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  • About
  • The Global ETD Search service is a free service for researchers to find electronic theses and dissertations. This service is provided by the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations.
    Our metadata is collected from universities around the world. If you manage a university/consortium/country archive and want to be added, details can be found on the NDLTD website.
21

Vaishnavism and indentured labour in Mauritian literature

Rajkomar, Sraddha Shivani January 2012 (has links)
This thesis addresses two key issues of postcolonial studies that remain under- represented in Anglophone academic circles: the history of Indian indentured labour in Mauritius that began in the nineteenth century and ended in the twentieth century; and the importance of religion in representations of histories of arbitrary colonial control and anti-colonialist struggle. Cross-disciplinary in scope, the thesis nevertheless adopts a literary methodological approach in the examination of poetic and prose texts written by four Mauritian authors from extremely diverse religious and social backgrounds who share a common interest in the fraught history of indenture. These authors are: Leoville L'Homme (1857-1928), Robert-Edward Hart (1891-1954), Marcel Cabon (1912-1972), and Abhimanyu Unnuth (1937- ). Each author's engagement with Vaishnavism, a Hindu tradition, shapes and reflects the visceral individual experiences of a chapter of Mauritian history that brought about one of the most important demographic, social and political changes in the island. In the Introduction, I provide extensive methodological, historical and conceptual contextualisation for the thesis, and establish indenture to be a traumatic phenomenon on a scale that is comparable to that of its predecessor, slavery. The subsequent chapters - which further contribute to postcolonial studies by participating in debates such as Orientalism, colonial desire and masculinity - are each devoted to one author and their relevant texts. In Chapters 1 and 2, I argue that using Vaishnavism, the religion of the colonised, by members of the colonial elite in representations of indenture inevitably consolidates colonialist control in a discursive manner. In Chapters 3 and 4, I look at how the same religion empowers the colonised subject in overcoming the trauma of indenture and in resistance to the sugar plantation system. To conclude, I reflect on the scope of the thesis and its contribution to postcolonial scholarship.
22

Work in progress : children's literature and childist criticism : towards an institutional re-consideration

Chapleau, Sebastien January 2009 (has links)
This thesis examines the place of the child within the domains of children's literature criticism from the angle of childist criticism, mainly as regards the production of literature. The introduction briefly addresses the world of children's literature criticism and puts forward some of the fundamental issues which will be dealt with as the thesis develops. Chapter One looks at some of the arguments put forward by Jacqueline Rose and Karin Lesnik-Oberstein and their reading of the fundamental issues regarding the place of the child in the writing and criticism of children's literature. The chapter draws parallels between their work and that of Jean-Jacques Lecercle as he writes about the notion of alterity. Chapter Two introduces the notion of childist criticism, its origins, uses, and shortcomings. Through childist criticism, the chapter offers an alternative position to that of Rose and Lesnik-Oberstein. Chapter Three considers some of implications deriving from the arguments developed in Chapter One and Chapter Two. Some institutional possibilities are developed. Based on the notions of cultural respect and unconditionality, the chapter considers, and disrupts, the binary opposition between childhood and adulthood, as well as offers some academic possibilities as far as children's literature studies are concerned. The conclusion summarises the key issues dealt with in the thesis and suggests some more possibilities as far as the development of childist criticism is concerned, especially regarding the notions of education and children's rights.
23

Mutations of heroism in nineteenth-century modernity

Burke, Tristan January 2017 (has links)
This thesis addresses how a range of early- to mid-nineteenth century texts from different national traditions deploy a discourse of heroism that responds to the legacies of Byron and Napoleon in such a way as to imagine new forms of subjectivity and class position as heroic. It shows how Byron and Napoleon are constructed by these texts as heroic figures of the past who are no longer suited to the current economic and social conditions of the triumphant bourgeoisie, but, simultaneously, how these figures are deployed by the bourgeoisie in order to bolster the ideological work of showing their class as heroic. Napoleon and Byron offer certain ideological and intellectual preconditions for the development of a bourgeois consciousness, a development which in turn repudiates what it is based on. I have selected texts across a range of national traditions in order to stress the pan-European importance of Napoleon and Byron. Their influence involves such an extent of international dialogue that they cannot be looked at without considering them as international figures. The comparative and international focus of the project allows an approach which both highlights the similarities between different national traditions and responses, and the differences between them, often rooted in various histories, points in economic development and ideological and political configurations. The rationale for selecting the particular texts I have is that all of them grapple quite obviously, and at a basic linguistic level, with the question of heroism: they present the word ‘hero’ in their title, in their opening pages, or with a certain frequency throughout the text. In addressing the central focus of my research, a number of issues surrounding it frequently arise. Particularly these concern theoretical questions to do with the novel as a key cultural form through which the bourgeoisie ideologically expresses and consolidates itself, questions such as “what is realism?” and “how does the novel respond to historical events?” Furthermore, the thesis inquires exactly how bourgeois subjectivity can be imagined, recognised and theorised. In order to address these concerns I deploy a range of theoretical texts, particularly the work of Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Walter Benjamin and Jacques Rancière. The thesis is split into two halves, focusing on Byron and Napoleon. It begins with a general introduction, addressing the historical context, and critical and theoretical works that respond to the notion of the hero and heroism. After this, each chapter focuses quite narrowly on specific texts but draws in wider historical, literary and other contextual concerns. The Byron theme has chapters on Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin and Lermontov’s A Hero of Our Time, and on Dickens’s David Copperfield. The Napoleon theme has chapters on Stendhal’s The Red and the Black and Thackeray’s Vanity Fair.
24

Orality in the body of the archive : memorialising representations of Creole language and culture in the technologised word

Edwin, Marl'ene January 2016 (has links)
This thesis begins with a re-reading of selected texts by Caribbean writers, specifically, Joan Anim-Addo, Olive Senior and Merle Collins and in so doing argues that literary fiction can and does function as a ‘creolised archive’. I argue that a historic marginalisation, which has barred Caribbean scholars from entering ‘formal’ archival spaces, has created an alternative discourse. Consequently, Caribbean writers have chosen the imagined landscapes of literature, a new archival space for the Caribbean, within which to document and preserve Caribbean cultural traditions. If as I suggest, fiction allows for the safeguarding of traditions, how then should we read Caribbean literature? The combination of a physical and a virtual archive questions the literary and linguistic interface that such a mingling entails in a preservation of Caribbean culture. I argue for an appreciation of orality as performance, primary and technologised, as well as the reading of texts as ‘creolised archive’. Drawing on interlinked theoretical works including that of Kamau Brathwaite, Édouard Glissant and Antoinette Burton, I attempt to establish the performativity of the ‘creolised archive’ in twentieth and twenty-first century Caribbean literature, defined as oral in this research. I suggest that the ‘creolised archive’ has a plurality of sources/resources enabling the preservation of aspects of Creole culture. I begin by exploring the literary representation and imagining of black female subjectivity to highlight a reading of the black female body as archive. The selected short stories provide a starting point from which the history and construction of the Creole voice is explored to determine the representation and preservation of Caribbean Creoles archived within the literary text. In considering the World Wide Web as archive, I examine how the World Wide Web might most effectively serve as an interactive archive for Caribbean oral literature. Additionally, I interrogate how the Web might be seen and experienced as a literary interface – a creolised archive – enabling Caribbean Creole languages and literature to be represented.
25

Framing translated and adapted children's literature in the Kilani project : a narrative perspective

Ayoub, Amal January 2010 (has links)
No description available.
26

No rest for the wicked? : exploring sleep in nineteenth-century Gothic literature

Siddiqui, Manal January 2016 (has links)
Sleep has long been overlooked in critical literature. It is often viewed as a state of passivity and so, an invalid area of research. However, this thesis argues that the depiction of sleep and sleepers in nineteenth-century gothic literature is reflective of historically-specific anxieties regarding sexuality and gender roles, such as those related to the New Woman, prostitution, and homosexuality. Similarly, concerns regarding urbanisation and scientific progress, particularly in relation to the latter's perceived displacement of religion, are shown to be apparent in the enactment of sleep in gothic narratives. Theories of sleep and dreaming are examined from a number of perspectives, illustrating the uncertainty which categorises the state. Ahistorical 'social facts' about sleep (predominantly founded in the relatively recent sociological interest in the subject) are shown to be related to nineteenth-century ideas of the state, and how best to enact it. This discussion of sleep chiefly draws on socio-historical readings. However, psychoanalytical ideas are also relevant, particularly in the discussion of dreams, and in relation to the sleeping enactment of repressed desires. In applying multiple critical approaches there is an attempt to develop existing analysis of gothic literature, as well as to contribute an original perspective on the seminal texts studied. Sleepers in the gothic are considered in terms of their physical appearance, where they sleep, and who they sleep with, and each aspect is shown to embody nineteenth-century attitudes regarding morality and sexuality. Portrayals of sleepers are further analysed in relation to their role in the narratives, and shown to be distinctly gendered, thus offering further understanding of gender roles (and responsibilities) in the gothic. Far from being innocent in their passivity, sleepers are shown to contravene a multitude of social and moral laws without waking, and thus, to contribute to the gothic genre's reputation as a transgressive literature.
27

Edward W. Said : resistance, knowledge, criticism

Taylor, Mark A. January 2016 (has links)
The prodigious output of the controversial Palestinian-American public intellectual, academic, and political activist Edward W. Said (1935-2003), continues to polarize the academic, intellectual, and political worlds, not least because of the inflammatory nature of his relationship to the vexed issue of Israel/Palestine. It is a contention of this thesis that this polarization has resulted in what are often less than critical examinations of Said's work. In short, because Said and his work remain relevant and influential, a new method of reading is required, one which not only takes account of Said's secular, 'worldly' approach to the issue of knowledge and its production, but applies the same rigour and method to the Palestinian's work in all its literary-critical, political, and personal varieties. This thesis attempts to meet that aim by testing Said's oeuvre within the rubric of his stated ambition to create a critical location from which the production of 'non-coercive' knowledge was attainable. In the context of his opposition to political Zionism and wider Western imperialism, whether Said produced, or even intended to produce knowledge that was 'non-coercive' is an extremely important question, and one that will be answered in this thesis. Formed by an introduction and three main chapters, the scope of this thesis is broad. Following an exposition of the biographical 'facts' of Said's life, Chapter One engages his late work, Out of Place. Ostensibly a memoir, Out of Place is subjected to the discipline of Said's own critical concept of 'worldliness' and placed within the much broader context of the author's oeuvre. From this location it is possible to see the memoir as one of a number of narratives competing in the political sphere. Chapter Two deals with the issue of Said's relationship to some of the key thinkers and schools of thought that seemed to inform his work, questioning whether Said resisted inculcation in powerful concepts like humanism, structuralism, post-structuralism, and Marxism or, in fact, permitted these influences to disrupt his desired critical location of homelessness. The final part of the thesis engages with Said's secular, provisional approach to knowledge. First, weaving through the tautly balanced concepts of beginnings and origins in Beginnings: Intention and Method, much of the chapter addresses Said's attack on Western knowledge production in Orientalism, where perversely he produces his own counter-monument to Western colonialism. The chapter ends with a Saidian reading of Said's three principal modes of criticism: secular, contrapuntal, and democratic. The conclusion that emerges from a Saidian,'worldly' reading of Said is perhaps both surprising and, yet, exactly as one might expect. Said was a human being, and human beings are flawed. The first intellectual line out of Said creates a restless critical and philosophical framework with the potential to undermine the second intellectual line out of Said, the political pragmatist always ready to produce coercive knowledge.
28

Women writers from the Francophone and Hispanic Caribbean at the close of the twentieth century : en-gendering Caribbeanness

Ferly, Odile January 2002 (has links)
In contrast to the usual division of Caribbean literary criticism into linguistic zones, this study adopts a pan-Caribbean approach. The contention is that women's writing challenges and revises many of the major regional identity discourses, most of which do not fully account for - or, in some cases, even allow - the shaping of female identity. Each chapter therefore revolves around an aspect of collective or individual identity. Chapter one discusses female characterisation in the fiction of Gisele Pineau (Guadeloupe, 1956), Ana Luz Garcia Calzada (Cuba, 1944), Edwidge Danticat (HaitiIUS, 1969), Julia Alvarez (Dominican RepubliclUS, 1951), and Mayra Santos (Puerto Rico, 1966), showing how these authors revise the representations commonly found in the androcentric literary canons of the region and offer alternative models crucial to the elaboration of a positive sense of identity for Caribbean women. The interplay between Caribbean history and literature, and the erasure of women from Caribbean historiography and historical fiction are the issues addressed in chapter two. Here it is argued that conventional historiography does not allow for the representation of Caribbean women's participation in the nation-building process. Challenging conventional male writing, the fictional accounts offered by Pineau, Santos, Danticat, and Alvarez reinsert the female presence in the Caribbean past. Chapter three is devoted to language in Caribbean societies and literature. It assesses the significance of gender in the creolisation process, and examines how gender affects the notion of 'nation language'. Here the focus is on the linguistic practices of Santos, Pineau, Sylviane Telchid (Guadeloupe, 1941), and Garcia Calzada. Chapter four is concerned with the response of several women writers to various identity discourses. It shows how Suzanne Dracius-Pinalie (Martinique, c. 1951) and Adelaida Fernandez de Juan (Cuba, 1961), Danticat and Santos, and finally Marta Rojas (Cuba, c. 1925) and Telchid contribute to the renovation of the canon by revising, adapting or simply integrating these discourses. Chapter five explores the treatment of exile and emigration in diaspora women's writing. It evaluates the significance of this experience in terms of a redefinition of (female) Caribbeanness in relation to the work of Dracius-Pinalie, Alvarez, Danticat, and Cristina Garcia. It ends with a discussion of the implications of exile and emigration for the notions of Caribbean identity, culture and literature.
29

Figuring 'Sleeping Beauty' : metamorphosis of a literary and cultural trope in European fairy tales and medicine, c. 1350-1700

Sarnyai, Lili January 2016 (has links)
This thesis takes an interdisciplinary approach to a recurrent cultural trope: the figure of the sleeping beauty. Sleeping beauties are young women—paradigms of femininity, paragons of virtue and physical perfection—who lose consciousness and become comatose and catatonic, for prolonged periods. In this unnatural state, these female bodies remain intact: materially incorrupt, aesthetically unblemished. Thus can the body of the sleeping beauty be defined as an enigma and a paradox: a nexus of competing and unanswered questions, uniquely worthy of investigation. This thesis examines the metamorphoses of the figure of the sleeping beauty in literature and medicine between c.1350 and 1700 in order to interrogate the enduring aesthetic and epistemological fascination that she exercises in different contexts: her potency to entrance, her capacity to charm, in both literary and philosophical realms. The widespread presence of the sleeping beauty in literature and art, as well as in the broader social sphere, over the centuries, indicates the figure’s important and ongoing cultural role. Central to this role is the figure’s dual nature and functionality. On the one hand, conceptualized as allegories, sleeping beauties act as receptacles for a complex matrix of patriarchal fears, desires and beliefs about the female body in general, and the virgin and maternal bodies in particular. On the other hand, understood as material or bodily entities, sleeping beauties make these same ideological questions incarnate. Sleeping beauties are, therefore, signs, treated as material bodies, a tension which this thesis explores. As such, they are prime subjects for cross-disciplinary correlational study and historicist analysis: vehicles for comparison and dialogue between literature, medicine, and religion on the issues of power and passivity, sexuality and gender difference, mortality and beauty, nature and the unnatural or supernatural. Sleeping beauties negotiate the boundaries of human desire for, and capacity for belief in, miracles and wonders.
30

Body language : ballet as form in literary modernism, 1915-1935

Anderson, Kathryn January 2014 (has links)
This dissertation undertakes an examination of the evolving relationship between text and dance via the ballet texts of literary modernism. My selected texts illuminate a spectrum of performativity, ranging from the blueprints for performance used in the collaborative enterprises of European ballet companies like the Ballets Russes and the Ballets Suédois to later unperformed works by canonical writers. Some texts serve the utilitarian purpose of instructing production, but others independently claim their own aesthetic importance. My study reveals how text infiltrated ballet in the 20th century, and, in turn, how ballet came to serve new expressive purposes on the page. As most of these texts have never been performed, a new question arises: what does it mean to read a ballet? Ballet texts invite a method of reading unique to their own formal experiment: the stylistic range of these texts invites a study of the borders between types of language in a given piece, the materiality of dance, and the word-play that implicated the human body into the space of poetry and prose so intricately in the modernist period. In the contexts of literary modernism and dance and performance studies, I propose my project as a unique and useful tool with which to appreciate and interrogate historical and continuing relationships between text and performance. Critics, scholars, and dance and theatre practitioners have avoided confronting these works, but I propose that it is precisely through their challenging nature that they are essential to a more comprehensive study of individual careers and an expansion of the boundaries of modernism. From Jean Cocteau in 1915 to E. E. Cummings in 1935, the climate that turned writers to ballet demonstrates the value of tradition in a specifically nuanced modernist project that negotiated a concrete cultural past in the context of artistic revolution.

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