Both my novel and the critical work explore Southern places, how they are defined and how Southern people imbue them with meaning—sometimes multiple and paradoxical meanings—and, in turn, how those places define them. In my novel, The Gospel According to No One, narratives tied to place are pitted against each other: New South versus Old South, fundamentalism versus liberalism, nihilism versus the mythic worldview, and the Agrarian Proprietary Ideal versus what some scholars see as the homogenizing forces of Late Capitalism. The struggles between these discourses threaten to undo order within the city. Those who survive forge new identities from the fragments of postmodernism, inventing new narratives about both themselves and the places they inhabit. My work on Eudora Welty also examines multiple Southern discourses. I argue that Welty’s self-conscious focus on reproductions of the South in Delta Wedding and The Optimist’s Daughter challenges the idea of a monolithic South, which also challenges any definitive categorization of Welty and her relationship to the imagined (the only ‘real’) South. In the bridging section of the work, I explain why I chose Welty as a subject of study, explore connections between postmodernism and Southern literature, suggest a definition of the South that is reflective of Place, and examine my creative work in light of the theoretical issues I have encountered.

This thesis examines the relatively new literary field of Asian American literature, and highlights the theme of identity in relation to the recent theories regarding racial melancholia. It takes Freudian psychoanalysis as its starting premise to argue for ‘transformative racial melancholia’ in hybridised Asian American subjects for whom a condition of loss is experienced in the combined processes of immigration, assimilation, and racialisation. I examine several novels by contemporary Asian American women and argue that these texts explore both racial and gender melancholia as conditions of loss. However, I suggest, these novels also demonstrate the process of depathologising melancholia within Asian American subjects and the restoration of a healthy psyche. A positive sense of identity within melancholic conditions is elicited when a healthy psyche is established. My thesis interrogates the way a constructive sense of identity is made available through avenues of intersubjective connectivity and social relations provided by the tropes of memory, history, gender performativity, and political agency. In examining and identifying these intergenerational links, I make a case for the subversion of the early concept of melancholia as individual pathology suffered by the solipsistic victim. My argument emphasises the way livability is generated in sharing, writing, and voicing melancholic losses within a larger collective communality. To this end, communication and language feature as key tools though which to convert losses into gains. To surmise, my thesis puts forward my argument regarding transformation within social interconnectivity that aids in making melancholia productive through the intersubjective management of losses.

This thesis explores four mid-twentieth century fictional texts in relation to concepts of action drawn predominantly from Anglo-American analytic philosophy and contemporary psychology. The novels in question are Anna Kavan's Ice, Samuel Beckett's How It Is, Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire and Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano. The theory of action provides concepts, structures, and language to describe how agency is conceptualised at various levels of description. My exploration of these concepts in relation to fiction gives a framework for describing character action and the conceptualisation of agency in my primary texts. The theory of action is almost exclusively concerned with human action in the real world, and I explore the benefits and problems of transferring concepts from these discourses to literary criticism. My approach is focused around close reading, and a primary goal of this thesis is to provide nuanced analyses of my primary texts. In doing so, I emphasise the centrality of concepts of agency in fiction and provide examples of how action theory is applicable to literary criticism.

This thesis uses the work of David Foster Wallace to exemplify two definitions of the term 'post-postmodernism'. I examine the literary connotation of 'post-postmodernism' – thus far, its predominant critical application – identifying the key characteristics of its form and addressing the centrality of Wallace's writing to its study. I extend this by showing how the term post-postmodern identifies a clear historical period and its cultural practices. Through detailed analyses of Wallace's work, I show the overlaps between post-postmodernist literature and the historical and cultural logic from which it emerged. This detailed argument not only allows me to establish the significance of Wallace's writing as both reflection of and critical intervention into the contemporary period, it also allows me to establish a contextualized significance for the study of 'post-postmodernism' in a variety of contexts and forms. My study takes in a variety of literary genres from Wallace's corpus, in order to produce a comprehensive reading of the implications of his work. It is organized around the central thematic strands of post-postmodernist literature, complemented by briefer discussions of the style and form such literature takes. These are all presented such that they establish that Wallace's writing is a primary exemplar of post-postmodernist literature; but also that his writing demonstrates a broader critical understanding of the term. Each set of readings is carefully contextualized to allow me to show the contiguous nature of the multiple uses of the term post-postmodernism. In my conclusion, I turn to address the broader significance of the detailed and multivalent definition of post-postmodernism that this thesis produces.

The aim of this research is to explore cultural differences in the children’s publishing industry in the USA and Spain and the impact these have on translation, and to develop a case study of the translation of Dav Pilkey’s Captain Underpants series into Spanish from a cultural and linguistic perspective. The main aim of this dissertation is to demonstrate the ways in which ranges of meaning are narrowed, expanded or refracted in children’s literature translation and how they affect early readers’ understanding of the text (as more or less subversive), modelling all this as a dynamic rather than static system. Bakhtin’s concept of dialogism is applied to the Captain Underpants texts to show that the translation process is a continuum, never a finalized project, which can - and does - change with time. This dissertation explores the ways in which the translator of the Captain Underpants series, Miguel Azaola, negotiates the pressures and constraints, be they political, historical, cultural, editorial, commercial, or linguistic, which are imposed upon him via ideology, commissioning editors and the publishing industry. All translations imply a certain level of manipulation of the original text, and the translation of a subversive text written for a younger audience is even more vulnerable to change, due to the existing power imbalance between adults and children and the potential of humour as a tool for undermining or reinforcing social control. The Captain Underpants books mock and challenge authority-figures and the structures of the adult world (parents, teachers, political and religious institutions). These books provide a carnivalesque context that enables children to establish a dialogue with the text through which to question societal norms that have been learnt in school and at home. This dissertation examines how humour and references to food have been translated into Spanish in this context. It also points out the dilemmas posed by retaining the original pictures in the translated text, and how the lack of a supporting cultural peritext affects not only the visual meaning of the text as a whole but also children’s reading experience and their perception of the books as cultural artefacts. Translation loss in children’s literature can be attributed to linguistic difficulties of capturing meanings or stylistic features. However, it may also reflect societal attitudes towards childhood and cultural differences. The history of publishing for children in Spain and the didactic mission of the publishing house (El Barco de Vapor) have had a strong impact on the translation of this series. Examples of the manifestation of this impact include domesticated names, loss of word-play, discrepancies between pictures and texts, and the almost complete deletion of the dual readership (adult and child). Translation has diminished the potential subversive elements of the target text, resulting in a significant reduction of humour. By adopting an interdisciplinary theoretical framework, in which theories from children’s literature, translation studies, reader response and studies on recent Spanish publishing trends are integrated, this thesis aims to make a scholarly contribution to the hitherto neglected study of the translation of contemporary children’s literature into Spanish. Highlighting throughout the differences in the textual content and children’s responses to the translated texts, this thesis explores the editor’s and translator’s decision-making processes and the challenges posed by translation for younger readers.

This thesis aims to revive Susan Glaspell’s name and reputation as an important fiction writer. For some time now Glaspell’s name has been somewhat displaced from the American literary canon and her fiction all but forgotten. Indeed, it is for her dramatic output that Glaspell is remembered; if she is remembered at all. I shall examine Glaspell’s fiction in relation to her life to show how she uses real life instances and contemporary social events to reflect on the socio-cultural status of women. My thesis will examine Glaspell’s fictional oeuvre by looking at some of the thematic issues concerning women’s subject matters which dominate Glaspell’s short stories and novels. The various chapters of this thesis are organised around the social issues, salient problems pertinent to the beginning to mid-twentieth century period, which Glaspell addresses. The issues I explore concern class, gender and identity. Class distinctions and discrimination are topics which Glaspell addresses due to her own complex relations with class and her own experiences in coming from a ‘downwardly mobile’ family. I will also examine Glaspell’s presentation of the complex relationship between class and women’s perception of themselves in society, specifically the early twentieth-century Midwestern society which Glaspell utilises throughout her writing. Finally, I will discuss Glaspell’s utilization of silence in the form of absent characters and as a medium of expression. My argument is that Glaspell deploys silence as a sign of power. This idea refutes the notion that women’s silence (in different forms) is synonymous with women’s cultural absence. Exploring Glaspell’s fiction oeuvre, this thesis hopes to reinvigorate Glaspell’s scholarly reputation and name as a culturally relevant, early twentieth century American novelist and short story writer.

This thesis explores the role of 1920s and 1930s popular culture in the short stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald. My original contribution to knowledge is to show how Fitzgerald’s use of dance, music, and film - at the level of both form and content - impact upon his literary aesthetics. By situating Fitzgerald’s work in the context of the short story as a genre, I consider the modernist features of his short fiction in relation to short-story cycles by James Joyce, Sherwood Anderson, and Ernest Hemingway. I argue that Fitzgerald’s lyrical style can be deceptive, and his stories are often more experimental, even subversive, than often recognised. This thesis argues that it is in Fitzgerald’s subtle use of ambiguity and parody that these experimental aspects of his fiction often manifest themselves. Reading the short fiction with a view to elucidating this parodic mode, and thus exploring Fitzgerald’s social and cultural critique, we encounter Fitzgerald parodying both his own fictive traits and his earlier stories, which sheds new light on his frequently disdainful remarks about the value of his magazine fiction. As ambiguity and parody are key features of African American cultural practices of the period, the thesis also re-examines Fitzgerald’s engagement with primitivist modernism, offering a broader perspective on how he navigated between his roles as literary novelist and popular short-storyist. Popular cultural references in Fitzgerald’s short fiction do not simply serve as temporal markers or to provide scenic tone, but often function subversively, to destabilise our expectations of a commercial Fitzgerald story whilst sitting in tension with Fitzgerald’s lyrical prose style. Themes of disguise and identity are of paramount importance to Fitzgerald’s literary modernism, and his use of these cultural media, centred around the concept of performance and leisure, show Fitzgerald subtly subverting our expectations of his short fiction.

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This thesis comprises a dissertation, ‘Two-Tone Detectives: Cross-Cultural Crime in Chester Himes’ Harlem Cycle Novels’; and Black Bush City Limits, a novel set amongst the ‘murphoisie’ of Irish London. The focus of the dissertation is an exploration of Himes’ expansion of the terms of the crime novel to countenance the broader theme of crimes against humanity, specifically slavery and its legacy in the United States of America following Emancipation in 1865. The dissertation argues that Himes takes a subaltern genre and by means of resisting the formulaic limitations of crime fiction introduces discourses not usually associated with the genre, such as folk tales, the Absurd, aspects of comedy derived from Elizabethan theatre, carnival, and the historical novel. The dissertation argues that Himes does not consistently manage to blend all of these elements successfully, and that his final unfinished novel, Plan B, fails to realise the potential of Himes’ subaltern genre. My novel, Black Bush City Limits, is an attempt to create a novel in the subaltern genre I argue Himes experiments with in the Harlem Cycle. In Black Bush City Limits a series of murders take place in and around the Dolmen Irish Centre in North London. Mick Kavanagh, a worker at the Centre, investigates these murders. His story is interrupted by extracts from a tranche of letters sent to him by his dying uncle in Ireland. These are by his Victorian forebear, Margaret Kavanagh, alive at the time of the Famine in Ireland. As the novel progresses the significance of these letters becomes apparent, and the two stories are gradually brought together. My dissertation contains a concluding chapter in which I trace where my own novel applies lessons learned from Himes’ example, and where I depart from him.

This research explores techniques for depicting interracial relationships, and their accomanying racial and cultural tensions, in fiction with an emphasis on Native American literature. This includes an examination of assuming other ethnicities through character development, and the line between appropriating racial identity and demonstrating empathy for characters regardless of races. This research specifically addresses techniques for illustrating the post-Civil Rights tensions between Euroamericans and Native Americans within the Interior West. As a non-Native American author native to the American West, I also identify the obstacles and strategies for including interracial relationships within my own work, a novel titled A Delicate Divide, which is based on a historic event: The Confederated Salish & Kootenai Tribes’ water compact proposal that threatens to strip land owner —primarily white—of their water rights within reservation borders. This research discusses Cosmopolitan and Nationalist arguments in favor and against non-Native merican depiction of Indians1 in fiction, and traces the progression of Euroamerican characterization within Native American fiction of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Through its examination of this aspect of racial tension, this research illustrates the arc of sentiment toward the colonizing race from early in the twentieth century, through the Civil Rights Movement and Wounded Knee II in 1973 (a significant event in Indian history), and into contemporary literature. An important outcome of this research has been my own personal understanding of the methods used to create fictional characters with varying viewpoints on race, including extreme racism, without making the overall nature of the work racist. I examine authors whose work deals heavily in themes of racial identity, racism, and cultural tensions between the colonizing race and the oppressed races. These authors also clearly illuminate the hardships of race relations from each of their characters’ perspectives. This paper discusses my approach to interracial fiction through the use of a third-race or “outsider” perspective to tease out racial stereotypes and cultural differences; the concept of imperative racism as a way in which characters overcome racism; and the use of self-directed racism as a technique for dispelling racial biases. Lastly, I highlight the predominant depiction of reservation life in literature as that of addiction, abuse, and poverty, with methods for updating depictions to a modern industry- and education-focused community, which is present on many of today’s reservations.