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The vast corpus of testimonial literature that has been produced in Latin America since the 1960s, reaches a peak in the 1970s and continues to the present day. The dissertation investigates this phenomenon in Chile, Argentina and Uruguay, through the examination of a group of literary works that range from personal testimonies to documentary novels. This genre is defined by a pact of truth established with the reader in relation to the experience that is being narrated. The first chapter describes testimony as a collective discourse that responds to a counter-hegemonic cultural project which opposes the doctrine of “National Security” that prevailed in the region during that period. Chapter II presents the guidelines that will frame the dissertation, preparing a synthesis of several existing models based upon diverse criteria: social, semantic, syntactic and functional. In establishing the relationship between narration, history and testimony, the thesis emphasizes that narrative techniques are needed in order to tell any story, even those which were not developed with a literary purpose. Testimony is not an exception, because it transforms experience into stories, applying to remembrances the structure of a plot. The texts are organized accordingly, taking into account the types of narrativization employed, and this taxonomy is connected with the reception theory and the contributions of the social criticism, in order to provide a comprehensive understanding of the genre. Chapters III, IV and V examine various works from the three countries mentioned above, establishing a connection between the historic-social situation, the collective symbols, the artistic production of that period, and testimonies. The conclusion suggests that the return of Latin American literature to its hybrid origins implies transformations such as the democratization of writing and the disappearance of the author as the centre of the literary production. It also claims that this corpus provokes a change in the direction of contemporary writing in those countries, generating a necessary catharsis and a new elaboration of a fragmented collective identity.

This thesis develops and refines a term used initially by Bill Buford to refer to works of contemporary realism. Dirty realism characterises a strain of realism first appearing in American and Canadian writing during the 1960s and increasing in prominence through the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s. The study focuses on the scholarship surrounding both the term and the works of particular authors, and applies the theories of Fredric Jameson and Michel de Certeau to develop a basic critical vocabulary for engaging the fiction and poetry of Charles Bukowski, Raymond Carver, Richard Ford, and Mark Anthony Jarman, as well as other writers treated with less intensity, such as David Adams Richards, Helen Potrebenko, Al Purdy, and Bobbie Anne Mason. In particular, the dissertation attempts to develop a critical terminology through which to discuss dirty realist texts. The most prominent of such terms, the "hypocrisy aesthetic," refers to dirty realism's aesthetic of contradiction, discursive variance, and offsetting of theory against practice. The chapters of the dissertation deal with the emergence of the hypocrisy aesthetic through a study of literary genealogy, history, and theory. The second chapter, "Dirty Realism: Genealogy," traces the development of major currents in twentieth-century American realism, particularly naturalism. Arguing for dirty realism as a variant of naturalism, the chapter traces the transmission of ideas concerning dialectics, determinism, and commodity production from Theodore Dreiser and Frank Norris, through James T. Farrell and John Steinbeck and ending with an extensive discussion of Charles Bukowski's Factotum. The third chapter, "Dirty Realism: History," addresses the impact of the Cold War on the development of dirty realism. Referring to major critics on the period, this section of the dissertation follows the development of hypocrisy as a form of discourse eventuated by Cold War contradictions, particularly between that of democratic freedoms proclaimed abroad and the atmosphere of suspicion and paranoia on the domestic scene (as—in the USA—in the HUAC hearings chaired by Senator Joseph McCarthy).

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This study examines the contemporary American memoirs Goat (2004) by Brad Land, Prozac Diary (1998) by Lauren Slater, and The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts (1976) by Maxine Hong Kingston to reveal how these texts push traditional thematic and genre boundaries as well as conceptions of minority identity. Their inclusion of fictional aspects, episodic structure, narrative excesses, and non-teleological endings work to enhance their status as sociocultural critique and protest. This dissertation utilizes a social oppression angle within disability studies to demonstrate the overlapping processes and experiences of marginalization faced by these disparate protagonists who are dis-abled due to their undesired bodily variations and their failure to meet sociocultural standards of appropriate embodied behavior. Society is ideologically unwilling to accommodate or accept the differences the protagonists possess. Such a frame expands the artificial and culturally constructed notion of disability by illustrating the ways that discourse and ideologies of embodied normalcy intersect to constitute various minority identities as incompetent and unworthy. The texts bear witness to each protagonists’ struggle to cultivate meaningful subjectivity and reject passive victim status; however, their resulting survivor subjectivities are both resistant to and complicit with hegemonic tenets. This literary project augments ongoing work in minority, identity, autobiography, cultural, and disability studies that deconstructs essentialist paradigms while reinforcing the important cultural and literary work of contemporary memoir. Moreover, it fills a critical gap with respect to Goat and Prozac Diary, bringing these two texts into the critical discussion of autobiography. Finally, this dissertation illustrates that memoir is uniquely positioned within literary genres to navigate the interconnectedness of identity, subjectivity, and ideology, thus challenging readers to confront the injustice of a sociocultural structure that sanctions these inequities in the first place / Writing a better story : authorizing a vivid and valid self -- Lauren Slater's Prozac diary : the medical model and the suppression of the patient -- Maxine Hong Kingston's The woman warrior : the spectacular subjugation of the dually oppressed and dis-abled body -- The three memoirs : no prosthesis needed. / Writing a better story : authorizing a vivid and valid self -- Lauren Slater's Prozac diary : the medical model and the suppression of the patient -- Maxine Hong Kingston's The woman warrior : the spectacular subjugation of the dually oppressed and dis-abled body -- The three memoirs : no prosthesis needed. / Department of English

“Black Mothers and the Nation” tracks the ways that texts produced by United States women throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries position the black maternal body as subversive to the white patriarchal power structure for which it labored and that has acted in many ways to abject it from the national body. This study points to the ways in which the black mother’s subversive potential has been repeatedly, violently, and surreptitiously circumscribed in some quarters even as it succeeds in others. Several important thematic threads run throughout the chapters of this study, sometimes appearing in clear relationship to the texts discussed and sometimes underwriting their analysis in less obvious ways: the functioning of the black maternal body to both support the construction of and undermine white womanhood in slavery and in the years beyond; the reclamation of the maternal body as a site of subversion and nurturance as well as erotic empowerment; the resistance of black mother figures to oppressive discourses surrounding their bodies and reproduction; and, finally, the figurative and literal location of the black mother in a national body politic that has simultaneously used and abjected it over the course of centuries. Using these lenses, this study focuses on a grouping of women’s literature that depicts slavery and its legacy for black women and their bodies. The narratives discussed in this study explore the intersections of the issues outlined above in order to get at meaningful expressions of black maternal identity. By their very nature as representations of historical record and regional and national realities, these texts speak to the problematic placement of black maternal bodies within the nation, beginning in the antebellum era and continuing through the present; in other words, these slavery, Reconstruction, and segregation narratives connect personal and physical experiences of maternity to the national body. / The subordination of embodied power : sentimental representations of the black maternal body in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's cabin and Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the life of a slave girl -- Recuperating the body : the black mother's reclamation of embodied presence and her reintegration into the black community in Pauline Hopkins's Contending forces and Toni Morrison's Beloved -- The narrative power of the black maternal body : resisting and exceeding visual economies of discipline in Margaret Walker's Jubilee and Sherley Anne Williams's Dessa Rose -- Mapping black motherhood onto the nation : the black maternal body and the body politic in Lillian Smith's Strange fruit and Alice Randall's The wind done gone -- Michelle Obama in context. / Access to thesis permanently restricted to Ball State community only / Department of English

The vast corpus of testimonial literature that has been produced in Latin America since the 1960s, reaches a peak in the 1970s and continues to the present day. The dissertation investigates this phenomenon in Chile, Argentina and Uruguay, through the examination of a group of literary works that range from personal testimonies to documentary novels. This genre is defined by a pact of truth established with the reader in relation to the experience that is being narrated. The first chapter describes testimony as a collective discourse that responds to a counter-hegemonic cultural project which opposes the doctrine of “National Security” that prevailed in the region during that period. Chapter II presents the guidelines that will frame the dissertation, preparing a synthesis of several existing models based upon diverse criteria: social, semantic, syntactic and functional. In establishing the relationship between narration, history and testimony, the thesis emphasizes that narrative techniques are needed in order to tell any story, even those which were not developed with a literary purpose. Testimony is not an exception, because it transforms experience into stories, applying to remembrances the structure of a plot. The texts are organized accordingly, taking into account the types of narrativization employed, and this taxonomy is connected with the reception theory and the contributions of the social criticism, in order to provide a comprehensive understanding of the genre. Chapters III, IV and V examine various works from the three countries mentioned above, establishing a connection between the historic-social situation, the collective symbols, the artistic production of that period, and testimonies. The conclusion suggests that the return of Latin American literature to its hybrid origins implies transformations such as the democratization of writing and the disappearance of the author as the centre of the literary production. It also claims that this corpus provokes a change in the direction of contemporary writing in those countries, generating a necessary catharsis and a new elaboration of a fragmented collective identity. / Arts, Faculty of / French, Hispanic, and Italian Studies, Department of / Graduate

This thesis develops and refines a term used initially by Bill Buford to refer to works of contemporary realism. Dirty realism characterises a strain of realism first appearing in American and Canadian writing during the 1960s and increasing in prominence through the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s. The study focuses on the scholarship surrounding both the term and the works of particular authors, and applies the theories of Fredric Jameson and Michel de Certeau to develop a basic critical vocabulary for engaging the fiction and poetry of Charles Bukowski, Raymond Carver, Richard Ford, and Mark Anthony Jarman, as well as other writers treated with less intensity, such as David Adams Richards, Helen Potrebenko, Al Purdy, and Bobbie Anne Mason. In particular, the dissertation attempts to develop a critical terminology through which to discuss dirty realist texts. The most prominent of such terms, the "hypocrisy aesthetic," refers to dirty realism's aesthetic of contradiction, discursive variance, and offsetting of theory against practice. The chapters of the dissertation deal with the emergence of the hypocrisy aesthetic through a study of literary genealogy, history, and theory. The second chapter, "Dirty Realism: Genealogy," traces the development of major currents in twentieth-century American realism, particularly naturalism. Arguing for dirty realism as a variant of naturalism, the chapter traces the transmission of ideas concerning dialectics, determinism, and commodity production from Theodore Dreiser and Frank Norris, through James T. Farrell and John Steinbeck and ending with an extensive discussion of Charles Bukowski's Factotum. The third chapter, "Dirty Realism: History," addresses the impact of the Cold War on the development of dirty realism. Referring to major critics on the period, this section of the dissertation follows the development of hypocrisy as a form of discourse eventuated by Cold War contradictions, particularly between that of democratic freedoms proclaimed abroad and the atmosphere of suspicion and paranoia on the domestic scene (as—in the USA—in the HUAC hearings chaired by Senator Joseph McCarthy). / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

Although Garrison Keillor is perhaps best known as the creator and host of Minnesota Public Radio's A Prairie Home Companion (1974-1987), the focus of this study is his literary career. Keillor's literary accomplishments include a successful career as a writer for The New Yorker and two best-selling books about the fictional town of Lake Wobegon, Minnesota, entitled Lake Wobegon Days (1985) and Leaving Home (1987). His literary style incorporates elements from several traditions in American literature--the precise, sophisticated "New Yorker style" practiced by writers such as E. B. White and James Thurber; the oral tradition prominent in the works of Mark Twain and the nineteenth-century literary comedians; and the satiric realism associated with the small-town literature of writers such as Sherwood Anderson and Sinclair Lewis.

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