Thesis (M. A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2006. / Title proper from title frame. Also available in printed format.

Traditional interpretations of James Joyce's Dubliners have often focused on the pervasive "paralysis" of the city, covered in the stories' range of "childhood, adolescence, maturity, and public life." However, these approaches have limited their focus on the women in the stories, often spotlighting the male characters--and the author--through a Freudian lens; consequently, the interpretations have overlooked important considerations in light of developing feminist criticism. Through a selection of the stories, this thesis attempts to show how the text of Dubliners offers a cultural critique of the ways in which women were oppressed and constrained by the Irish Catholic ideology which established their roles within society. By the close of the collection, however, Joyce's creation of an inchoate image of the multi-dimensional, sexualized women of his mature works, Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, is embodied in the character of Gretta Conroy in "The Dead." Using Judith Butler's theory of performative acts of gender construction and Julia Kristeva's cultural dynamic of "the maternal" in the Stabat Mater, this criticism of the text lifts the female characters from the backgrounds of Dubliners and reveals the diseased culture of Dublin from another perspective. The female characters in the text act out expected cultural roles, often modeled after the Irish Catholic ideal of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Through the speech, silence, and physical acts of the female characters in Dubliners, "the female" in Irish-Catholic-Victorian culture is constructed--and reinforced--for Joyce's audience. This reading then furthers our understanding of the institutions, values, and practices which defined "womanhood" in nineteenth-century Dublin. / Graduation date: 1999

This qualitative study explored influences on three Canadian authors who present characters with disabilities in childrens fiction. Portraits of these authors are framed by a discussion of contemporary Canadian childrens novels, offering curriculum ideas within the framework of critical literacy. The research questions were: What patterns in the depictions of characters with disabilities appear in the context of Canadian novels, published since 1995, for children and young adults? What motivates and informs selected contemporary childrens authors construction of fictional characters with disabilities? Portraiture was used as a variation on case study research. Methods for data collection and analysis included semi-structured interviews, personal narratives, and content analysis regarding three author portraits, including a self-portrait; content analysis was also applied to fifty childrens novels. Bakhtins conceptualization of the literary chronotope was utilized as a lens to explore aspects of time and space internal and external to these texts, and further delineated by aspects of time, social context, and placethree categories borrowed from the field of narrative inquiry. Research on classic fiction illuminates particular patterns and trends regarding authors portrayals of characters with disabilities. This dissertation has identified and explored contemporary trends. While disability figured in all of the childrens novels in the study sample, ethnicity was strikingly absent, as were books for junior readers ages eight to eleven. The inquiry utilized Dresangs Radical Change theory to identify the landscape on which books about characters with disabilities reside, supporting the metaphorical conceptualization of the radical changes in childrens literature as a rhizome. The resonance of what has informed authors, in addition to the exploration of the childrens books in this study, offers perspectives that impact critical literacy classroom approaches delineated within Lewison, Flint, and Van Sluys four dimensions framework: disrupting the commonplace, interrogating multiple viewpoints, focusing on socio-political issues, and taking action and promoting social justice. The latter dimension, while not accomplished through reading the texts themselves, may be approached through attention to author influences. The implications of the study relate to curriculum development as well as promote further research in Education, English Literature, and Disability Studies. An annotated bibliography is included.

Sensation fiction, which flourished in England from the 1850s to the 1880s, was viewed by Victorian establishment figures as a threat to prevailing social values. This dissertation focuses on the work of Charles Reade, who along with Wilkie Collins and Mary Elizabeth Braddon, was among the most well-known sensation novelists. While several novels by Collins and Braddon have been rediscovered by scholars since the 1980s, Reade's fiction remains neglected. With its explicit critique of the emerging regimes of power/knowledge in the fields of medicine, criminal justice, and sexual mores, Reade's work anticipates Michel Foucault's theories elaborated a century later. Although previous readings of Victorian fiction have drawn on the ideas of Foucault in an attempt to identify sensation novels as cultural productions complicit with a developing bourgeois hegemony, I argue that these novels represent a narrative genre that challenges and resists these disciplinary constraints. In addition, Reade's work provides a rare glimpse of alternative sexualities and gender identities in nineteenth-century fiction that can be read in light of feminist and gender theory. This dissertation recovers the fiction of Charles Reade as a body of work that anticipates recent trends in literary and cultural theory and that speaks to us today with an uncanny familiarity.

Thèse (M.A.)--Université Laval, 2000. / Comprend des réf. bibliogr.

I argue that one cannot hold a Meinongian ontology of fictional characters and have a causal theory of reference for fictional names. The main argument presented refutes Edward Zalta's claim that storytelling should be considered an extended baptism for fictional characters. This amounts to the claim that storytelling fixes the reference of fictional names in the same way that baptism fixes the reference of ordinary names, and this is just a claim about the illocutionary force of these two types of utterance. To evaluate this argument, therefore, we need both a common understanding of the Meinongian ontology and a common taxonomy of speech acts. I briefly sketch the Meinongian ontology as it is laid out by Zalta in order to meet the former condition. Then I present an interpretation of the taxonomy of illocutionary acts given by John Searle in the late 1970s and mid 1980s, within which we can evaluate Zalta's claims. With an ontology of fictional characters and a taxonomy of speech acts in place, I go on to examine the ways in which the Meinongian might argue that storytelling is an extended baptism. None of these arguments are tenable-there is no way for the act of storytelling to serve as an extended baptism. Therefore, the act of storytelling does not constitute a baptism of fictional characters; that is, storytelling fails to ground a causal chain of reference to fictional characters.

Jane Austens <i>Mansfield Park</i> has earned a reputation as a difficult text for its politically-charged negotiations of ethics and unsatisfactory heroine. Since Edward Said presented the novel as an example of British literature that contributed to an expanding imperialist venture (95), scholarly attention has shifted to focus on the extent to which the novel critically engages with macrocosmic power structures and hegemonic discourse. That is, how does Mansfield Parks description of power dynamics at home reflect slave-related issues in the foreign atmosphere? Austens interest in and familial connections to slave-related issues, contemporary cultural awareness of abolitionist sentiment, and textual allusions to the slave trade all contribute to the novels counterpoint between domestic and foreign spaces: the Bertram family is economically dependent on a slave plantation in Antigua. A microcosm of plantation life, Mansfield Park represents the dilemmas of marginalized women who are presented with choices to rebel against or submit to patriarchal authority. In order to preserve her own physical, emotional, and psychological safety, Fanny Price bids for patriarchal favour. While others are punished severely for their rebellion, Fanny is rewarded for her submissive choices and enjoys an elevated social status. However, she inspires no reformation and remains an unsatisfactory heroine. Like the grateful Negro of contemporary plantation tales, Fanny functions to stabilize the status quo through her gratitude and loyalty, reinforcing societys tightly-controlled boundaries of acceptable behaviour. Mansfield Parks revelatory strength is that it exposes the mechanisms by which power is produced and maintained in domestic and imperial spaces.

This is a critical study of F. Scott Fitzgerald‟s Tender Is the Night focusing primarily on the lack of examination and criticism surrounding the women characters. Included are reviews of Fitzgerald‟s personal and professional life from the publication of his critically acclaimed The Great Gatsby until the publication of his last complete novel, Tender Is the Night, discussion of the contemporary and current criticism of the novel, and a feminist reading of the novel in order to focus more significant critical attention upon the women characters in order to create a fuller understanding of Fitzgerald‟s novel.

En la tesis es resolt la conjectura del nombre de Tamagawa en dues situacions: per a corbes el.líptiques E+ definides sobre Q amb multiplicació complexa donada per un cos imaginari quadràtic K, i per a caràcters de Hecke Ak--K*. / In the thesis we solve the Tamagawa number conjecture in two situations: for elliptic cuves E+ with complex multiplication an imaginary quadratic field K, where we impose that E+ is defined over Q, and for Hecke characters of the form, Ak--K*.

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