This thesis intends to answers these questions: What did “curiosity” mean in the nineteenth century, and how do Charlotte Brontë's four major works represent such curiosity? How were women looked at, formulated, and situated under the nineteenth-century curious gaze? In order to answer these questions, this thesis examines Brontë's works by juxtaposing them with nineteenth-century exhibitions. Four chapters are thus dedicated to this study: in each a type of exhibition is contemplated, and in each the definition of “curiosity” is defined through the discussions of boundary-breaking. The first chapter discusses the metaphors of “cabinets of curiosities” throughout Brontë's texts. The most intimate and enclosed spaces occupied by women and / or their objects—attics, desks, drawers, lockets—are searched in order to reveal the secret relationship between Brontë's heroines and the objects they have hidden away, especially the souvenirs. From cabinets of curiosities the thesis moves to another space in which the mechanism of curiosity and display takes place—the garden. The second chapter thus discusses the supposed antithesis between the innocent and the experienced, between the Power of Nature and the Power of Man, by reading the garden imagery in Brontë's works along with nineteenth-century pleasure gardens and the Wardian case. The imagery of Eve is also taken into consideration to discuss the concept of innocence. In the third chapter, metaphors of waxworks and the Pygmalion myth are applied to discuss the image of women's bodies in Brontë's texts, and the boundary between the living body and the non-living statue is seen as blurred. In the final chapter, dolls' houses and their metaphors in Brontë's works are examined in order to explicate Brontë's concept of “home,” and the dolls' house thus poses a question on the relationships between the interior and the exterior, the gigantic and the miniature, and the domestic and the public spaces.

Nineteenth-century British fiction is often dismissed as necrophillic or obsessed with death. While the label of necrophilia is an apt description of the fetishistic representations of dead women prevalent at the end of the century, it is too narrow to fit literature produced earlier in the century. This is not to say that abnormal attitudes toward death are only a feature of the late nineteenth century. In fact, pathological attitudes toward death abound in the literature, but the relationship between the deceased and the survivor is not always sexual in nature. Rather, there is a clear shift in attitudes, from the chaste death fantasy, or attraction to the idea of death, prevalent in Gothic works, to the destructive, stagnant mourning visible in mid-century texts, and culminating in the perverse sexualization of dead women at the turn of the century. This literary shift is most likely attributable to the concurrent changes in attitudes toward sex and death. As sex became more acceptable, more public, via the channels of scientific discourse, death became a less acceptable idea. This “denial of death” is a direct reaction to the religious uncertainties brought about by industrialization. As scientists and industrialists uncovered increasing evidence against a literal interpretation of the Bible, more people began to doubt the nature of God and the existence of an afterlife. If there was no God, then there was no heaven, which raised questions about what happened to the soul after death. With the certainty of an afterlife gone, death became mysterious, something to fear, and the passing of loved ones was doubly-mourned as their fate was now uncertain.

This thesis examines four translations and retranslations of novels by British female writers. They are Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford, Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, George Eliot’s Silas Marner, and Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. The translations and retranslations, eight target texts in total, are mapped onto the sociopolitical and sociocultural milieu of China from the late 1920s to 1930s. During the span of time when the eight translations were published, China was undergoing a special period of political turbulence intertwined with literary vibrancy. With the literary field of China segmented into various literary societies or political organizations subscribing to their respective doctrines and principles, Chinese intellectuals including translators from various backgrounds produced literature and translation within the agenda of their respective literary or political societies. The heart of this thesis’s theoretical framework is the role of agents of translation involved the practice of translation production. The interaction amongst the human and nonhuman agents: translators, patrons, intellectuals, literary institutions, publishers and more, are examined in order to identify the translation motivations of the translators. The seven translators covered in the present study are categorized into three distinctive groups: the leftists, the humanists and the commercial translators. A collective analysis of the translators’ behaviour should shed light on the general understanding of the intended social functions of these translated novels written by British female writers published during Republican China.

In the first chapter of Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Gilbert Markham invites his reader to join him as he attempts to recall the past. Because Gilbert uses the journal of another to supplement his own memories, the novel's frame narrative structure becomes saturated with complex memory-based issues and problems. Thus, the complicated frame narrative provides fertile ground for exploring the novel through memory. In studying the frame narrative, scholars have typically devoted their criticism to Gilbert and how he shapes the frame. Few scholars afford the other primary narrator of the novel, Helen, any power in shaping that frame. However, both Gilbert's and Helen's narratives exist separately yet function codependently. Using recent studies in memory as well as Derridean and Foucaultian archive theory as a lens, I will explore how Tenant presents an anarchic narrative structure that simultaneously gives its own semblance of power and order without assigning complete narrative power to one person or to one gender.

Syftet är att fastställa gemensamma drag och paralleller, som återfinns i dels keltiska myter/keltiska texter och dels i Wuthering Heights, för att sedan kunna diskutera hur dessa gemensamma drag möter och interagerar med varandra.Resultat: Jag har funnit att det i Wuthering Heights’ ramberättelse återfinns gemensamma drag och paralleller, mellan voyage-genrerna immram & echtrae och Wuthering Heights. I Wuthering Heights ’ kärnberättelse har jag funnit gemensamma drag och paralleller mellan berättelserna hämtade från Leabhar Gabhála Éireann och Wuthering Heights (samtligt mytologiskt material är hämtat ur den mytologiska cykeln). I diskussionen om det innehållsliga mötet, kommer jag fram till att Mr. Lockwood förändrats i och genom sin resa. Jag finner också att Wuthering Heights förändrats i sitt möte med Mr. Lockwood. Lägger man sedan det mytiska filtret uppe på det innehållsliga mötet kan man tolka in ett att kulturellt möte mellan det keltiska/gamla och det europeiskt-kristna/nya som en fruktbar förening, där ingen av parterna är att ringakta. Genom att låta polariteter som dåtid/nutid, hedniskt/kristet och ödemark/civilisation beblanda sig med varandra, både textmässigt strukturellt sker en sammansmältning. Detta är något som ligger helt i linje med den mytologiska cykelns världsuppfattning, där element från vår värld beblandas med element från the Otherworld.

Orientador: Mário Luiz Frungillo / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-24T10:22:46Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Saber_RogerioLobo_M.pdf: 1131901 bytes, checksum: bd74a40c9603c7d7c7f65986303efd81 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014 / Resumo: As obras Crônica da casa assassinada e O morro dos ventos uivantes - escritas, respectivamente, pelos autores Lúcio Cardoso (1912-1968) e Emily Brontë (1818-1848) - podem ser lidas como textos que, além de explorarem elementos da estética gótica literária, partilham uma trama que se movimenta a partir dos planos de vingança executados por seus protagonistas Nina e Heathcliff. Em primeiro lugar, desejamos delimitar quais elementos e temas são explorados pelos textos que nos permitem compará-los com os romances pertencentes à literatura noir dos séculos XVIII e XIX. Por fim, prevemos a aproximação de ambos os romances, de maneira que possamos compreender as razões da vingança de cada um dos agentes, os instrumentos utilizados, o modo de execução do plano e, por fim, as consequências do ataque levado a cabo. A aproximação proposta, além de confirmar que os textos podem ser lidos como obras góticas, indica-nos conclusões de ordem filosófica a respeito do tema em estudo (vingança) / Abstract: The literary works Crônica da casa assassinada and Wuthering Heights - respectively written by Lúcio Cardoso (1912-1968) and Emily Brontë (1818-1848) - can be read as texts that explore elements from the literary gothic aesthetics as well as a plot that animates itself through the revenge plan executed by their protagonists Nina and Heathcliff. In the first place, we want to delineate the elements and themes that are explored in the texts and that allow us to compare them to the novels that belong to the 18th and 19th centuries literature noir. In conclusion, we foresee an approximative reading of both novels in order to understand the reasons of the revenge of each protagonist, the instruments used, how the plan was executed and, finally, the consequences of the attack. Our approximative reading confirms that the texts can be read as gothic novels and it indicates us philosophical conclusions on the elected theme (revenge) / Mestrado / Teoria e Critica Literaria / Mestre em Teoria e História Literária

No description available.

Uppsatsen granskar två platser i Emily Brontës roman, husen Wuthering Heights och Thruscross Grange. Analysen kretsar kring karaktärerna på dessa platser och relationerna mellan dem med utgångspunkt i Henri Lefebvres teori The Production of Space. Uppsatsen granskar maktperspektiv, äganderätt och olika karaktärers anknytning till hus och hushåll.

Although Anne Brontë's first novel, Agnes Grey, presents itself as a didactic treatise, Brontë's work departs from many accepted Evangelical tropes in the portrayal of its moral protagonist. These departures create an exemplary figure whose flaws potentially subvert the novel's didactic purposes. The character of Agnes is not necessarily meant to be directly emulated, yet Brontë's governess is presented as a tool of moral instruction. The conflict between the novel's self-proclaimed didactic purpose and the form in which it presents that purpose raises a number of interpretive questions. I argue that many of these questions can be answered through the application of a hermeneutic presented in Augustine's De Doctrina Christiana. Such a hermeneutic shifts the burden of interpretation away from the author and toward the reader in such a way that the moral figure becomes, not a standard to be emulated, but rather a test of the reader's personal spiritual maturity. This sign theory heavily influenced the works of medieval hagiographers such as Ælfric of Enysham, who depended on Augustine's sign theory to mediate some of the less-orthodox behaviors of saints such as Æthelthryth of Ely. I argue that by applying Augustine's hermeneutic and reading Agnes Grey in the context of these earlier didactic genres, the novel's potentially subversive qualities are not only neutralized, but become an important element of Evangelical instruction.

<p>This thesis examines the ways in which various practices, such as novel-writing, publishing, book-reviewing, reading for pleasure, adaptation and studying English literature, have produced <i>Jane Eyre</i>’s complex cultural profile. The organizing principle of the study is Paul du Gay, Stuart Hall et al’s ‘circuit of culture’, which identifies five key processes or ‘moments’ as being productive of the meanings that a cultural artefact or text comes to possess. Explaining the meanings which have been attached to <i>Jane Eyre</i> partly involves trying to understand why it has been perceived and described dichotomously. For example, it has been thought of as trivial and serious, radical and conservative, feminine and unfeminine. The investigation begins with the writing process, exploring how and why Charlotte Brontë embedded the text with specific hybrid features. The study then traces how these textual features have acquired meaning in different discourses, focusing primarily on the novel’s reception in Britain in the mid-nineteenth century and in the 1990s. The thesis points to the role played by distinct target-audiences in configurations of <i>Jane Eyre</i>; Charlotte Brontë, publishers, biographers, literary critics, film-makers and teachers have all had specific audiences in mind when they have described, evaluated, regulated and/or creatively reworked the novel, its author’s life and/or the culture in which the author lived. During the course of the twentieth century, <i>Jane Eyre</i> became increasingly thought of as a legitimate object of study at all levels of the education system. The thesis examines how the text has been studied, and contributes to ongoing debates about National Curriculum English by offering ways of allowing more creativity into the classroom.</p>