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This thesis investigates the expansion and continuing proliferation of Canadian historical fiction during the past three decades, and makes a case for reading a number of these novels as postmodern historical fiction. Characterized by the postmodern tendency to problematize history and cross genre boundaries, the novels discussed here are nevertheless rooted in their Canadian context. To establish a theoretical framework, the thesis reviews the reconfiguration of history in contemporary critical theories and its impact on the writing of history and historical fiction, and investigates the debate over Canada's postcoloniality. In the textual analysis, I address the questions raised by the interaction between postmodern problematization of history and local concerns in the selected novels. What narrative strategies are employed to launch an epistemological and ontological questioning of history? Are alternative reconceptualizations of history offered after the problematization? How do these texts achieve genre transgression through narrative devices and what is the purpose of this? What meta-narratives of national history are challenged? What national myths are subverted and dismantled? Are some other myths accidentally reasserted in this deconstructive process? What effects does this historical revisionism or scepticism have on the understanding of Canadian national identity? The focus of the discussion is on the relationships between formal experimentation and thematic concerns and the ways these texts interweave general critiques of history and its representation with specific investigations into the Canadian context. Finally, I propose explanations for the flourishing of contemporary Canadian historical fiction by taking into account both the combined theoretical framework and the complexities and subtleties of the texts under scrutiny. The thesis concludes that the authors of these novels have complicated the postmodern questioning of history at a variety of levels and made that questioning accommodate the novelists' concern with Canadian specificities.

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This thesis presents a reading of the fiction of Don DeLillo and Thomas Pynchon that focuses on the significance of embodiment in the authors’ technologically mediated worlds. The study draws upon the work of Vivian Sobchack, Steven Connor, Merleau-Ponty, and Jean-Paul Sartre. Critics of DeLillo and Pynchon’s fiction have generally avoided phenomenological perspectives; as a result, the concept of corporeality has not been thoroughly examined. Thus, the thesis examines the fiction of Pynchon and DeLillo in light of theories of embodiment that have been overlooked. Central to the thesis is a study of the theoretical and technical aspects of visual and auditory technology that is focused on how the authors depict an intrinsic connection between the physical body and prosthetics. To subvert the conventional dichotomy between the human and the technological, the thesis explores the sensory experiences of the characters, drawing attention to the inextricable connection between the body and the world. The analysis also considers the significance of the unity of the senses and the connection this has to the manner in which the body’s materiality is depicted. Moreover, the concept of monstrosity is used to explore how the authors portray the fluidity and the multiplicity of the human body. Giving a close reading of the body’s inherent connection to technology and the prominence of materiality, the thesis suggests that the characters depict subjective experiences that are rooted in their physicality. Technology is not perceived, in its conventional sense, as a means of disembodying the characters; on the contrary, it is the gateway to exploring corporeality.

This thesis is inspired by the abiding academic and public interest in Kerouac’s work and aims to advance new readings of Kerouac’s prose in a contemporary literary and cultural context. It is particularly concerned with a deconstructive reading of Kerouac’s prose and engages with his negotiations of race, gender, spirituality and origins within the framework of post-war America’s accelerated culture. Kerouac’s indebtedness to modernist techniques notwithstanding, this thesis argues that in its historical and thematic preoccupations Kerouac’s prose is vividly conversant with postmodern strategies. Without losing perspective of the late forties and fifties background from which Kerouac’s works emerged, the thesis explores the ways in which his thematic, linguistic and structural concerns interact with contemporary theory. Tracing the Kerouacian narrator’s problematization of the search for meaning in an accelerating culture, it examines his prose in a post-war context of uncertainty and ambiguity. In active dialogue with his contemporary America, Kerouac addresses and often challenges the dominant cultural practices of his time. Foregrounding the conflicts of his era, he anticipates subsequent social developments and philosophical debates, gesturing towards and at times capturing a postmodern sensibility. The four chapters of the thesis analyse Kerouac’s approach to the concept of simulation, his position towards Western representations of Eastern spirituality, his negotiation of the image of the exotic other and his narrative constructions of ethnicity and identity. Using the work of theorists such as Baudrillard, Virilio and Derrida, and also drawing on postcolonial studies, I demonstrate how Kerouac produces a highly performative prose in his projections of identity and heterogeneity. It is this ability to converse with literary and cultural developments up to the present day that best illuminates the contemporary appeal of Kerouac’s deconstructive approach to the notions of identity and otherness and most vividly illustrates the continuing vitality of Kerouac’s writing.

This thesis engages with three US poets – Jorie Graham, Charles Wright and Mark Doty – as well as using other writing, from the Modernists to the ekphrastic collection, to engage with the context of ekphrasis, ‘the verbal representation of visual representation’, in the US. After an introduction that evaluates previous work on ekphrasis and studies the forms of engagement between visual and verbal art, a section of three chapters is devoted to each poet. The first explores Jorie Graham’s work on abstract painting, photography and film, analyzing how she uses the different temporal conventions of each genre to write about the past. The second section looks at the links between memory and present perception in the work of Charles Wright and his struggle with how to represent as he follows the path to abstraction before returning to the more simple desire to say what he sees, accepting the sleight of hand that is necessarily a part of this. The third section goes on to explore the work of Mark Doty, a poet who embraces illusion in representation, arguing that the process of creating and deconstructing illusions is a fundamental part of how we define our own identity as well as how we make space for ourselves within the community. Refuting accusations that ekphrastic writing often depends too heavily on the visual artwork for its credibility, this section considers how it can be used positively as a tool for legitimation by writers who come from a minority perspective, analysing the visual aspect of poems on cruising, drag and public sex performances. A final section uses the relatively new phenomenon of the ekphrastic collection – with work by Cole Swensen, Debora Greger and Claudia Rankine– to examine how ekphrasis deals with issues of gender and iconic cultural images.

Shifting (A)Genders examines the representation of cyborgs in post-war American women’s science fiction, focusing on issues relating to gender and disability. Drawing on ideas expounded in Donna Haraway’s ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’ (1985) and theories of disability that conceptualise the disabled subject as a figure that disrupts the human and gender identity, it explores the ways in which novels by C.L. Moore, Anne McCaffrey, James Tiptree Jr., Joan D. Vinge, Lois McMaster Bujold and Marge Piercy highlight the emancipatory potential of technology for marginalised subjects. While critics argue that Haraway’s theory of the cyborg is idealistic, failing to consider the materiality of the body, this thesis demonstrates that representations of the human-machine in women’s writing emerge at particular historical moments confronting gender stereotypes in science fiction when gender relations are unstable in American society. Situating texts in their socio-historical context, I argue that women writers portray cyborgs differently to male writers and challenge western heteropatriarchal concepts of the human subject. The thesis identifies a shift in focus from representations of female to male cyborgs in women’s writing, which reflect changing perceptions of the gendered and disabled body. It also asserts that anxieties about the instability of gender can be related to moments of social upheaval that define post-war America.

This thesis is a study of the works of Margaret Walker (1915-1998) in a chronological order in the social and intellectual context of twentieth century America. Material presented in this study is based on research on available criticism published on Walker’s work. It is also based on research on the social, intellectual, and political aspects of twentieth century America. This thesis also incorporates information derived from the researcher’s close reading of Walker’s work. It argues that issues of race, gender, and class are always connected in twentieth century America and in Walker’s work as reflective of this century in America. It also argues that Walker’s feminist consciousness develops from one work to another until it reaches its peak in her later poetry. Chapter one investigates Walker’s literary heritage to understand the factors that shaped her creativity and contributed to the formation of her voice as a writer. It examines how far she was influenced by white and black literary traditions in her writings. Chapter two approaches Walker’s early poetry, represented in For My People (1942) in the context of 1930s and 1940s America. This volume is discussed in relation to Communism and Marxist thought to know how far Walker fell under their influence during that time. Chapter three examines Walker’s next publication, Jubilee (1966) in the context of 1950s and 1960s America. It focuses specifically on the Civil Rights Movement and how Walker’s novel reflects on its events and main debates. Chapter Four explores Walker’s later poetry: Prophets for a New Day (1970), October Journey (1973), Farish Street (1986), and This Is My Century (1989) in relation to 1970s and 1980s America. It explores how far these works show the influence of the Women’s Movement and Black Feminism on Walker’s perceptions.

The thesis examines the development of the concept of minority in the plays of Tennessee Williams, as it transforms from minority as the identity of a certain group in his early plays, into an experience of marginality. In The Glass Menagerie (1945), A Streetcar Named Desire (1947) and Suddenly Last Summer (1958) Williams' characters experience self-confinement within the body, which categorises them as identifiable minorities. Three versions of The Night of the Iguana will be pivotal in this thesis; the 1961 three-act version of Iguana finds the 'interior space' of the characters' confinement in conflict with 'the exterior space'. In Williams' later plays, including Kingdom of Earth (1968), In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel (1969) and Small Craft Warnings (1972), the concept of marginality becomes more abstract, concerning the characters' interaction with one another to create a space of liberation. The thesis defines this space as 'the circle of 'one-ness' which is formed between two marginalized characters who come together in order to be liberated from their own confinement. Over the course of these plays Williams widens this dramatic circle to operate on a collective level of unity that includes two or more characters. The thesis ends with a discussion of Vieux Carré (1977), where Williams succeeds in dramatising the unity of these characters with the image of the loving God, and offering a return to the self as the source of salvation and liberation. By reading Williams' dramatic texts in relation to his use of stagecraft, including the visual and aural images, stage directions and the characters' movements on the stage, as well as their spoken words, the thesis aims to present a new framework for the study of Williams' dramatic work.