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This thesis focuses on the representation of physical violence in the first Romantic French dramas of the 19th century. Before 1829, the Classic movement forbade spectacles of violence in the major theatres. However, with the production of the first Romantic play, Henri III et sa cour, the stage was transformed into a space of murder, physical brutality and suicide. In this study, we will interrogate the reasons for which violent acts reappear on the French stage. The influence of the guillotine will be examined as well as the sublime and grotesque nature of murder. The theories of Christine Marcandier-Colard, which explore the supreme beauty of criminality, will lead us to determine which ideologies are communicated through the depictions of death. We will also analyze the reaction of the public in regard to brutality in the theatre, as well as the role that violence plays in the development of a new society. Although violence inherently possesses a destructive value, its aesthetic value in the theatre advocates a veritable evolution of the French society towards democracy.

This manuscript examines the cultural history of rural North China, as seen through the production, circulation, content and interpretation of graphic wood-block prints, known as nianhua. The spatial focus is on a fixed set of print producing villages on the North China plain. The temporal focus encompasses the late 1800s through the early 1960s. In examining how nianhua were produced and distributed in late 19th and early 20th century North China, I show that the village print industry was prescriptive in organization. This organization was a basic factor in delimiting form and iconography in print, since it imposed limits on the free appropriation of texts, and directed the way in which they were read. Having accounted for these factors, I consider how perceptions of the social, physical and ethical world were put into print, and how print in turn configured perceptions of the world. Since print is thus socially derived, print and its interpretation are considered in terms of responses to social change, and the capacity of print to effect change. The environment in which village print is structured is variously considered to be formed by the following: the physical space of the home; late-imperial narrative structures (and their residual perpetuation beyond the decline of the political regime); narrative structures produced through technological change and expanded translocal experience; and state-centred reform beginning in the Republican era, and reaching its conclusion under communism. I conclude that narratives which began as superscriptive and authoritative structures, were appropriated and re-structured by the specific conditions of the production, distribution, and display of print in the village.

On December 10, 1835 the Federal Diet of the German Confederation banned the publication and distribution of any works written by a group identified as "das junge Deutschland." The Diet explicitly named Karl Gutzkow, Heinrich Laube, Theodor Mundt, Ludolf Wienbarg, and Heinrich Heine as members of this group. Since 1835 the term "Young Germany" has been widely accepted among historians and literary analysts alike. However, there has been virtually no agreement regarding the purposes of the group, its importance, or even its membership. In recent years, historical studies have gradually come to accept that the notion of a unified group called "Young Germany" is a myth, but no study has attempted to identify the key issues which divided the so-called Young Germans. This study examines the content of the 'Young German' works in the years prior to the Federal ban in order to determine the nature of the disagreements which divided Gutzkow, Laube, Mundt and Wienbarg. By utilizing the voluminous monographic and journalistic works produced by the socalled Young Germans, this study establishes their positions on many of the key issues of the Vormarz era, in particular, the emancipation of women, religious emancipation and Saint- Simonianism, and political emancipation. Based upon these positions, this study argues that there was little consensus among the core 'members.' Each man believed that he was contributing to the creation of a new type of literature which would end the Romantic separation of literature from the real world and usher in a more utilitarian form of writing. The author would no longer serve only the muses of literature, he would also serve more practical causes. Beyond this shared conviction, however, there were few issues upon which Gutzkow, Laube, Mundt and Wienbarg agreed. Moreover, even on the basic assumption that writers and their works must serve practical causes there was considerable conflict regarding the implementation of this ideal. On the larger socio-political issues of the day there was virtually no agreement. Some of the 'Young Germans' expressed fairly traditional opinions on these topics, others were remarkably modern. Seldom if ever, however, did they speak with one voice.

This study seeks to redress the continued exclusion of women poets from the theorization of the dramatic monologue. I argue that an unacknowledged consensus on the definition of the dramatic monologue exists, in spite of the oft-proclaimed absence of one, and that it is the failure to recognize this consensus which has in part debarred women poets from the theorization of the form. In particular, the failure to acknowledge this consensus has led recent feminist critics attempting to “rethink” the dramatic monologue, such as Cynthia Scheinberg and Glennis Byron, to reinscribe the very model they are attempting to rewrite by admitting into their analysis only those poems which already conform to the existing model. In consequence, these critics inadvertently repeat the exclusion they are attempting to redress by reinscribing a model which is predicated—as both Scheinberg and Byron acknowledge—on the exclusion of women poets. In order to end this cycle of exclusion, my project begins from a different beginning, with Hemans instead of Browning, and traces her innovations and influence across the dramatic monologues of two key dramatic monologists of the 19th-century, Augusta Webster and Amy Levy. In the hands of all three women poets, the dramatic monologue develops into a form which calls into question not only the nature of the self, as is characteristic of Browning’s model, but more crucially, the possibility of the subject. Their poems persistently dramatize what Judith Butler calls “impossible speech”—speech that is not recognized as the speech of a subject—and thereby challenges the model of authoritative speaking which underpins both men’s dramatic monologues and the prevailing theory of women’s as a clutch for linguistic freedom, power and authority. This project therefore has dual aims: to complicate our current conception of the dramatic monologue by placing the women’s dramatic monologues in conversation with the larger tradition of the form; and to complicate our understanding of 19th-century women poets’ conception and constructions of female subjectivity by re-theorizing their poetic strategies in the development of the dramatic monologue. / Thesis (Ph.D, English) -- Queen's University, 2008-06-26 14:13:29.982

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The thesis indicates how central Canadian Methodists came to terms with Christian perfection in the years 1828-1884. It demonstrates that the concept was a matter of constant and considerable concern, and that the primary force in determining how it was attended to was the influence of John Wesley. The main elements of the concept are set out--an experience possible through momentary faith and resulting in cleansing from sin and the ability to love God with pure love. Influences upon Canadian Methodism are probed and, in particular, the thought of John Wesley on the subject is investigated. Lines of influence from Wesley to Canadian Methodism are traced. The thesis sketches the importance of the concept as seen in attempts to define it, to bring it to personal experience, to urge others to seek and find it. In the concluding remarks, some of the writer's observations are reflected.

This thesis observes the various representations of the Amerindian in Quebec literature between 1855 and 1875. Those twenty years are set as a sample both sufficiently rich and narrowly delimited as to permit a synchronic analysis. / The analysis itself is a close inspection of a large quantity of poetry and fiction read in search of pan-textual recurrences. Constant features found as such are presented in a quasi-index of characteristics and quasi-characters-like figures, both seen as cliche, or topoi, and both linked to various imaginary constructs about cruelty, fear and security, forestry, religion, womanhood, alcoholism, etc. The poetics constraints in which those figures take place are considered: for example, what role may or may not play an Amerindian character in a narrative? Also analysed are underlying micro-narratives, particularly those linked to progress and decay. / The whole is not a unified system which would account for every possibility; it may instead be conceptualized as series of trends which may or may not combine or clash. / Those cliches are read as signs of larger and collective questionings, most notably about Quebec's self-image.

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