<p>Patrick White is a man divided: one part of him strives for permanence, surety, the ideal, while knowing the contingent, temporal realm he inhabits must inevitably undermine such striving. The desire, and the knowledge of its futility, leads him into a misanthropic devaluation of human creative possibility and, complementarily, into the arbitrary use of imposed symbolic resolutions directed to an elect who can "see". It has been this part of White, largely, that criticism has been industrious in explicating, if not in quite the terms I have used above. But there is another part of White which strains away from the former dualism of idealism and despair, significance and banality, towards a vital wholeness to be apprehended in human relationships. It is this aspect of White which embodies his genuine novelistic power and which, consequently, helps us to understand and place" the former "cerebral" response to the complexity of finding meaning in the twentieth century.</p> <p>The present study deals with four novels in four chapters, and briefly discusses a fifth in an epilogue. It opens with an introduction in which I link the division found in White to T.S. Eliot's theory of the "dissociation of sensibility", and so to the major modernists, Eliot, Yeats, and Lawrence. I then devote a chapter to each of The Aunt's Story (1948), Riders in the Chariot (1961), The Vivisector (1970), and A Fringe of Leaves (1976). The main thrust of these chapters is to demonstrate how White's development as a writer moves from ambivalence toward his vision, through a compensatory rigid dualism, to an increasing awareness and acknowledgement of the reality that creative relationship offers. The epilogue comments briefly on White's most recent novel, The Twyborn Affair (1979), in which he indulges many of the predilections he had sufficiently "placed" through the writing of A Fringe of Leaves. Evidence that White has not forgotten the discoveries of Fringe is present, but in a tenuous form. Though White's creativity is of major status, the divisions that tend to undermine it still have a powerful hold on him.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

<p>Most critical studies of Ford are largely general in nature, mainly because of the comprehensive, 'pioneering' positions critics have tended to adopt in order to show that Ford is indeed worthy of our attention. As a result, the major novels and romances --the three volumes of Fifth Queen (1906, 1907, 1908), The Good Soldier (1915), and the four volumes of Parade's End (1924, 1925, 1926, 1928) --still need the kind of close, textual analysis that would demonstrate their value as subtle and intricate works of art. In this study, I have attempted to provide a detailed examination of these works.</p> <p>Perceiving an additional 'flaw' in most evaluations of these fictions, whereby form and content are discussed as separate entities, I have focused, instead, on the "rhetoric" of the novels --on the ways in which we are made to see Ford's fictional worlds. Seen through the perspectives afforded by Scharer's "Technique as Discovery", Booth's The Rhetoric of Fiction and Lodge's Language of Fiction, this theoretical framework is discussed in the opening chapter. By focusing upon rhetoric as being an integral part of the process by which we are moved to a unique view of experience, I try to illuminate some of the "enigmas" surrounding the selected fictions, as well as counter many of the negative criticisms that have hitherto appeared.</p> <p>In my chapter on Fifth Queen, I argue that the rhetoric Ford there employs is designed to fully explore the romance form. By focusing upon the range of effects in the trilogy, we see that, contrary to its general reputation, Fifth Queen is not a structure without unity, but a unified "song" of the romance heroine who seeks to give a shape to experience through a faith in something outside the self. The other characters in the trilogy fail to respond to Katherine's qualities, and the rhetorical effects Ford employs bring out their failings and Katherine's triumph of selfhood. These failings are especially noticeable in Henry VIII who is incapable of the kind of love which would take him beyond his own limitations. In many ways, ·the contrast between Henry's imprisonment in his "passions" and "prides", and Katherine's freedom through a love for something outside the self, is a pattern repeated throughout Ford's work.</p> <p>Any consideration of the rhetoric of The Good Soldier must deal with the narrator Ford uses to tell his "Tale of Passion". I show how the values or norms we are made to see as of importance in the novel are precisely those which help the narrator tell his tale. This is particularly true of the most important value, passion. Passion enables Dowell, as faith does Katherine, to transcend the self in order to escape its constraints; as a consequence, he can see things from another point of view. It also allows him to give experience a form, and, through this creative act, he finds a degree of self-awareness and freedom. Passion is the value he comes to see as being the sentiment that Edward Ashburnham tried hardest to express. It is the sentiment that Leonora fails to understand. However, Dowell does understand passion and the "affair" as a whole; as a result, he comes to align himself with the "passionate" who are destroyed by a "garrison" mentality that denies anything exceptional in life.</p> <p>Passion is also the subject of Parade's End, and the value which lies behind its telling. Approaching the novel through its rhetoric, I show how the tetralogy is a unified work, of which the much maligned fourth volume, The Last Post, is an integral part. The sequence of volumes is structured in such a way that it explores various kinds of passion: those that are destructive and imprison the characters involved, and those that are creative and are seen as a source of life. We, as readers, experience these passions, and the shaping of our experience depends upon Ford's successful handling of his medium--especially his use of character, point of view, juxtaposition, language, time and setting. I analyses these aspects of the novel's rhetoric by tracing them through the entire fabric of the tetralogy. There emerges an excellent depiction of passion which is the equal of The Good Soldier.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

<p>This study shows how the narrative strategies of Beckett's early fiction, developed as a dialogical response to Joyce's work, lead to an implied critique of conventional notions of narrative and subjectivity. Beckett's work, the study argues, takes up the challenge posed by Joyce's "Work in Progress," and Beckett's individualistic reading of Proust, and finally "refus[es] the possibilities of modernist writing" (Said 50). Thus Beckett attempts an "impossible" fiction in which protagonists and narrators reject their roles, the presumption of audience interest is examined and sacrificed, and the speaker's power over language radically questioned. Consequently, More Pricks than Kicks, Murphy, watt, Malone Dies and The Unnameable demonstrate the fictional potential of rejected and "impossible" tactics such as silence, futility, and apparent incompetence.</p> <p>The study demonstrates that the isolated individualism of Beckett's protagonists is associated with a breakdown of language and self, a process that provides a fictional anticipation of the theoretical view that language removed from either actual or conventional situations of utterance and reply ("writing" as opposed to speech) becomes an autonomous sign-system which remains silent about questions of self and identity. (Since it is only in human dialogue, in taking up an anchored subject-position within language, that a speaker's subjectivity can emerge). Beckett's protagonists, seeking to maintain their distance from the social distribution of subject positions, and seeking to propagate their personal monologue outside any dialogue, find themselves lost in a "moment before speech," or in language without parole, and thus are unable to base their own subjectivity in the unmoored or ungrounded discourse they inhabit. To explicate these implicit ideas, I turn to theorists of language and the self such as Emile Benveniste and Jacques Lacan (whose ideas were developing at the same time as Beckett was writing the works treated: in Paris in the 1930's). iv</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

<p>More than simply a backdrop, the forest in the Mahabharata and Ramayaoa is one of three central environments in the Hindu epics, and of the three is easily the setting which most frequently shapes the epic action. By studying the forest, the people who pass through it and their activities there, a new perspective on Hindu epic narrative is gained.</p> <p>The central thesis of this study is that the tripartite process of transformation, first observed in rites of passage, operates in the forest-related sections of the Mahabharata and Ramayana, the middle or threshold phase of that process centering in the forest. The forest, then, acts as a threshold across which the epic heroes and heroines pass as they move from one lift-stage to another, or as is more often the case, from one state of existence to another.</p> <p>For example, in the early adventures of both Rama and Laksmana. . and the Pandava brothers, the heroes move from ... the brahmacarya life-stage to the grhastha life-stage. Similarly both Nala and Damayanti reflect this transfermative process: Nala as he moves from being a ritually impure, possessed, insane king to a purified, liberated, sane king; Damayanti as she moves from being the wife of a madman to the wife of a just, powerful ruler. Damayanti 's transition is more dramatic than first appears for in epic India a woman had very few life options, thus a disastrous marriage meant that she was as good as dead. Both Draupadi and sit~ cross forest thresholds similar to Damayanti's. The Pandava brothers and Rama also cross similar forest thresholds. Their movement from a state of peace to a state of war occurs primarily during the forest exiles common to both epics. Finally, while they dwell in the forest threshold, the epic religious heroes and heroines par excellence, the tapas-doing ascetics, move from a state of existence in which they are subject to death to a state of immortality. This last process, the movement from mundane, profane sphere to sacred sphere, provides a pattern useful for further understanding the forest activities of Rama and the Pandavas.</p> <p>In studying these various movements between states of existence, characteristics of the threshold phase of these processes emerge. In the case of Pandava the dynamic movement of the threshold is stressed, celibacy, communists, pilgrimage and the intersection of mythic and heroic planes are the central characteristics. In the case of Rama, when the more static ideal nature of the threshold is stressed, the dual modality of Nowhere and Source is the central characteristic. These characteristics themselves become tools with which to understand some of the intricacies of epic narrative.</p> <p>More importantly by focusing on the forest, an essential difference between the Mahabharata and the Ramayana can be explored. And this is certainly one of the most important contributions of this study. Very few investigations have endeavored to treat both of the Hindu epics. The reasons for this are complex, but I suspect that to confront the whole of both epics is impossible because of their vastness, while to choose a perspective from which to see both epics simultaneously without trivializing is difficult. The forest in the Mahabharata and Ramayana provides a substantial perspective and thus a study of it is helpful in understanding the meanings of the Hindu epics.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

<p>The Oriental tale in the eighteenth century was a very popular form which has been ignored until fairly recently. Furthermore, woman's contribution to this popular but marginalized form has been almost utterly neglected. Beginning with Eliza Haywood's Adventures of Eovaai. Princess of Iiaveo, through Frances Sheridan's History of Nouriahad and concluding with Ellis Cornelia Knight's Dinarbas; A Tale Being£:!: Continuation of Rasselas, Prince gfAbissinia, this study chronologically follows the rise of the domestic woman in the decidedly undomestic Oriental tale as these three authors negotiate genre, their culture and their gender through the writing of Oriental tales.</p> <p>The Oriental tales as written by these women represent an opposing voice to developing literary realism so beloved of the middle classes. While Oriental tales are at least partially reactionary in their inflection of earlier romance conventions, they are also as necessary as realism for the development of capitalism: capitalism relies not only on an ethic of saving, generally associated with realism, but also on an ethic of spending. Emphasizing sumptuous description and luxury, they reinforce expenditures, which punctuate periods of working and saving, and women are absolutely central in the development and construction of their culture through their writing and through their gender association with consumption for their culture.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

<p>Although Paul Scott is a successor to other Anglo-Indian novelists, his literary reputation is unjustly -overshadowed, particularly by E.M. Forster's. Scott's epic novel, The Raj Ouartet and its sequel, Staying on, provide a pointed indictment of the human costs of British imperialism from a British point-of-view, both employing and undermining the standard themes and conventions of the Anglo-Indian novel. A complex and repeated series of images and symbols diagnoses the pathological state of the Raj at its moment of collapse. Scott's Anglo-India is trapped In a mythical Edwardian era of imperial certainty, rather than in the contemporary political reality of Indians· insistence on their right to self-rule.</p> <p>The current weakness of the Raj is that it is riven from within; the novel explores such issues as race and class, and points to the conflicts between, and paradoxes of, liberal and conservative imperial policies and ideologies. The Anglo-Indians· circumscribed sense of place, their attitudes to language, and their limited view of history expose the ultimate destructiveness of imperialism for those subjected to it.</p> <p>Scott's achievement notwithstanding, the uncritical and apolit1cal academ1c study of h1s novels and other novels about lnd1a overshadows the literary achievements of Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi writers writing in English, permits continued ignorance and devaluing of the vast diversity of literature's in Indian languages, and continues to perpetuate the damagingly false images and attitudes about India which sustained the imperial venture in the first place.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

<p>Dylan Thomas belongs to an exclusive group, the Anglo-Welsh poets, who, throughout most of English literary history, have either chosen or have been compelled to write in English rather than in Welsh, a situation which offers someone interested in language analysis an opportunity to study its several implications. Perhaps, in the not too distant future, the way in which human beings think and learn a language will be satisfactorily determined. In what language does a bi-lingual person think? Does a human being think in words or pictures? What emotive value do words possess? Is there an on-going tension between the first language and the acquired language or languages, or, as in Thomas' case, the first family language which he could not speak fluently and the alien language which became his lingua franca? To what extent do the latent influences such as personal associations, family background, interests, ancestry, ultimately affect the nature of writing? At present, in the world of critical thought on these subjects, we are still "on a darkling plain" where "ignorant armies clash by night".</p> <p>Literary critics have often dismissed Dylan Thomas' poetry, and particularly his figurative language, as excessively esoteric and complex. This study will, I hope, go some way to meet this criticism by examining in some detail the dynamics of Thomas' diction, metaphor, and symbolism, as necessary components of a style that is both original and essential to the manifestation of a truly private metaphysical vision. In this study I will attempt to identify the elements that characterize his style: in short, to establish why his poems are the way they are.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)

<p>The four decades which followed the publication of Charles Darwin•s The Origin of Species in 1859 saw the concept of evolution spread throughout the sciences. and indeed into virtually every field of intellectual inquiry. In literature, evolutionary concepts gave rise, broadly speaking, to two kinds of writing: discursive and associative. The actual debate which erupted upon publication of Darwin•s theory of natural selection quickly gave rise to a large body of discursive literature in which the ramifications of evolutionary theory were examined. Undoubtedly this discursive prose influenced scientists and non-scientific readers alike, and helped to make Darwinian concepts a part of our culture. This thesis provides evidence that Canadian writers took part in the debate on evolution, producing a body of discursive prose, and it also shows that Canadian imaginative literature has been affected by that debate in significant ways.</p> <p>Four of the eight writers dealt with in this thesis wrote non-fictional prose. Daniel Wilson (1816-1892; ethnologist and literary critic) and William Dawson (18201899); geologist and paleontologist) are authors of critiques of Darwinism in which their individual scientific interests play important roles. Goldwin Smith {1823-1910; historian and journalist) and William LeSueur (1840-1917; social critic) direct their rationalistic arguments at the social implications of science.</p> <p>Imaginative literature in which evolution shows important influence appeared in Canada with the Confederation poets. Poetry by three of them --Charles G. D. Roberts (1861-1945}, Archibald Lampman {1861-1899) and Wilfred Campbell {1858-1918)· --is discussed in the thesis. In their poetry there is certainly an effort to define man in the light of the new scientific knowledge, and also a marked tendency to see the idealistic possibilities inherent in evolution. On the other hand, the fiction of Charles G. D. Roberts focuses on the realistic aspects of Darwinism.</p> <p>The culminating figure in this thesis is E. J. Pratt. The influence of the earlier literature of evolution is evident in Pratt's poetry. His scientific orientation which appears in his fascination with mechanism in nature and man, and in his use of scientific terms and imagery --strongly suggests the influence of the debate on evolution, and of wilderness literature such as Roberts' fiction.</p> <p>In terms of the structure of the thesis, the seven chapter divisions set off individual studies which depend for the most part on primary sources, and which are held together by a common theme. The chapters are further related by the evidence they provide for the existence of an imaginative continuum, according to which "writers are conditioned in their attitudes by their predecessors, or by the cultural climate of their predecessors, whether 1 there is conscious influence or not".</p> <p>The specifically Canadian dimension observed in the literature of evolution analyzed here derives from that activity of the· imagination which seeks to create a unified vision of reality. The associative literature in particular presents a world in which the specific physical environment merges with the intellectual framework in which the debate on evolution was conducted. Thus, although there is nothing specifically Canadian about evolutionary theory, evolutionary concepts have become important to Canadian literature.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

<p>While there has been much helpful commentary on Richard Wilbur's work, inadequate attention has been given to the individual words and phrases which are vital to the entirety of each poem. Critics tend either to propose very specific but limited views of Wilbur's intentions and techniques or to give somewhat sketchy analyses of the individual poems. In this thesis, I have attempted to deal with the bulk and variety of Wilbur's poetic output, especially points of interest and difficulty which critics overlook or tend to skim past.</p> <p>The five themes discussed in this thesis are related to Wilbur's idea of happiness. A happy poet does justice to the world he perceives. The "world" that Wilbur is concerned with includes the "Republic of Letters," the world of phenomena, and the world of human experiences. An artist continues and modifies his literary tradition and tries to shape the protean diversity of human consciousness. True "happiness" can only be gained through self exposure to life's endless contradictions and through maintaining a balance between the artist's conflicting responses to these contradictions.</p> <p>One of the many contradictions is the conflict between human vision and the multifarious world. Wilbur attempts to show that physical vision is allied to moral vision. The poet also tries to articulate a compromise between the scientific and the artistic modes of perception. Through vision, man may achieve a reciprocal relationship with the world. A poet's vision is to discover the cosmic harmony beneath the apparently fragmented world and, as in a kaleidoscope, to arrange a design which holds the disparate images together.</p> <p>Wilbur's mundane commitments counterbalance his spiritual yearnings. His remarks about Robert Frost's Apple-picker--who 11 has climbed not to heaven but toward it, seeking perfection in a finite task11 --provide the key to the understanding of Wilbur's work in general. Corresponding to the rival claims of spirituality and corporeality, the structure of poems on this topic--and many of Wilbur's poems--is dialectical. The arrangement of the arguments is usually a juxtaposition of the thesis against the antithesis, followed by a synthesis. This dialectical format of ideas can be divided into three categories: polarities and counterpoint, dialogues, and narratives of dilemma.</p> <p>Another rivalry is that between art and reality. Naked reality motivates the artist to metaphor, and he gives reality form and pattern. The difficulty of this relation arises from the intricacy involved in achieving a "borrowing of the powers" from the real objects. Sometimes Wilbur translates the fugitive events into verbal patterns and sometimes he reshapes other artists' interpretations of life into another art form--a poem.</p> <p>The qualities that Wilbur cherishes in poetry-grace and lightness, for instance--are qualities essential to a purposeful existence. He is concerned with the tension between the limitations imposed upon man and man's aspirations and achievements within or despite these limitations. Wilbur's Weltanschauung is this-worldly: it seeks out ways of living happily in a fallen world. While Wilbur is genuinely saddened by mortality and mutability, he does not seem to be imaginatively held by them. The reader does not suspect the poet's honesty and seriousness in his exaltation of personal equilibrium and his faith in a basically decent universe. But the reader may sometimes miss a sense of human tragedy. Wilbur's limitations are his temperamental peculiarities which he can hardly be expected to transcend consistently. Given his register, Wilbur is brilliant. By and large, he imagines excellence and is uncommonly successful in his attempt to "make it."</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

<p>George Eliot's later novels are discussed with reference to Mikhail Bakhtin's concept of dialogism. Although Bakhtin traces dialogism from comedy and carnival, Eliot's dialogism is rooted in tragedy. Romola is set during Florentine carnival and Savonarola's sacred parody of carnival. While Eliot and Bakhtin, following Goethe, both use carnival as an image of ambivalence, in contrast to Bakhtin, Eliot recognizes carnival's violence when it is not simply a metaphor. Deviations from a key intertext, Paquale Villari's Ufe and Times of Girolamo Savonarola, are critical to understanding the novel's ambivalence. Felix Holt and The Spanish Gypsy are studied in light of Eliot's discussion of tragedy, a genre that Eliot argues contains irreconcilable positions. Neither work arrives at an absolute pronouncement for dealing with social inequities. Although Felix has usually been seen as Eliot's mouthpiece, I argue that Felix Holt and the separately published address are dialogic and Eliot does not present any simplistic single correct course for English politics.</p> <p>Bakhtin's discussion of the difference between epic and novel is a starting point for looking at Eliot's use of parodic heroes in Middlemarch, in which incessant parody provides multiple views on every action or word, and large abstract truths cannot be found. Harriet Martineau is introduced as a model for Dorothea's possibilities, and the monologism of Martineau's work forms a contrast for Middlemarch. In Daniel Deronda, Eliot's hero realizes his inability to believe in an epic stance, and the possibility of politics is challenged. Daniel is paralyzed, unable to act because of his own consciousness of dialogism. The Zionism eventually embraced by Daniel is not endorsed absolutely but is subject to the various perspectives of the novel. The usual understanding of the concluding allusion to Milton's Samson Agonistes is challenged by examining Milton's depiction of the conflicting duties of family and nation.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)