" partly in a geographical sense. George Gissing, for example, in spite of Continental influences remained a very English (in some ways almost insular) novelist, and in that sense an introvert. Edmund Gosse, on the other hand, was a very cosmopolitan critic although his style was typically English. Robert Louis Stevenson provides a third angle. Having been born in Edinburgh he was forced into exile for most of his life, and obviously this had a great effect on his writings. Of the three writers most weight is given to Edmund Gosse. In my analysis of George Gissing I concentrate on some of his best known novels, The Unclassed, The Nether World, New Grub Street and Born in Exile. The Emancipated and By the Ionian Sea deal specifically with Italy. There are four chapters on Edmund Gosse. The first concentrates on the early part of his long career when his main interest was Scandinavian literature. The next two chapters give an account of his impressions of and writings on America and France. In the fourth chapter on Edmund Gosse I concentrate on the part of his career when he had become an established authority on his own country's literature. Robert Louis Stevenson, too, is dealt with in four chapters. First I write briefly about his Scottish works, all inspired by his childhood and youth. Next I deal with his two favourite countries, France and the United States, both associated with his Wife, Fanny. The last chapter follows Stevenson to the South Seas where he spent the last few years of his life and wrote some of his best books. The three writers are compared from time to time. Robert Louis Stevenson and Edmund Gosse knew each other well; George Gissing is the odd man out. But his reaction to foreign influences differs from that of the other two and this makes a comparison very interesting.

This thesis provides a wide-ranging account of the work of Robert Louis Stevenson, tracing an unyielding preoccupation with the mode of romance throughout his famously diverse body of writing. It argues that Stevenson's prose retools romance in several important ways; these include modernization, disenchantment, and the reinterpretation of romance as a practical force able to reach beyond textual confines in order to carve out long-lasting psychological pathways in a reader. In its pursuit of these arguments, the thesis draws upon and appends a significant amount of archival material never before used, including excerpts from The Hair Trunk – Stevenson's first extended piece of fiction, still unpublished in English. More widely, it analyses the appearance of romance within four major aspects of Stevenson's prose: aesthetic theme, structure, setting, and heroism, each of which is the focus of a discrete chapter. The introduction engages with the history and definition of romance itself, arguing that it is most usefully approached as mode rather than genre in the context of Stevenson's writing. Chapter I then assesses Stevenson's direct critical engagement with romance, and appraises his wider literary aesthetic in that light. Romance is shown to be built in to the way he writes about writing, adventure being intrinsic to his authorial quest for adequate expression. Chapter II goes on to examine Stevenson's relationship with structure, and argues that self-reflexivity interacts with romance to form the habitual core of his creative writing. Chapter III investigates the use of cities, forests and seas as sites of modern romance within Stevenson's oeuvre, arguing that he eschews descriptive Romanticism and instead lauds a primarily practical approach towards the navigation of these environments. Finally, Chapter IV demonstrates Stevenson's perception of a relationship between authorship and the heroic, charting his use of romance as part of a progressive evocation of the failure of heroism itself as a sustainable modern ideal.

Often overlooked in the nineteenth century Gothic novel are the complicated social issues existing within the text. In Emily Brontèe's Wuthering Heights and Robert Louis Stevenson's The Master of Ballantrae, the authors each create villains who represent the preoccupation with appropriate sexuality and conventional gender roles existing in Victorian England. Brontèe's Heathcliff and Stevenson's James Durie embody all that is immoral and non-normative in society with their depraved behavior ; however, because of the authors' craftiness with language, the authors, through their villains, manage to magnetize the other characters and subsequently emasculate those men in the text who emulate the Victorian ideal of masculinity. By focusing their novels on the plight of the Other and his disruption to the homogeneous rules regarding sexuality and gender in the nineteenth century, both authors articulate a profound understanding of the societal fears regarding these issues existing in their time. / by Dana DeFalco. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2011. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2011. Mode of access: World Wide Web.